Category: World

SHOCKING footage from the first megafire of the year shows the terrifying reality crews are facing as they continue to battle the raging inferno.

The Dragon Bravo Fire in Arizona, sparked by lightning on July 4, has been burning for almost a month and continues to pose a threat to the Grand Canyon.

It has already incinerated the Grand Canyon Lodge, an iconic tourist location on the North Rim that first opening in 1928.

Heartbreaking images show the historic lodge engulfed by flames with officials from the national park saying they have been “devastated by the loss”.

Other structures were destroyed including the North Rim visitor Center and a number of cabins.

The blaze officially achieved “megafire” status on Friday, officials confirmed.

It comes as it is now over 105,000 acres in size, making it the largest wildfire in the continental United States so far this year.

After already burning through around 100 structures, it is the biggest fire to hit the Grand Canyon National Park since 1984 and is the 10th largest wildfire in the state since 1990.

Timelapse footage shows orange plumes of smoke and vapors billowing into the sky above the tree line, powerful enough to create it’s own weather system.

“They’re known to generate storms, produce lightning, or even tornadoes,” the Southwest Area Incident Management Team 2 overseeing the wildfire response said on Facebook.

As of Saturday, the inferno was over 114,500 acres in size – almost three times bigger than Washington DC.

While crews desperately battle the flames officials say it is still expected to grow thanks to heavy winds, high temperatures, and dry conditions.

The Kaibab National Forest lying north and south of the Grand Canyon confirmed in an update that over 1,180 people are battling the flames with 11% of it contained as of August 2.

“You can see the flames at night. You can see clouds of smoke during the day.” Lisa Jennings, a spokeswoman for the Southwest Area Team said of the view from the South Rim, 11 miles away.

Fire Behavior Analyst Arthur Gonzales gave an update on the fire saying that the north perimeter was causing a concern for “rapid fire spread” due to the combination of winds and dry land.

He detailed how embers can be “lofted over containment lines or down into additional fuels ahead of the fire”.

“We’re at a 100% chance today that any ember that hits those fuels will take,” he warned on Saturday.

Meanwhile, the southwest flank of the inferno on the North Rim of Grand Canyon and at the Kaibab National Forest is “well-established over the rim edge” making it even more difficult to tackle.

This area of the fire is being further encouraged by 100 degree temperatures in the Grand Canyon and could spread west by half a mile, Gonzales said.

The National Weather Service has issued an Extreme Heat Warning until Friday.

“We’re kind of locked in a dry, breezy, abnormally hot pattern because our monsoon hasn’t showed up,” Benjamin Peterson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Flagstaff, told the New York Times.

As efforts continue to dampen and extinguish the fire, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park will remain closed for the rest of the 2025 season.

Meanwhile, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has launched a probe into the fire after the decision was made early on to have a “controlled burn”.

This is a technique often to try to prevent other fires by burning up the vegetation that fuels major fires but strong winds on July 11 saw the fire exceed containment lines and burn the Grand Canyon lodge and other buildings.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14899896/footage-dragon-bravo-megafire-grand-canyon-wildfire-update/

SELECT Americans have just hours left to claim an impactful cash grab.

The direct payment comes as part of a new benefits program that seeks to assist those in need this summer.

SUN Bucks Hawai’i, run through the state’s Department of Human Services, is an Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) initiative that offers money to qualifying families with children.

The funds go towards food purchases parents have to make during the summer that their kids would’ve gotten at school for free.

Checks worth $177 will be sent out for each child, to be spent over the summer months.

Some households must apply for the SUN Bucks benefits, and an application deadline is approaching fast on August 3, 2025.

Those that have children attending a school operating with the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), where all meals are free to all students, must apply.

Additionally, households that have children who are attending a school operating with the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) who were not approved for free or discounted meals during the school year but may now be eligible because of income limits must submit an application.

QUALIFY INSTANTLY

There are only four criteria that would make a child automatically eligible and not require an application, according to the FAQ page on the Hawai’i Department of Human Services website.

One way would be that the child resides in a household that is participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) between July 1, 2024, and August 3, 2025.

The child could also have been identified as a ward of the state (foster), or identified by their school as unhoused, a migrant, or a runaway.

Another way to instantly qualify for SUN Bucks would be for the child to have attended a school that offers NSLP, and the household where they reside already applied for and was approved for free or discounted school meals.

Lastly, there are exceptions that would allow the school-age requirement to apply to Head Start and/or pre-K students, so long as they attended a program that offered NSLP.

Those who automatically qualify or submit an application and are approved will get EBT debit cards in the mail to be used anywhere they are accepted.

This includes local farmers markets and most retailers.

Applications can be submitted through the Hawai’i Department of Human Services website or by calling 1-888-975-7328.

According to data collected so far from the state agency, at least 80,000 children have already gotten benefits this year worth a combined $14 million.

OFFICIALS SPEAK OUT

Except, thousands more are likely eligible, according to a statement from First Lady Jaime Kanani Green at a recent news conference.

“In Hawai’i, we care for one another — we mālama our keiki, our kūpuna and our ‘ohana,” she said.

“SUN Bucks reflects those values. It’s about ensuring every child has what they need nutritionally to grow and thrive — not just during the school year, but all year long.”

“No child in Hawai’i should ever go hungry and this program helps us live up to that kuleana.”

This was further emphasized by Governor Josh Green, who also explained that small businesses would benefit as a side effect.

“Today is about something simple, but incredibly important — making sure our children have enough to eat,” Green noted.

“SUN Bucks is a reminder that when we invest in our keiki, we invest in the future of our state.”

“These benefits don’t just help families — they strengthen our local economy by putting dollars directly into our grocery stores, farmers markets and food systems,” he added.

Other states also have programs helping families in need this summer.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/money/14886601/hawaii-sun-bucks-ebt-program/

 

Hamas said on Sunday it was prepared to coordinate with the Red Cross to deliver aid to hostages it holds in Gaza, if Israel meets certain conditions, after a video it released showing an emaciated captive drew sharp criticism from Western powers.
Hamas said any coordination with the Red Cross is contingent upon Israel permanently opening humanitarian corridors and halting airstrikes during the distribution of aid.

According to Israeli officials, 50 hostages now remain in Gaza, only 20 of whom are believed to be alive. Hamas, thus far, has barred humanitarian organizations from having any kind of access to the hostages and families have little or no details of their conditions.
On Saturday, Hamas released its second video in two days of Israeli hostage Evyatar David. In it, David, skeletally thin, is shown digging a hole that, he says in the video, is for his own grave. The arm of the individual holding the camera, which can be seen in the frame, is a regular width.
The video of David drew criticism from Western powers and horrified Israelis. France, Germany, the UK and the U.S. were among countries to express outrage and Israel’s foreign ministry announced that the UN Security Council will hold a special session on Tuesday morning on the issue of the situation of the hostages in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he had asked the Red Cross to give humanitarian assistance to the hostages during a conversation with the head of the Swiss-based ICRC’s local delegation.
A statement from The Hostages Families Forum, which represents relatives of those being held in Gaza, said Hamas’ comments about the hostages cannot hide that it “has been holding innocent people in impossible conditions for over 660 days,” and demanded their immediate release.
“Until their release,” said the statement, “Hamas has the obligation to provide them with everything they need. Hamas kidnapped them and they must care for them. Every hostage who dies will be on Hamas’s hands.”
Six more people died of starvation or malnutrition in Gaza over the past 24 hours, its health ministry said on Sunday as Israel said it allowed a delivery of fuel to the enclave, in the throes of a humanitarian disaster after almost two years of war.

The new deaths raised the toll of those dying from what international humanitarian agencies say may be an unfolding famine to 175, including 93 children, since the war began, the ministry said.
Egypt’s state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV said two trucks carrying 107 tons of diesel were set to enter Gaza, months after Israel severely restricted aid access to the enclave before easing it somewhat as starvation began to spread.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, said later in the day that four tankers of U.N. fuel had entered to help in operations of hospitals, bakeries, public kitchens and other essential services.
There was no immediate confirmation whether the two diesel fuel trucks had entered Gaza from Egypt.

Gaza’s health ministry has said fuel shortages have severely impaired hospital services, forcing doctors to focus on treating only critically ill or injured patients.
Fuel shipments have been rare since March, when Israel restricted the flow of aid into the enclave in what it said was pressure on Hamas militants to free the remaining hostages they took in their October 2023 attack on Israel.
Israel blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza but, in response to a rising international uproar, it announced steps last week to let more aid reach the population, including pausing fighting for part of the day in some areas, approving air drops and announcing protected routes for aid convoys.
U.N. agencies say airdrops are insufficient and that Israel must let in far more aid by land and open up access to the territory to prevent starvation among its 2.2 million people, most of whom are displaced amidst vast swathes of rubble.
COGAT said that during the past week over 23,000 tons of humanitarian aid in 1,200 trucks had entered Gaza but that hundreds of the trucks had yet to be driven to aid distribution hubs by U.N. and other international organisations.
Meanwhile, Belgium’s air force dropped the first in a series of its aid packages into Gaza on Sunday in a joint operation with Jordan, the Belgian defence ministry said.
France on Friday started to air-drop 40 tons of humanitarian aid.

LOOTED AID TRUCKS

The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said on Sunday that nearly 1,600 aid trucks had arrived since Israel eased restrictions late in July. However, witnesses and Hamas sources said many of those trucks have been looted by desperate displaced people and armed gangs.
More than 700 trucks of fuel entered the Gaza Strip in January and February during a ceasefire before Israel broke it in March in a dispute over terms for extending it and resumed its major offensive.
Palestinian local health authorities said at least 80 people had been killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes across the coastal enclave on Sunday. Deaths included persons trying to make their way to aid distribution points in southern and central areas of Gaza, Palestinian medics said.
Among those killed was a staff member of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which said an Israeli strike at its headquarters in Khan Younis in southern Gaza ignited a fire on the first floor of the building.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-says-it-will-allow-aid-hostages-if-israel-halts-airstrikes-opens-permanent-2025-08-03/

A woman was knocked from her boat off the Jersey Shore when a distressed whale bashed the vessel – sending her flying into the frothing waves, shocking footage shows.

The incident went down Sunday off in Barnegat Bay in New Jersey, when a small motor boat came across a minke that was seen thrashing in shallow waters.

Its fin and back could be seen lurching out of the water in evident desperation.

When the boat approached, the whale became even more frantic and wound up under its hull – eventually tipping the vessel during the thrashing and sending a woman into the water.

She was quickly pulled to safety, and wasn’t injured.

The incident was caught on camera by Kim Mancini, who said the whale seemed to be in trouble before boaters arrived.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/08/03/us-news/whale-killed-off-jersey-shore-after-bashing-boat-throwing-passenger-into-water/

Sometimes, a Formula 1 win is less about speed than strategy and gritty driving.

Lando Norris held off McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri in a tense finish to win the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday and boost his title chances.

Overtaking in Hungary is tough, but Norris had to work hard to keep the win as Piastri loomed behind him in the final laps.

Norris celebrated with a double fist pump on top of his car after claiming McLaren’s 200th F1 win by less than a second to cut Piastri’s standings lead to nine points from 16.

“I’m dead. It was tough, it was tough,” Norris said. “The final stint, with Oscar catching, I was pushing flat out.”

It was the fourth one-two finish in a row for McLaren, with Norris winning three of those head-to-heads as the momentum swung back toward him ahead of the four-week midseason break.

Making the right call

A year on from a contentious first win for Piastri over Norris in Hungary after awkward radio messages, this was a race decided on the track.

Norris briefly dropped to fifth on the first lap but made his tires last to stop only once, while Piastri changed tires twice.

Piastri steadily cut into Norris’ lead in the latter stages of the race but the British driver held on with old tires to take the win. Piastri nearly collided with his teammate when he locked up a wheel while trying to pass on the second-to-last lap. Still, it was Norris who held on to have the last word in their title fight.

“Good racing. Good strategy. Good call,” was how Norris summed it up on the radio.

Piastri’s two-stop approach happened because, at the time, he and McLaren were more focused on getting ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, whose pace eventually fell away anyway.

“It wasn’t obvious that we just had enough pace to blow past (Leclerc),” Piastri said. “For Lando, there was virtually nothing to lose by trying a one-stop race. For myself, potentially there was.”

George Russell took third for Mercedes after fighting his way past Leclerc in a contest that earned Leclerc a time penalty for nearly colliding with Russell while defending.

Defending champion Max Verstappen was only ninth after being off the pace all week. He stays third in the standings, but drops to 97 points off leader Piastri in another heavy blow to an already unlikely title defense.

Ferrari frustration

Leclerc started on pole position with hopes of landing Ferrari its first Grand Prix win of the year, but ended up fourth after a radio message of what he later admitted was misplaced blame aimed at the team.

“This is so incredibly frustrating. We’ve lost all competitiveness,” he told the team over the radio. However, he later told broadcaster Sky Sports that the car actually had a chassis problem he only learned about later.

A day after calling himself “useless” and questioning whether Ferrari might need to replace him, Lewis Hamilton ended up 12th, exactly where he started. His comments after the race seemed set to fuel more speculation about his troubled first season with the Italian team.

“There’s a lot going on in the background that is not great,” Hamilton told Sky Sports, without explaining further.

Hamilton never seemed to have the pace to fight for points and was at one stage forced off the track by Verstappen as his old rival overtook him.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/f1-hungarian-grand-prix-leclerc-piastri-norris-699a38d637973a7ca8f6821ceae71df2

The sheet of paper says “Wanted Person” at the top. Below is a photo of a young woman, a headshot that might have been taken in a studio. She looks directly at the camera, smiling with her teeth showing, and her dark, shoulder-length hair is neatly brushed.

At the bottom, in red, are the words: “A reward of one million Hong Kong dollars,” together with a UK phone number.

To earn the money, about £95,000, there is a simple instruction: “Provide information on this wanted person and the related crime or take her to Chinese embassy”.

The woman from the photo is standing in front of me. She shudders when she looks at the building.

We are outside an imposing structure that was once home to the Royal Mint and which China hopes it can develop into a new mega-embassy in London, replacing the far smaller premises it has occupied since 1877.

The new premises, opposite the Tower of London, is already being patrolled by Chinese security guards. The building is ringed with CCTV cameras too.

“I’ve never been this close,” admits Carmen Lau.

Carmen, who is 30, fled Hong Kong in 2021 as pro-democracy activists in the territory were being arrested.

She argues that the UK should not allow China’s “authoritarian regime” to have its new embassy in such a symbolic location. One of her fears is that China, with such a huge embassy, could harass political opponents and could even hold them in the building.

There are also worries, among some dissidents, that its location – very near London’s financial district – could be an espionage risk. Then there is the opposition from residents who say it would pose a security risk to them.

The plans had previously been rejected by the local council, but the decision now lies with the government – and senior ministers have signalled they are in favour if minor adjustments are made to the plan.

The site is sprawling, at 20,000 square metres, and if it goes ahead it would mark the biggest embassy in Europe. But would it also really bring the dangers that its opponents fear?

A RUSSIAN volcano has erupted for the first time in centuries, sending ash surging 29,000ft into the sky.

The volcano roared back to life in the Kamchatka region of eastern Russia after last week’s major 8.8 Richter scale earthquake.

Last week’s quake saw tsunami warnings issued across the Pacific Ocean.

Pilots have been warned of flight dangers with a red aviation alert after the eruption of Krasheninnikov.

While it is listed as an active stratovolcano, it has not erupted for around 600 years – before observations were made.

New footage emerged today of tsunami waves climbing up the land in the remote Kuril Islands.

A man and his dog retreating could be seen fleeing as a fresh warning was issued following another earthquake of 7 on the Richter scale in eastern Russia.

The dramatic footage was captured on Shumshu Island, just off the southern coast of the Kamchatka peninsula.

Vsevolod Yakovlev, head of the Kronotsky Nature Reserve, said today: “Its eruption is not something out of the ordinary for a region with high volcanic activity.

“During satellite monitoring, thermal spots have been repeatedly noted in the area of the Krasheninnikov volcano.

“This is a significant increase in temperature on the Earth’s surface compared to neighbouring areas.”

Tsunami warnings following last week’s quake have since been lifted.

Ash coated the Kronotsky Nature Reserve – which includes dozens of volcanoes.

It is also home to the Valley of the Geysers, and has one of the world’s largest concentrations of brown bears.

Russian volcanologist Alexei Ozerov said: “A crack opened up along the volcano from the top of the crater, and a steam-gas mixture is currently rising from this crack.

“Emissions are occurring, and a large amount of ash was ejected during the opening of the crater crack.

“This ash reached the Valley of Geysers, and …the smell of gas…

“A question is immediately raised about the evacuation of the Valley of Geysers, those tourists who are there.”

But according to Russian officials, there was no immediate threat to life or wildlife.

The response team said: “The explosive eruption of the volcano continues.

“Ash explosions up to 10 km (32,800 ft) above sea level could occur at any time.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14899432/russian-volcano-explodes-tsunami-warning/

RUSSIAN forces last night bombed a key bridge used to transport military logistics in the Ukrainian frontline city of Kherson

Footage shows a Russian airstrike destroying the key road crossing on the Dnipro River after dropping two guided bombs.

The attack damaged a bridge connecting the city to the Korabel neighbourhood.

A few homes and a high-rise residential building were also damaged, officials said.

A defiant Vladimir Putin has snubbed peace and is instead steadily increasing his overnight bombing raids – which could soon hit 1,000 a day.

Governor Oleksandr Prokudin urged residents of the Korabel district to evacuate, citing complications with logistics and infrastructure.

He wrote on Telegram: “As a result of the enemy airstrike, logistics have been complicated.

“Because of this, it will be difficult to deliver food and other things for the time being.”

Kherson Oblast, which is just near the Russian-occupied Crimean region, is frequently targeted by the Russians.

Kyiv sought revenge by launching a massive drone attack targeting Russia’s main resort city of Sochi, where Putin is said to be rebuilding one of his palaces.

More than 120 firefighters were trying to extinguish a blaze at an oil depot that was sparked by the drone attack, regional Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said.

A massive fuel tank with a capacity of 2,000 cubic metres was on fire, Russia’s RIA news agency reported.

Some 30 huge explosions led to a massive inferno at the facility close to the main airport often used by the Russian dictator.

The Russian defence ministry said that its air defence units destroyed 93 Ukrainian drones overnight, including one over the Krasnodar region and 60 over the waters of the Black Sea.

Rosaviatsia, Russia’s civil aviation authority, temporarily halted flights at Sochi’s airport to ensure air safety.

Meanwhile, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was also attacked today, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.

The UN nuclear watchdog said that its team at the power plant heard explosions and saw smoke coming from a nearby location.

But a fire after Ukrainian shelling has been brought under control, Russian authorites in the Moscow-held region said.

The plant’s administration said on Telegram that a civilian had been killed in the shelling, but that no plant employees or members of the emergency services had been injured.

“The auxiliary facility is located 1,200 metres from the ZNPP’s site perimeter and the IAEA team could still see smoke from that direction in the afternoon,” the nuclear watchdog said.

Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia plant in the first weeks of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Both sides have accused each other of firing or taking other actions that could trigger a nuclear accident.

The station, Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, is not operating but still requires power to keep its nuclear fuel cool.

It comes just three days after 31 people died including five children after Putin’s forces fired an Iskander missile into a residential tower block in Kyiv.

US President Donald Trump branded Putin’s tactics “disgusting” as emergency workers worked through the night to pull bodies from the ruins.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, he said: “Russia – I think it’s disgusting what they’re doing. I think it’s disgusting.”

Putin’s bloodbath comes as Russia faces Trump’s new deadline for peace on August 7.

Trump warned the Kremlin that it had just 10 or 12 days to come to the table and agree on peace.

As the death toll climbed this morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lamented the deaths.

He said: “The youngest child was only two years old. My condolences to the families and loved ones of the deceased. 159 people were injured, 16 of them children.

“Once again, such a vile strike by Russia shows that additional pressure on Moscow and sanctions are necessary.

“No matter how much the Kremlin denies their effectiveness, they work and must be stronger – hitting everything that allows such strikes to continue.

“And it is very important that the world does not remain silent about them.

“I thank everyone who has supported our people. We appreciate that President Trump, European leaders, and our other partners clearly see what is happening and condemn Russia.”

Trump has said that the US is “totally prepared” for a nuclear war following a slew of threats against America from a Kremlin comrade.

In an extraordinary escalation, the commander-in-chief ordered that two nuclear submarines be positioned near Russia.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14898844/putin-bombs-key-kherson-bridge-ukraine/

Mandy Moore is calling out the hit-and-run driver who sped off after hitting her family.

“The woman who rear ended my family and then drove off we pulled over, hope your karma finds you,” the “A Walk To Remember” star wrote on her Instagram Stories Friday.

“Thankfully everyone was ok but what kind of human does that?” Moore, 41, continued.

The singer, who is married to Dawes frontman Taylor Goldsmith, didn’t reveal any more details about the accident. She and Goldsmith share three children together: sons August, 4, and Oscar, 2, and daughter Louise, 10 months.

A rep for Moore did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.

The “This is Us” star has become known as a fierce defender of her family over the years.

In January, she clapped back at social media users who criticized her for sharing a GoFundMe campaign aimed at helping her in-laws recover from the Los Angeles fires.

After noticing the swift backlash from fans, who said the actress could help her family with her large net worth, Moore responded to the criticism with an updated caption.

“”****And people questioning whether we’re helping out our own family or attributing some arbitrary amount of money google says someone has is NOT helpful or empathetic. Of course we are,” she wrote.

“We just lost most of our life in a fire too. Kindly F OFF. no one is forcing you to do anything.”

She’s even gone so far as to slam an Amazon driver who delivered a package to her recently torched in-laws’ home after it was destroyed by the Los Angeles wildfires.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/08/02/celebrity-news/mandy-moore-fires-back-after-hit-and-run-driver-barrels-into-family/

The recent removal of a placard at the National Museum of American History that detailed Donald Trump’s two impeachments did not come after White House pressure, the museum’s parent organization said on Saturday (Aug 2).

The placard was meant to be temporary and “did not meet the museum’s standards in appearance, location, timeline, and overall presentation”, the Smithsonian Institution said in a statement on X.

“It was not consistent with other sections in the exhibit and moreover blocked the view of the objects inside its case. For these reasons, we removed the placard.

“We were not asked by any administration or other government official to remove content from the exhibit.”

The Smithsonian statement came after The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the museum last month removed the placard describing Trump’s impeachments and reverted to old signage that said “only three presidents have seriously faced removal” – Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

The Post said the removal stemmed from a Smithsonian content review after the White House pressured the organisation to remove a director of one of its art museums.

Trump is the only American president to have been impeached twice – first in 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, then in 2021 for inciting an insurrection. He was acquitted by the Senate both times.

Since starting his second term in January, the Republican has moved to control major cultural institutions, while slashing arts and humanities funding.

In March, Trump signed an executive order to “restore the Smithsonian Institution to its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness” and “remove improper ideology”.

The order accused the institution of having “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” and argued the shift has promoted narratives that portray American values as “inherently harmful and oppressive”.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/us-museum-says-trump-administration-did-not-compel-impeachment-display-removal-5274141

 

The German government said it has taken note of “limited initial progress” in the flow of aid into Gaza, but said the amount was “very insufficient” to meet the needs of people there. DW has the latest.

Ukraine says it has struck some key oil and military facilities on Russian territory. A blaze that broke out near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant after Ukrainian shelling has been brought under control. DW has the latest.

Friends confirmed that Chahal had been receiving frequent death threats from pro-Khalistan groups but remained resolute in his advocacy

The sudden and mysterious death of Sukhi Chahal, a notable US-based businessman and social activist known for his strong opposition to Khalistani separatism, has deeply impacted the Indian diaspora and anti-Khalistani communities, according to a Times of India report. Chahal’s unexpected demise in California has raised numerous questions among his friends and associates.

Jaspal Singh, a close friend, revealed that Chahal attended a dinner at an acquaintance’s home on Thursday. “Shortly after the meal, his health rapidly declined, and he passed away on the spot,” Singh explained on Saturday, noting that Chahal had been in good health before the incident.

As the founder and CEO of The Khalsa Today, Chahal was a prominent critic of Khalistani elements operating abroad. Friends, including Boota Singh Kaler, confirmed that Chahal had been receiving frequent death threats from pro-Khalistan groups but remained resolute in his advocacy. The timing of his death, just before a significant Khalistan Referendum event on August 17 in Washington DC, which he was actively opposing, has heightened suspicions among his associates.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/prominent-anti-khalistan-activist-sukhi-chahal-dies-mysteriously-in-us-9480850.html

 

An Ohio couple, Lindsey and Tim Pierce, had a baby from an embryo frozen for over 30 years. The embryo, created in 1994, was transferred to Lindsey in 2024.

In a significant breakthrough, an Ohio couple welcomed a baby developed from an embryo that had been frozen for over 30 years.

Lindsey Pierce (35) and Tim Pierce (34) of London, Ohio, who were trying to conceive for the last seven years, finally welcomed Thaddeus Daniel Pierce into the world last week on Saturday.

The embryo was one of the four produced by Linda Archerd, now 62, using in vitro fertilisation (IVF) in 1994. Among the four embryos, one was transferred to Archerd and resulted in the birth of a daughter, who is now 30 and mother to a 10-year-old. The other embryos were cryopreserved and stored, as per the report by BBC.

In November 2024, one embryo was moved to Lindsey after being cryopreserved in liquid nitrogen for approximately 30 years, the report added.

Following a divorce, Archerd was awarded custody of the embryos. She then found out about Nightlight Christian Adoptions and their “Snowflakes” program, which allows donors to select adoptive families based on values like religion and ethnicity.

Archerd had a preference for her embryo to be “adopted” by a white, Christian married couple.

“The first thing that I noticed when Lindsey sent me his pictures is how much he looks like my daughter when she was a baby. I pulled out my baby book and compared them side by side, and there is no doubt that they are siblings,” she said to MIT Technology Review.

The fertility clinic that transferred the embryo is run by John Gordon, a reproductive endocrinologist and Reformed Presbyterian who is working to reduce the number of embryos in storage, the report added.

“We have certain guiding principles, and they’re coming from our faith. Every embryo deserves a chance at life and that the only embryo that cannot result in a healthy baby is the embryo not given the opportunity to be transferred into a patient,” he said as reported by The Guardian.

In a statement, Lindsey and Tim Pierce said the clinic’s support was just what they needed.

“We didn’t go into this thinking about records — we just wanted to have a baby,” Lindsey Pierce said.

According to experts, this instance breaks the previous record, which was set by twins born in Oregon in 2022 from embryos frozen in 1992, the BBC report added.

Source : https://www.news18.com/viral/worlds-oldest-baby-has-just-been-born-age-at-time-of-birth-31-ws-l-9480363.html

Around 80 colorful pride boats sailed through Amsterdam’s World Heritage canals on Saturday in the finale of a week-long celebration in the city that stood in stark contrast to recent crackdowns on LGBTQ+ rights in fellow EU member state Hungary.
While the flotilla is not political, attendees used the occasion to criticise conflicts or world leaders for their stance on LGBTQ+ rights.

Thehany Gilmore, a 43-year-old Dutch-Caribbean dressed in a leather outfit with a whip, said banning of the Budapest pride parade “is a form of oppression.”

“People everywhere should have their own pride to be able to represent who they are,” she said.
Palestinian flags were spotted among the crowd of revelers, and Dutch police arrested four activists who had jumped in the water to vandalize the Booking.com boat in protest over its listings in settlements in Israeli-occupied territories.
Others criticized U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration implemented anti-trans policies and cut funding for international aid programs, dealing a setback to HIV prevention efforts in Africa.
Some waved a hybrid U.S./Pride flag, while one boat declared itself a ‘Trump-Free Pride Boat’ with signs reading ‘Trans Rights Are Human Rights.’ Another featured mock graveyards and the message ‘Trump’s Actions Kill. Love Saves Lives,’ highlighting fears over U.S. AIDS funding cuts.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/amsterdam-pride-parade-blends-celebration-protest-lgbtq-show-solidarity-2025-08-02/

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa.N), said on Saturday it took a $3.76 billion write-down on its stake in Kraft Heinz (KHC.O), during the second quarter, an acknowledgment the decade-old investment hasn’t worked out.
Berkshire also reported a 4% decline in quarterly operating profit as insurance underwriting premiums fell. The write-down and lower gains from common stocks caused a 59% drop in overall net income.

Buffett’s conglomerate signaled it remains cautious about market valuations, amid uncertainty about tariffs and growth in the broader economy.
It reported a near-record $344.1 billion cash stake, and sold more stocks than it bought for an 11th straight quarter. As of mid-July, Berkshire hadn’t repurchased any of its own stock since May 2024.
Buffett, 94, has led Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire since 1965, though he plans to step down at year-end.
“Investors are getting antsy and want to seek activity, and nothing is happening,” said Kyle Sanders, an analyst at Edward Jones. “Buffett definitely views the market as overvalued, and will sit back and wait for something to come to him.”

Uncertainty about trade policies, including tariffs, has become a headwind as delayed orders and shipments led to declining revenue at most of Berkshire’s consumer businesses.
Jazwares, which makes the popular Squishmallows plush toys, saw revenue fall 38.5% in the year’s first half.
Analysts viewed overall results as lackluster.

“Berkshire and the economy are at an inflection point,” said Cathy Seifert, a CFRA Research analyst. “I don’t think the market will embrace the combination of mediocre results, a lack of stock buybacks, and Berkshire’s recent share underperformance amid a management transition.”
Seifert and Sanders rate Berkshire “hold.”

KRAFT HEINZ

Second-quarter operating income fell to $11.16 billion, or about $7,760 per Class A share, from $11.6 billion a year earlier. Results included $877 million of currency losses as the U.S. dollar weakened.

Net income, including gains and losses on stocks such as Apple (AAPL.O), and American Express (AXP.N), fell to $12.37 billion from $30.35 billion. Revenue fell 1% to $92.52 billion.
Buffett views unrealized investment gains and losses, including on stocks Berkshire has no plans to sell, as often meaningless to understanding his company.
The $3.76 billion after-tax write-down for Berkshire’s 27.4% Kraft Heinz stake, equal to $5 billion before taxes, followed the struggling food company’s announcement it would consider strategic alternatives, which could include a breakup.
Berkshire had carried Kraft Heinz on its books at above-market value but said economic and other uncertainties, and its longer-term plans to remain an investor, made the gap “other-than-temporary.”

The write-down is Berkshire’s second for Kraft Heinz, following a $3 billion write-down in 2019.
Buffett acknowledged at the time that Berkshire overpaid in the 2015 merger of Kraft Foods and H.J. Heinz, one of his biggest investment missteps.
Kraft Heinz has suffered as more shoppers favor healthier and private-label alternatives. Its approximately 200 brands include Oscar Mayer, Kool-Aid, Velveeta and Jell-O.
Berkshire also carries another big investment, its 28.1% stake in Occidental Petroleum (OXY.N), at $5.3 billion above fair value, but reported no need for a write-down.

LAGGING THE MARKET

Shares of Berkshire have fallen more than 12%, and lagged the Standard & Poor’s 500 (.SPX), by about 22 percentage points, since Buffett announced on May 3 he would step down as chief executive at year end.
Vice Chairman Greg Abel, 63, will succeed him, though Buffett will remain chairman.
Analysts said the premium embedded in Berkshire’s stock price because of the presence of Buffett, arguably the world’s most well-known investor, has eroded, while growth may slow in the insurance sector, a major Berkshire profit center.
The lack of new investments has also been a drag. Analysts believe Berkshire’s BNSF unit could buy CSX (CSX.O), to create another transcontinental railroad, after Union Pacific (UNP.N), agreed on July 29 to buy Norfolk Southern (NSC.N).
Buffett transformed Berkshire over six decades from a troubled and since-closed textile company into a $1.02 trillion conglomerate.
Berkshire owns several insurers and reinsurers, electric utility and renewable energy businesses, several chemical and industrial companies, and familiar consumer brands such as Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom and See’s Candies.

BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL

Berkshire said the 12% quarterly decline in insurance underwriting profit stemmed primarily from reinsurance businesses and some smaller insurance businesses.
Geico, its best-known insurance business, saw pre-tax underwriting profit rise 2%, as a 5% increase in premiums offset a smaller rise in accident losses.
The car insurer has been ceding market share to State Farm and Progressive (PGR.N), while focusing on improving underwriting quality and technology and cutting jobs.
Analysts said higher tariffs could be a headwind for Geico if the cost of auto parts rose, potentially increasing losses from accident claims.
BNSF is also cutting expenses. Lower fuel costs helped boost quarterly profit 19% gain, though revenue and cargo volumes barely changed.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/berkshire-takes-38-billion-kraft-heinz-write-down-operating-profit-falls-2025-08-02/

In 1943, a camouflaged ship set off from Australia to England carrying top secret cargo – a single young platypus.

Named after his would-be owner, UK prime minister Winston Churchill, the rare monotreme was an unprecedented gift from a country desperately trying to curry favour as World War Two expanded into the Pacific and arrived on its doorstep.

But days out from Winston’s arrival, as war raged in the seas around him, the puggle was found dead in the water of his specially made “platypusary”.

Fearing a potential diplomatic incident, Winston’s death – along with his very existence – was swept under the rug.

He was preserved, stuffed and quietly shelved inside his name-sake’s office, with rumours that he died of Nazi-submarine-induced shell-shock gently whispered into the ether.

The mystery of who, or what, really killed him has eluded the world since – until now.

Smoke from Canadian wildfires hovered over several Midwestern states Saturday, bringing warnings of unhealthy air for at least the third day.

Air quality alerts were in effect in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as eastern Nebraska and parts of Indiana and Illinois. Forecasters said the smoky skies would remain for much of the day.

Canadian environmental officials said smoke from the forest fires would persist into Sunday for some areas.

The Switzerland-based air quality monitoring database IQAir, which assesses air quality in real time, listed the city of Minneapolis as having some of the worst air pollution in the world since Friday. The Air Quality Index (AQI) was expected to reach the red or unhealthy category in a large swath of Minnesota.

AQI is a system used to communicate how much air pollution is in the air. It breaks pollution down into six categories and colors, along with advice on what is and is not safe to do. They range from “good” (the color green) to “hazardous” (maroon).

People with lung disease, heart disease, children, older adults and pregnant women are most susceptible to the poor breathing conditions.

“What’s been unique in this go-around is that we’ve had this prolonged stretch of smoke particulates towards the surface, so that’s where we’ve really had the air quality in the red here for the past few days,” said Joe Strus, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area in Minnesota.

“We’ve sort of been dealing with this, day in and day out, where you walk outside and you can taste the smoke, you can smell it,” Strus said. “Sometimes we’ve been in higher concentrations than others. Other times it’s just looked a little hazy out there.”

The air was improving Saturday, he said, specifically across the Twin Cities and southwestern Minnesota, but state health officials warned that conditions could remain unhealthy for sensitive groups through Monday.

Officials said the smoke could spread as far south as Tennessee and Missouri.

The EPA’s Air Quality Index converts all pollutant levels into a single number. The lower the number, the better. Anything below 50 is classified as “healthy.” Fifty to 100 is “moderate” while 100-150 is unhealthy for “sensitive groups.” Anything above 150 is bad for everyone. Parts of Minnesota exceeded that number on Saturday.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/canada-wildfires-smoke-minnesota-midwest-ec9aff3eb3f76cf115c3737d8b1d515b

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps pay for PBS, NPR, 1,500 local radio and television stations as well as programs like “Sesame Street” and “Finding Your Roots,” said Friday that it would close after the U.S. government withdrew funding.

The organization told employees that most staff positions will end with the fiscal year on Sept. 30. A small transition team will stay until January to finish any remaining work.

The private, nonprofit corporation was founded in 1968 shortly after Congress authorized its formation. It now ends nearly six decades of fueling the production of renowned educational programming, cultural content and emergency alerts about natural disasters.

Here’s what to know:

Losing funding

President Donald Trump signed a bill on July 24 canceling about $1.1 billion that had been approved for public broadcasting. The White House says the public media system is politically biased and an unnecessary expense, and conservatives have particularly directed their ire at NPR and PBS.

Lawmakers with large rural constituencies voiced concern about what the cuts could mean for some local public stations in their state. They warned some stations will have to close.

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday reinforced the policy change by excluding funding for the corporation for the first time in more than 50 years as part of a broader spending bill.

How it began

Congress passed legislation creating the body in 1967, several years after then-Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow described commercial television a “vast wasteland” and called for programming in the public interest.

The corporation doesn’t produce programming and it doesn’t own, operate or control any public broadcasting stations. The corporation, PBS, NPR are independent of each other as are local public television and radio stations.

Rural stations hit hard

Roughly 70% of the corporation’s money went directly to 330 PBS and 246 NPR stations across the country. The cuts are expected to weigh most heavily on smaller public media outlets away from big cities, and it’s likely some won’t survive. NPR’s president estimated as many as 80 NPR stations may close in the next year.

Mississippi Public Broadcasting has already decided to eliminate a streaming channel that airs children’s programming like “Caillou” and “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” 24 hours a day.

Maine’s public media system is looking at a hit of $2.5 million, or about 12% of its budget, for the next fiscal year. The state’s rural residents rely heavily on public media for weather updates and disaster alerts.

In Kodiak, Alaska, KMXT estimated the cuts would slice 22% from its budget. Public radio stations in the sprawling, heavily rural state often provide not just news but alerts about natural disasters like tsunamis, landslides and volcanic eruptions.

From Big Bird to war documentaries

The first episode of “Sesame Street” aired in 1969. Child viewers, adults and guest stars alike were instantly hooked. Over the decades, characters from Big Bird to Cookie Monster and Elmo have become household favorites

Entertainer Carol Burnett appeared on that inaugural episode. She told The Associated Press she was a big fan.

“I would have done anything they wanted me to do,” she said. “I loved being exposed to all that goodness and humor.”

Sesame Street said in May it would also get some help from a Netflix streaming deal.

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. started “Finding Your Roots” in 2006 under the title “African American Lives.” He invited prominent Black celebrities and traced their family trees into slavery. When the paper trail ran out, they would use DNA to see which ethnic group they were from in Africa. Challenged by a viewer to open the show to non-Black celebrities, Gates agreed and the series was renamed “Faces of America,” which had to be changed again after the name was taken.

The show is PBS’s most-watched program on linear TV and the most-streamed non-drama program. Season 10 reached nearly 18 million people across linear and digital platforms and also received its first Emmy nomination.

Grant money from the nonprofit has also funded lesser-known food, history, music and other shows created by stations across the country.

Documentarian Ken Burns, celebrated for creating the documentaries “The Civil War,” “Baseball” and “The Vietnam War”, told PBS NewsHour said the corporation accounted for about 20% of his films’ budgets. He said he would make it up but projects receiving 50% to 75% of their funding from the organization won’t.

Influence of shows

Children’s programing in the 1960s was made up of shows like “Captain Kangaroo,” ’’Romper Room” and the violent skirmishes between “Tom & Jerry.” “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” mostly taught social skills.

“Sesame Street” was designed by education professionals and child psychologists to help low-income and minority students aged 2-5 overcome some of the deficiencies they had when entering school. Social scientists had long noted white and higher income kids were often better prepared.

One of the most widely cited studies about the impact of “Sesame Street” compared households that got the show with those who didn’t. It found that the children exposed to “Sesame Street” were 14% more likely to be enrolled in the correct grade level for their age at middle and high school.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/corporation-for-public-broadcasting-pbs-funding-cuts-7b4c1aa10a98956aedf02360b3741bd1

OLYMPIC champion athlete Sha’Carri Richardson was arrested at an airport on charges of alleged domestic violence after a row with her boyfriend Christian Coleman.

The sprinter, who won a 4x100m relay gold medal and 100m silver at last year’s Paris Games, was reportedly held in custody for less than 20 hours.

It is understood that Richardson got into a heated argument with her boyfriend and fellow athlete Christian Coleman near a TSA security checkpoint at a Seattle airport.

According to The Athletic, a police report states that an officer claims to have witnessed Richardson shoving her boyfriend multiple times as he tried to walk away.

Footage of the alleged incident was reportedly captured on a security camera at the airport, which cops deemed enough probable cause for her arrest.

The clip reportedly shows Richardson reaching out with her left arm and grabbing Coleman’s backpack before pushing it away.

She then appeared to block Coleman’s way before shoving him into a wall.

The police report later said that Richardson seemingly threw an item at Coleman, which the TSA indicated may have been headphones.

The case was cleared and the Olympic athlete was released from jail after Coleman allegedly refused to press charges and “declined to be a victim”, DailyMail reports.

Richardson landed in custody at the SCORE South Correctional Facility in Des Moines, Wash at 6:54pm on Sunday and was released at 1:30pm on Monday, according to police records.

The Team USA star rose to fame for competing in the 200m and 100m events at the Paris Olympics.

The sprinter is not only known for her lightning speed, but also her distinctive style.

The Texan gained popularity for her eye-catching hair colours, long painted nails and unique tattoos.

Richardson missed out on her Olympics debut at Tokyo 2020 due to a ban but made up for it the last year’s games.

Richardson served a one-month ban after testing positive for THC (cannabis).

The American accepted the ban “for an anti-doping rule violation for testing positive for a substance of abuse” and worked her way back to the spotlight.

Richardson told Vogue: “I’m better at being Sha’Carri. I’m better at being myself.”

Sha’Carri Richardson came back strong in 2023 with some stunning results in the World Championships in Budapest.

Richardson won the gold medal in the 100m event and bronze in 200m.

The runner also anchored Team USA to first place in the 4x100m relay race.

And the Texan’s journey back to the spotlight at Paris 2024 has been recorded in the new SPRINT series on Netflix.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/sport/14896420/gold-olympic-star-shacarri-richardson-arrested-domestic-violence/

THE producer of the hit Netflix documentary about a missing woman who vanished on a family cruise more than 27 years ago says they have received new tips related to her case.

Amy Lynn Bradley disappeared without a trace in March 1998 after boarding the Royal Caribbean Rhapsody of the Seas with her parents, Ron and Iva, and her younger brother Brad.

The family trip began in Puerto Rico and first stopped in Aruba.

Just three days into the trip, on March 23, Amy disappeared after spending the night socializing and dancing at the ship’s nightclub until the early hours of the morning.

She was last seen asleep on the balcony in the family’s shared cabin, but no evidence suggests she fell or jumped from the railing.

When her father woke up, he couldn’t find his daughter and alerted the ship’s security crew, but they found no sign of her, and cameras failed to capture any last movements.

The case has gripped the true crime community for years, and alleged witnesses speak out in the documentary to suggest she may have been sex-trafficked.

She was last seen dancing with a bass player who was performing with a band on the trip, Alister Douglas, whose nickname was “Yellow,” although he has always maintained his innocence.

His daughter, Amica, suspects her father was involved in Amy’s disappearance and is seen in the three-part Netflix series grilling him during a tense phone call, in which he insists he has nothing to hide.

Filmmaker Ari Mark, who worked with fellow producer Phil Lott on the series, spoke exclusively to The U.S. Sun after it became a Top 10 show on the streamer.

He said, “[We’re] very pleased with very pleased with how the series has been received. The ‘buzz’ around the show is incredible.

“That’s what we want. The more people that know Amy’s story – the better.”

Asked if the team had received any possible leads since its release that have been passed on to police or the FBI, he said they had, but they don’t want to get their hopes up just yet.

“We have had a few leads come in, but I can’t discuss them and they’re not verified yet, so they may very likely be false leads,” he said, as they can get hoax calls, or people getting information wrong.

“This was always about one thing: finding Amy,” he went on.

“But to ensure that the audience is activated, they have to want to help.

“To use Iva Bradley’s words, they are ‘over the moon’ that Amy’s story is finally getting this level of attention. Everyone in the world now knows her name.

“I prefer to believe that Amy is alive. But there’s so little tangible official ‘evidence’ in this case that it’s impossible to know.

“So much gray area, especially when it comes to timelines.

“Remember, no cell phones and virtually no cameras, so we really can’t track people’s whereabouts, which means we can’t take anything as fact.”

SEX WORKER MYSTERY

One of the aspects only briefly touched on in the documentary is how the family’s cabin was cleaned before the police were able to look for evidence and deem it a potential crime scene.

Mark admitted the cleaner’s identity remains unknown, and it is unclear whether a small table on the balcony could have been moved closer to the railing.

Her sandals were placed side by side, and a t-shirt was lying on the arm of the chair she’d been sitting on, while her cigarettes were missing, and only an ashtray remained on the table.

“Allegedly, ‘cruise security’ was responsible for questioning their crew,” Mark said.

He added that they did search for evidence that Amy had jumped or fallen into the water, saying, “They absolutely looked and came up with nothing.

“They did find Amy’s fingerprints around the cabin, but the whole family’s fingerprints were all over the room, so it wasn’t really ‘evidence.'”

One of the most shocking parts of the documentary saw experts review photographs published on a sex worker website years later that showed a woman clad in lingerie.

The woman had strikingly similar features to Amy, and her family said they fear it could be her years on.

Asked his opinion on the legitimacy of the photographs, Mark said, “I really don’t know. We tend to air on the side of something happened to her vs accident.

“One thing we do know with missing person cases is that there usually is some elusive piece of evidence out there, but the universe needs to align to bring that thing or person forward.”

FBI REWARD

Asked about the theory that Douglas could have been involved in her disappearance, Mark confirmed his lie detector test was “inconclusive” despite reports he passed, but he was cleared by police.

Mark simply said, “I feel awful for the Douglas family and what they’ve had to endure all these years.”

Does he have any advice for anyone who has information but is terrified to come forward?

He said, “I would say to them: look at this family. Look at the pain this has caused. And look at the millions of people that want to help.

“That has to be enough for someone to muster the courage to speak out.”

He added that Amy’s family is “understandably shattered and lives in a constant state of not knowing.”

Mark added, “Gaining their trust has been a journey, but their warmth, sense of family, and strength has been something that everyone who worked on this show has admired and rallied behind.”

The FBI has a page dedicated to Amy’s disappearance and a separate website that features images of what she could potentially look like today.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14855754/amy-bradley-missing-new-leads-after-netflix-show/

 

This year’s 85th anniversary could match or surpass the 75th rally’s record

INTERSTATE 90 is bracing for an explosive week as more than 700,000 bikers roar into town for the 85th annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

This year’s milestone event is expected to break attendance records and bring the thunder to South Dakota’s Black Hills.

The rally officially runs from Friday, August 1 through Sunday, August 10, but the action kicks off even earlier with pre-parties starting July 28.

Sturgis, a small town in Meade County, transforms into the fourth largest city in South Dakota during the rally.

What began in 1938 with just nine stunt riders and a few horses has become the biggest motorcycle rally in the world.

Attendance has climbed steadily over the decades, from 3,000 in 1940 to a record 747,032 in 2015.

In the past five years, the rally has averaged around 500,000 people annually.

Last year’s turnout dropped 8.1% from 2022, totaling 458,161 attendees, according to Harley-Davidson.

This year’s 85th anniversary could match or surpass the 75th rally’s record.

The city of Sturgis rakes in major profits during the rally, with $784 million generated in 2022 alone, according to officials.

The event also pumped $1.4 million in sales tax revenue into South Dakota’s coffers in 2024, despite a slight decline from 2023.

Opening ceremonies kick off August 1 with a flag procession, a blessing of the bikes by Mayor Kevin Forrester, and a parade featuring the Budweiser Clydesdales.

Centenarian rider Gloria Tramontin Struck will serve as grand marshal, leading the celebration after nearly 85 years on the road.

The speed limit near rally hotspots like Buffalo Chip and Full Throttle is just 35 mph, and traffic slows it down even more – low-speed handling is key.

Many riders also take the opportunity to explore Black Hills landmarks like Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial.

The rally brings together bikers from all over the world to celebrate freedom, horsepower, and the open road.

ZZ Top opens the lineup on August 1 at 10 PM, followed by Gene Simmons on August 3.

Other major acts include Five Finger Death Punch, Marilyn Manson, Jason Aldean, Nickelback, Buckcherry, Tesla, and Stone Temple Pilots.

Concerts are included with camping admission and typically begin at 8 pm or 10 pm nightly.

Buffalo Chip pass sales are up a staggering 67% over last year, showing the massive anticipation for this year’s rally.

The Bikini Beach Pre-Party ran from July 28 to July 31 and featured Big Skillet as the warm-up act.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/motors/14893924/sturgis-motorcycle-rally-rally-august-south-dakota-festival/

A DAUGHTER delivered a heartbreaking eulogy to her mother, who was killed in the 345 Park Avenue mass shooting.

Wesley LePatner, 43, a managing partner at Blackstone, was laid to rest on Thursday at a Manhattan synagogue where her husband and daughter gave an emotional eulogy.

LePatner’s 14-year-old daughter spoke in front of 500 people, celebrating her late mother.

“My mom was like my rock,” she told the massive crowd at the Central Synagogue in Midtown Manhattan.

“I never imagined this happening when I was 14,” she said.

“It’s just unimaginable that this actually happened.

“I keep thinking it’s a prank or like a lucid dream, and that someone’s going to jump out and say, ‘Ha, ha. It was all a joke.’”

The 14-year-old continued her eulogy with tears streaming down her face.

“I hear the doorbell ring, I think it’s her, and I get excited,” she said as she began to stumble over her words.

LePatner’s husband, Evan, spoke to the 500-person crowd after his daughter.

“There’s a huge gaping Mount Everest size hole in my life right now,” Evan said.

“I know everyone here has different-sized versions of it from her loss. I am staggered by the love and caring shown by those in this room.

“It is overwhelming and awesome all at one. It speaks to the supernatural abilities Wesley had and the way she made the world better for all of us.”

LePatner was tragically shot in the lobby of the Blackstone office on Monday evening by Shane Tamura.

Tamura drove from Las Vegas to New York City with a semiautomatic rifle in search of shooting NFL executives, ABC News reported.

Tamura shot an NYPD officer and a security officer before taking the elevator up to the 33rd floor in pursuit of the NFL offices.

However, the shooter got off at the wrong floor and wound up killing a young employee at Rudin Management before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide.

A fifth person, who did work for the NFL, was shot and was taken to the hospital in critical condition.

As of Tuesday, he was stable.

“I got to spend about an hour with him,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told NBC about the living victim.

“(He) is an amazing young man and so we’re optimistic about his recovery. I think that’s good news for all of us in the NFL and obviously, our hearts continue to be in support with their family.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14892783/wesley-lepartner-daughter-eulogy/

FOUR people have been killed at a Montana bar and the gunman is on the loose, police said.

Suspect Michael Paul Brown, 45, is at large after he allegedly opened fire on Friday morning, prompting a manhunt involving SWAT teams and the FBI, police said.

The shooting broke out at Owl Bar in Anaconda at 10:30 am, the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation said.

Police warned people to avoid the area in southwestern Montana while they hunt for the suspect.

Brown is believed to be armed, police said.

He was seen driving west of Anaconda in a 2007 white Ford F-150 pickup truck with Montana license plates.

Police are now searching the woods near Stumptown Road, where he was last spotted.

The alleged shooter is wearing a tie-dyed shirt, blue jeans, and an orange bandana, police said.

A SWAT team cleared the suspect’s house in Anaconda after the attack, according to the Granite County Sheriff’s Office.

Brown lives right next to Owl Bar, according to public records.

The shooting broke out just 30 minutes after Owl Bar, a dive bar, opened at 10 am.

The victims haven’t been identified.

MULTIPLE SHOT IN ANACONDA, MONTANA

The shooter reportedly injured several people in a bar and fled in a vehicle, leaving the town of 9,800 on high alert

Anaconda is a town of about 10,000 people located in Deer Lodge County, about 75 miles southeast of Missoula.

The Montana Highway Patrol warned just before 1 pm local time, “There is a heavy law enforcement presence west of Anaconda near Stumptown Road and Anderson Ranch Loop Road.”

Police initially stopped a White F-150, but determined it wasn’t the suspect, according to the sheriff’s office in neighboring Granite County.

Cops said that there’s no threat to Granite County citizens at this time.

“Authorities are searching for a suspect believed to be armed. Please avoid the area,” GCSO said.

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte said he’s “closely monitoring the situation involving an active shooter in Anaconda.”

Cops have yet to say what led to the shooting.

The FBI responded to the shooting, FBI’s Salt Lake City office spokesperson Sandra Barker told the Associated Press.

The Denver office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also said it sent agents to help local police.

Cafe owner Barbie Nelson told the AP that she locked up her business, the Firefly Café, at around 11 am on Friday after her friend told her about the shooting.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14893937/active-shooter-anaconda-montana-deer-lodge-owl-bar/

Maxwell, the ex-girlfriend of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, is serving a 20-year prison sentence on child sex trafficking charges. Her prison transfer comes after she met a top US Justice Department official.

Ghislaine Maxwell, an associate of child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has been transferred from a prison in the southern US state of Florida to a lower security facility in Texas, the Bureau of Prisons announced Friday.

Maxwell’s lawyer, David Markus, also confirmed to the Reuters news agency that she had been transferred to the new facility.

Maxwell is currently serving a 20 year sentence behind bars on charges of child sex trafficking. She is accused of grooming underage girls for Epstein to sexually abuse.

US authorities did not explain the reason why Maxwell was transferred to a new facility in Bryan, Texas. She was earlier imprisoned at FCI Tallahassee in Tallahassee, Florida.

The minimum-security Federal Prison Camp Bryan where Maxwell is now housed has better conditions than the low-security FCI Tallahassee in Florida.

Federal Prison Camp Bryan has little to no perimeter fencing and a lower staff-to-inmate ratio, whereas FCI Tallahassee has double-fenced perimeters fencing and more prison staff on site.

How have Epstein and Maxwell victims reacted?

Victims of Epstein and Maxwell have condemned Maxwell’s move to a lower-security prison.

“Ghislaine Maxwell is a sexual predator who physically assaulted minor children on multiple occasions, and she should never be shown any leniency,” Annie and Marie Farmer and the family of Virginia Giuffre said in response to the transfer. They said the transfer “smacks of a cover up.”

Annie and Marie Farmer have accused Epstein of molestation, whereas Giuffre has alleged that she was sex trafficked by Epstein to Prince Andrew, a member of the British royal family. Giuffre took her own life in April.

Maxwell’s transfer comes as Trump admin faces ‘Epstein files’ firestorm

The transfer occurred after Maxwell recently met with US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. It comes as Maxwell is appealing her prison sentence and the US President Donald Trump’s administration is facing criticism over its handling of the Epstein case.

Last month, the US Justice Department said that Epstein did not have a “client list” and that he did indeed kill himself in his prison cell in 2019.

Both of those claims were met with skepticism from many Trump supporters, who urged the Trump administration to release more information on the Epstein case.

The scandal regarding the so-called “Epstein files” is of a personal nature for Trump, who once was friends with Epstein. The disgraced New York financier had even said he was Trump’s “closest friend” in recordings released by author Michael Wolff last year.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/epstein-associate-ghislaine-maxwell-moved-to-texas-prison/a-73504250

While the country has made progress on some fronts, expectations that last year’s student-led uprising would bring substantial change have not yet been met. DW spoke with citizens, activists and officials in Dhaka.

Sheikh Hasina resigned as Bangladesh’s long-serving prime minister in August 2024 after weeks of deadly protests that started over a controversial quota system for government jobs, but morphed into a wider anti-government movement.

Hasina fled to India, while other members of her Awami League party were either arrested in connection with the protests or went into hiding.

Today, in the capital, Dhaka, the main office of the powerful opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Hasina rival and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, is a hub of activity.

When will Bangladesh hold credible elections?

Many BNP members, including Zia, who had been imprisoned on charges including graft, vandalism and violence — which the BNP says were politically motivated during Hasina’s 15-year tenure — are now free.

Abdus Salam, a prominent BNP leader, told DW that the only change he sees since Hasina fled to India in August 2024 is political freedom.

“We were in hiding during this time last year. We were not able to stay in our homes. We were facing numerous court cases. We didn’t have a normal life. That suffering may have ended,” he said.

In another busy Dhaka street, Ambia, a garment factory worker, told DW that while she admires the students who led last year’s uprising to bring change in her country, she said her expectations have not yet been met.

“I hoped that the anarchy would end, and that people wouldn’t politicize every incident,” said Ambia. “The political parties create many issues whenever something happens. I didn’t expect that. The feeling of security hasn’t returned yet.”

The interim government led by Muhammad Yunus, a former banker and prominent economist, had been aiming to hold elections in April 2026, saying it needed time to implement constitutional reforms, changes to the electoral process and bring about progress in judicial independence and press freedoms.

However, Yunus’ administration did not rule out a possibility of polls in February, which has been demanded by the BNP and its allies.

Rights violations and rise of Islamists

Bangladesh has seen some economic progress, but human rights remain a concern.

London-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said the Yunus-led interim government is “falling short” on its promise to improve human rights in Bangladesh.

“Some of the fear and repression that marked Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League Party’s 15-year rule, and abuses such as widespread enforced disappearances, appear to have ended,” according to HRW.

“However, the interim government has used arbitrary detention to target perceived political opponents and has yet to deliver systemic reforms to protect human rights.”

“The hope of the thousands who braved lethal violence a year ago when they opposed Sheikh Hasina’s abusive rule to build a rights-respecting democracy remains unfulfilled,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, HRW’s deputy Asia director.

At the same time, Islamist parties have increased their visibility since Hasina’s ouster.

The Yunus government also withdrew a ban on the country’s largest Islamist party last August, reversing a decision by the Hasina government.

A rally held by an influential Islamist group in May drew thousands to the streets of Dhaka. As many as 20,000 people turned out to show support for the Hefazat-e-Islam group as it laid out a list of demands for Bangladesh’s interim government.

They opposed government proposals that include equal inheritance rights for women, a ban on polygamy and recognition of sex workers as laborers.

‘Significant progress’ on reducing rights violations

Foyez Ahammad, senior assistant press secretary for the interim government, told DW that HRW’s expectation of reducing human rights violations to zero may not have been achieved, but significant progress has been made toward reducing it.

“HRW has expressed its dissatisfaction [with] many issues as their expectation after the era of Sheikh Hasina didn’t meet to the level they expected,” Ahammad said.

“Bangladesh was in a condition of massive human rights violations, where hundreds of secret prisons were operating, and enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings happened,” he added, noting that press freedom “went down to zero” under Hasina’s rule.

“We have made progress from that situation within a short period. For example, media houses that were closed down in the past reopened,” added Ahammad, who said that ordinary people are expressing their opinions openly, including on social media.

“They are even criticizing the government in state-run broadcasters, which didn’t happen in the past,” he said.

Hasina’s supporters, however, do not agree with these claims and point to a crackdown on their party under the interim government.

Hasina faces uncertain future

Yunus’ interim government has banned all political activities of Hasina’s Awami League until a special tribunal completes a trial of the party and its leaders over the deaths of hundreds of people during last year’s mass uprising.

Following the ban, senior Awami League politician Mohammad A. Arafat claimed Yunus was trying to “keep his unconstitutional regime in power and delay elections.”

Speaking to DW from an unknown location in May, the former information minister said Yunus was trying to secure the support of Islamists and the National Citizens’ Party — which spearheaded the move against the Awami League (AL) — by banning the former ruling party.

“The only way the Islamists can make their way into parliament is by banning AL,” Arafat said.

The tribunal against Hasina, former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan and former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun has set August 3 and 4 for the prosecution’s statement.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/bangladesh-still-polarized-a-year-after-hasinas-ouster/a-73498890

Germany’s old-age pension system faces collapse under the weight of an aging population. The country’s new Economy Minister Katherina Reiche wants Germans to work longer to make up for it.

For German Economy Minister Katherina Reiche, there’s a simple way to fix Germany’s pension system: “We need to work more and longer,” she flatly told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper in late July, instantly triggering a new debate along familiar lines. Reiche argued that the pledges her government had made in the coalition contract earlier this year were just not going to be enough.

Germany’s aging population has long been recognized as a problem. The population’s median age — 46.7 — is the eighth-highest in the world and the third-highest among major economies, after Japan and Italy. By 2040, fully a quarter of the population is expected to be 67 or older. This year, birth rate fell to its lowest point in 20 years.

This has had a marked effect: In the early 1960s, there were still six actively insured workers for every pensioner — that ratio is now 2 to 1 and sinking, and in 2025, two-thirds of the Labor Ministry’s budget will go into the pension system: €121 billion ($140 billion).

“It cannot be sustainable in the long term for us to work only two-thirds of our adult lives and spend one-third in retirement,” said Reiche. “Unfortunately, too many people have been refusing to accept the demographic reality for too long.”

Reiche’s statements triggered a quick backlash from her center-left Cabinet colleagues. Lars Klingbeil, finance minister and leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which traditionally sees itself catering to a working-class electorate, described Reiche’s statement as a “slap in the face” for many workers.

“It’s easy to say that when you’re sitting in your comfortable chair in Berlin,” Klingbeil told news outlet ntv. “But you should go out and talk to the people in the country who are working as roofers, who are working as nurses, who are working as teachers and are really wearing themselves out and who are already struggling to make it to 67.”

Trade unions, meanwhile, said Reiche’s plan was simply a new way to cut pensions. Many workers will be unable to work to a higher age for health reasons, forcing them to retire early, and accept deductions that permanently reduce their pensions.

Raising retirement age doesn’t rule out pension cuts

The contract agreed by Germany’s two governing parties — Reiche’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the SPD — promised that Germany’s current retirement age would not be raised.

Instead, the contract pledged, “We want more flexibility in the transition from job to pension.” In practice, “flexibility” means offering incentives to people who work beyond the legal retirement age. This would include measures like the so-called “Aktivrente” (“active pension”), by which any income of up to €2,000 per month is tax-free for those above the legal retirement age.

Jan Scharpenberg, pensions expert at the financial advice company Finanztip, is convinced that the German pension system urgently needs to be reformed, but that the debate around it has become tedious.

“The length of a working life is just one of the levers that can be adjusted to reform the German pension system in order to deal with the demographic transformation,” he told DW. “And if I’m being really honest, I think it’s a bit exhausting how for years and decades the same pro- and con arguments are being made, but no actual reform is put in place.”

While he agrees that raising the legal retirement age may become necessary, that doesn’t negate the argument that it would, in practical terms, mean pension cuts for some people. “Those two things can be true at the same time, but that shouldn’t prevent a pension reform,” he said. “A reform of the system will only work if you combine and pull several levers.”

How Germany’s pension system works

The retirement age system in Germany is dauntingly complicated. At the moment, the legal retirement age in Germany is 65, though it is scheduled to rise to 67 by 2031. But the age is staggered depending on the individual’s year of birth, and how long they have paid into the system.

And there are exceptions: People who are disabled or have paid into the system for 45 years, for example, can retire earlier.

A contribution of 18.6% of an employee’s gross monthly salary goes into the state retirement fund, with the employee and the employer each paying half. The government expects this contribution rate to rise to 22.3% by 2035, where it is supposed to level out until 2045.

Johannes Geyer, public economics researcher at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), pointed out that the reason why the retirement age issue is so contentious is because it affects workers differently.

“There are lot of people who can’t imagine working beyond the age of 67,” he said. “But those in perhaps better paid jobs can do that.”

Pension income vs. pension expenses

But many experts say the narrow focus on the retirement age is unhelpful, as there are many different ways of increasing contributions to the pension system.

One measure, for example, would be to provide better child care facilities, so that more single parents are able to work full-time and therefore pay higher pension contributions. Another solution might be to make migrating to Germany to work easier and more attractive. There are also proposals to increase the number of people paying into the public system by including the self-employed and civil servants, a proposal made recently by Labor Minister Bärbel Bas from the SPD.

Meanwhile, on the expense side of the ledger, some more painful measures might be put in place to balance the books. Apart from raising the retirement age, that might mean extending the “waiting time” (the number of years one must pay into the system before one can begin to draw a pension), or reducing the rate at which pensions increase every year.

The pension increase is calculated based on the development of gross wages and salaries in Germany and is 3.74% for 2025.

In the coalition agreement, the SPD was able to secure the pension level at 48% of the standard pension to the average income (before taxes) until 2031. Critics have labeled this as untenable.

According to Scharpenberg, a mix of measures needs to be implemented. But instead, he said, the perennial political debate revolves around doing one measure or another, as if it were impossible to combine them.

International comparison

The German pension system is structured very differently to other European countries. In Denmark, for example, the retirement age is linked to the country’s life expectancy, so that it rises automatically as people live longer.

And in Sweden, an individual’s contributions are invested in various financial markets and then the profits are paid out when that person reaches old age.

“That helps to diversify the risk,” said Geyer. “They’re not so dependent on the aging of their own population.” In the German system, on the other hand, contributions from workers are put into a single pot, which is used to finance current pensions.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/will-germany-raise-retirement-age-beyond-67/a-73472863

At least 30 passengers were injured after several coaches of the Islamabad Express derailed near Lahore on Friday evening, officials confirmed on Saturday. Three of the injured passengers are reported to be in critical condition.

According to Pakistan Railways, the train was en route from Lahore to Rawalpindi when it derailed at Kala Shah Kaku in Sheikhupura, about 50 km from Lahore. Ten coaches went off the tracks.

Rescue teams responded quickly, transporting the injured to a nearby hospital. Efforts are ongoing to rescue passengers still trapped in the derailed coaches.

No deaths have been reported so far. The derailment occurred around 30 minutes after the train departed from Lahore station.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/at-least-30-injured-after-several-coaches-of-passenger-train-derail-in-pakistan-2765062-2025-08-02

The decision to identify cyber threat group UNC3886 was because Singaporeans “ought to know about it” given the seriousness of the threat, said the minister.

While naming a specific country linked to cyber threat group UNC3886 is not in Singapore’s interest at this point in time, the attack was still serious enough for the government to let the public know about the group, said Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs K Shanmugam on Friday (Aug 1).

Speaking to reporters on the side of the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore’s (CSA) Exercise Cyber Star, the national cybersecurity crisis management exercise, Mr Shanmugam said that when it comes to naming any country responsible for a cyber attack, “we always think about it very carefully”.

Responding to a question from CNA on reports tying the group to China, Mr Shanmugam said: “Media coverage (and) industry experts all attribute UNC3886 to some country … Government does not comment on this.

“We release information that we assess is in the public interest. Naming a specific country is not in our interest at this point in time.”

UNC3886 has been described by Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant as a “China-nexus espionage group” that has targeted prominent strategic organisations on a global scale.

Mr Shanmugam had announced on Jul 18 that Singapore is actively dealing with a “highly sophisticated threat actor” that is attacking critical infrastructure, identifying the entity as UNC3886 without disclosing if it was a state-linked actor.

He said the threat actor poses a serious danger to Singapore and could undermine the country’s national security, and added that it was not in Singapore’s security interests to disclose further details of the attack then.

When asked the following day about UNC3886’s alleged links to China and possible retaliation for naming them, Mr Shanmugam, who is also Home Affairs Minister, said this was “speculative”.

“Who they are linked to and how they operate is not something I want to go into,” he said.

Responding to media reports in a Jul 19 Facebook post, the Chinese embassy in Singapore expressed its “strong dissatisfaction” at the claims linking the country to UNC3886, stating that they were “groundless smears and accusations against China”.

“In fact, China is a major victim of cyberattacks,” it wrote.

“The embassy would like to reiterate that China is firmly against and cracks down (on) all forms of cyberattacks in accordance with law. China does not encourage, support or condone hacking activities.”

On Friday, Mr Shanmugam also gave his reasons for disclosing the identity of threat actors like UNC3886.

“We look at the facts of each case (and) the degree of confidence we have before we can name. And when we decide to name the threat actor, we look at whether it is in Singapore’s best interest,” said Mr Shanmugam, who is also the home affairs minister.

In this case, the threat, attack and compromise to Singapore’s infrastructure was “serious enough” and the government was confident enough to name UNC3886 as the perpetrators, he said.

“Here, we said this is serious. They have gotten in. They are compromising a very serious critical infrastructure. Singaporeans ought to know about it, and awareness has got to increase. And because of the seriousness, it is in the public interest for us to disclose,” said Mr Shanmugam.

ATTACKS HAVE HAPPENED ELSEWHERE

Mr Shanmugam was accompanied at Friday’s exercise by Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo, who is also Minister-in-Charge of Cybersecurity.

Held at the Singapore Institute of Technology in Punggol, the exercise saw teams from critical sector organisations tackle cybersecurity challenges based on key threats, such as advanced persistent threats (APTs) and attacks on critical systems.

APTs are a type of prolonged cyberattack typically carried out by well-resourced threat actors.

“There’re close to about 500 participants today. They come together, put a face to a name, exercise real life scenarios, things which have happened elsewhere,” said Mr Shanmugam, emphasising that such incidents are “not theoretical”.

During the event, Mr Shanmugam was shown a demonstration of an attack on a port, where crane operations were paralysed and energy supply was cut off.

He was also briefed on the response plan for when the public transport system gets attacked, with millions of people commuting and the fare systems are targeted.

“You have to exercise, you have to bring people together. Government has got a high level of knowledge.”

The private sector, meanwhile, is focused on getting things done for their business, he added.

“Now, they need their knowledge and abilities to also increase. So we’ve got to work together,” said Mr Shanmugam.

Mrs Teo had announced earlier this week that owners of Singapore’s critical information infrastructure will, from later this year, be required to report to CSA any incidents suspected to be caused by APTs.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/cybersecurity-cyberattack-threat-unc3886-country-shanmugam-mha-csa-5271641

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday (Aug 1) that Moscow hoped for more peace talks with Ukraine but that the momentum of the war was in its favour, signalling no shift in his stance despite a looming sanctions deadline from Washington.

US President Donald Trump has said he will impose new sanctions on Moscow and countries that buy its energy exports – of which the biggest are China and India – unless Russia moves by Aug 8 to end the three-and-a-half-year war.

He has expressed mounting frustration with Putin, accusing him of “bullshit” and describing Russia’s latest attacks on Ukraine as “disgusting”.

Putin, without referring to the Trump deadline, said three sessions of peace talks with Ukraine had yielded some positive results, and Russia was expecting negotiations to continue.

“As for any disappointments on the part of anyone, all disappointments arise from inflated expectations. This is a well-known general rule,” he said.

“But in order to approach the issue peacefully, it is necessary to conduct detailed conversations. And not in public, but this must be done calmly, in the quiet of the negotiation process.”

He said Russian troops were attacking Ukraine along the entire front line and that the momentum was in their favour, citing the announcement by his Defence Ministry on Thursday that Moscow’s forces had captured the Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar after a 16-month battle.

Ukraine denied that Chasiv Yar is under full Russian control.

Ukraine for months has been urging an immediate ceasefire but Russia says it wants a final and durable settlement, not a pause. Since the peace talks began in Istanbul in May, it has conducted some of its heaviest air strikes of the war, especially on the capital Kyiv.

The Ukrainian government has said the Russian negotiators do not have the mandate to take significant decisions and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on Putin to meet him for talks.

“We understand who makes the decisions in Russia and who must end this war. The whole world understands this too,” Zelenskyy said on Friday on X, reiterating his call for direct talks between him and Putin.

“The United States has proposed this. Ukraine has supported it. What is needed is Russia’s readiness.”

Russia says a leaders’ meeting could only take place to set the seal on agreements reached by negotiators.

Ukraine and its European allies have frequently said they do not believe Putin is really interested in peace and have accused him of stalling, which the Kremlin denies.

“I will repeat once again, we need a long and lasting peace on good foundations that would satisfy both Russia and Ukraine, and ensure the security of both countries,” Putin said, adding that this was also a question of European security.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/putin-trump-russian-ukraine-war-sanctions-deadline-5272316

 

Elon Musk’s social media platform X on Friday (Aug 1) accused Britain of regulatory “overreach” following the implementation of the country’s Online Safety Act, a law designed to protect children from harmful content such as pornography.

“The Online Safety Act’s laudable intentions are at risk of being overshadowed by the breadth of its regulatory reach,” X said on its Global Government Affairs account. “A plan ostensibly intended to keep children safe is at risk of seriously infringing on the public’s right to free expression.”

CONCERNS OVER FREE SPEECH, DUPLICATION

X also criticised a new police unit set up to monitor social media and a recently introduced code of conduct for online platforms, calling the measures “parallel and duplicative.” The company suggested these initiatives could further erode free speech.

Despite its criticism, X said it has begun complying with the law by rolling out age-verification systems in Britain, Ireland and the wider European Union. These include estimating a user’s age based on account details, using AI to assess selfies, or requiring the upload of official ID documents.

FINES FOR NON-COMPLIANCE

Under the Online Safety Act, which came into force on Jul 25, UK media regulator Ofcom requires such age checks to be “technically accurate, robust, reliable and fair.” Companies that fail to comply face fines of up to £18 million (US$24 million) or 10 per cent of global revenue, whichever is higher. Repeat offenders risk being blocked in the UK.

WIDER DEBATE OVER PRIVACY

The UK’s move follows similar efforts in France and several US states, where governments have pushed for stricter age verification for pornography sites. Supporters say the rules are necessary to protect minors, but critics warn that such policies could undermine user privacy and heighten the risk of identity theft if sensitive data were compromised.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/musks-x-accuses-britain-online-safety-overreach-5272741

US President Donald Trump said on Friday (Aug 1) he had ordered two nuclear submarines to be repositioned to the “appropriate regions” in response to recent threats from former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

“I have ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that,” Trump posted on social media.

He described Medvedev’s recent remarks as “highly provocative” and warned that “words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences. I hope this will not be one of those instances.”

The move marks the latest escalation in rhetoric between the two leaders, who have traded barbs over Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. On Tuesday, Trump gave Moscow a 10-day deadline to agree to a ceasefire or face new US tariffs on Russian oil and on countries that purchase it.

Trump did not clarify whether the submarines are nuclear-powered or armed with nuclear weapons. The US Navy has declined to comment on the matter, and the Pentagon has not responded to media inquiries.

Russia has not signaled any willingness to meet Trump’s conditions and continues to advance its own demands for peace.

Medvedev, currently deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, responded by accusing Trump of playing a “game of ultimatums” and reminded the US leader of Russia’s legacy nuclear strike capabilities inherited from the Soviet Union.

The Kremlin has not directly commented on Trump’s latest move, but Medvedev’s remarks were widely covered in Russian state media. Once seen as a more moderate figure, Medvedev has in recent years become one of Moscow’s most vocal anti-Western hardliners, often issuing hawkish statements that Kremlin critics describe as reckless.

However, some Western diplomats view Medvedev’s rhetoric as a window into broader thinking within the Kremlin’s senior policy circles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that while Moscow welcomed more peace talks with Ukraine, the momentum on the battlefield remained in Russia’s favor.

Trump, who once touted close ties with Putin, has grown more openly frustrated with the Russian leader, calling recent attacks on Ukraine “disgusting” and accusing him of spreading “bullshit.”

Trump previously rebuked Medvedev in July for mentioning nuclear weapons in response to US strikes on Iran. At the time, Trump accused him of “throwing around the N (nuclear) word” and mocked the Kremlin by saying, “I guess that’s why Putin’s THE BOSS.”

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/trump-moves-nuclear-submarines-after-statements-former-russian-president-5272881

Sean “Diddy” Combs’ attorney Marc Agnifilo gave rare insight into the rap mogul’s life in federal prison.

The New York-based lawyer, who oversaw Combs’ sex-trafficking case in Manhattan federal court earlier this year, said his famous client spends a lot of time alone with his thoughts.

“I think he spends a lot of time thinking,” Agnifilo said in a new interview with Variety Friday.

“So many people say, ‘The worst thing I could do is spend too much time with myself.’ That’s what jail is.”

The defense lawyer admitted, “It’s difficult, and sometimes that’s necessary.”

Agnifilo said that when Combs’ trial was still underway throughout May and June, the Bad Boy Records founder, 55, spent “a tremendous amount of time preparing his defense.”

“He’s a remarkably smart man and was a valuable teammate in his own defense. So, we worked on his case for 20 hours a day every day, and he was at the center of it,” the attorney shared.

However, since Combs was found guilty of prostitution charges in July and has to await his Oct. 3 sentencing behind bars, as he was denied bail several times, he now spends time working on himself.

It was previously reported the former rap exec signed up for a self-help program called STOP, which is a course focused on preventing sexual assault, domestic and dating violence.

“He’s been doing a lot of writing. He writes essays, some of which I think are beautiful and poignant and thoughtful,” Agnifilo added to Variety. “He’s trying to pass the time productively.”

The attorney claimed that the “It’s All About the Benjamins” rapper has also been an asset to his fellow inmates by starting “programs” for those in jail with him.

“Unlike other prison facilities, there are almost no programs at the MDC. So, these men and women have nothing but time on their hands,” Agnifilo said.

Combs has been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, NY, since even before his trial began. He has been locked up ever since he was arrested on Sept. 16, 2024.

During a hearing last December, a Law and Crime reporter present inside the courtroom called out how prison seemed to be taking a toll on the “I Need a Girl” rapper.

“He appeared just astonishingly thinner, which you can expect [from him being] inside a federal detention center for a couple of months now,” Elizabeth Millner said at the time.

“A lot different from the luxury lifestyle that he was living before, but he appeared very noticeably thinner and maybe being locked up in detention is starting to wear on him,” she added before pointing out that Combs’ hair had also noticeably turned gray.

However, a source downplayed that the “Last Night” rapper was struggling at the time, telling Page Six exclusively that Combs was “fit, healthy and fully focused on his defense.”

“He has been very active, remains in good spirits, and, as always, he was happy to see his children,” the insider added. We were also told he has been working out regularly.

Agnifilo himself had admitted, though, that food was the “roughest part” of his client’s imprisonment. Most recently, a July Fourth prison menu revealed Combs would be served cereal, fruit, milk, butter and a breakfast cake for breakfast, and a hamburger, bean burger, two hot dogs, among other items for lunch.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/08/01/celebrity-news/inside-sean-diddy-combs-difficult-life-in-prison-as-he-awaits-sentencing/

Hulk Hogan showed “no interest” in meeting his daughter Brooke Hogan’s twins amid their years-long estrangement, her husband, Steven Oleksy, claimed.

The former NHL player revealed that he stayed in contact with Hulk in case the pair ever wanted to mend their relationship, but his efforts were to no avail, he told People in an interview published Friday.

He alleged that he reached out to his father-in-law “about a month and a half after” his twins were born in January — one of whom is named after the late WWE star.

“I sent text messages once again to kind of gauge where he was at, but there was no interest.”

Oleksy, 39, also told the outlet that Brooke’s brother, Nick, offered to bring Hulk to their house to meet the twins, but it never came to fruition.

As we previously reported, Hulk died on July 24 after suffering from cardiac arrest. He also secretly battled leukemia before his death.

Brooke, 37, and Hulk were estranged in the years leading up to his shocking death. According to insiders, their last conversation took place in September 2023 — around the time the ex-wrestler tied the knot with his wife, Sky Daily.

However, in her tribute to her dad, Brooke touched on their estrangement, saying that they “never had a ‘big fight.’”

“My father and I never ‘fought.’ It was a series of private phone calls no one will ever hear know or understand,” she said.

She also claimed that after she and Oleksy moved to Florida to be closer to him, Hulk pushed her away while he battled his health issues in private.

Most recently, it was reported that Brooke won’t be getting any part of her dad’s massive estate.

Sources told TMZ that Brooke asked to be removed from her dad’s will because she didn’t trust those around him.

However, her husband shared that he felt Brooke wanted to be excluded from her dad’s will because she wanted to uphold “her dad’s best interests even after his death.”

“That money does not represent accomplishments in the ring — the majority of it came at the expense of my wife’s dignity. It was built on hurtful comments about her and her past relationship, which caused pain not only to her, but to many other families,” said Oleksy, 39.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/08/01/celebrity-news/hulk-hogan-had-no-interest-in-meeting-daughter-brookes-twins-before-his-death/

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will shut down its operations after the loss of federal funding, the nonprofit said on Friday, in a blow to local TV and radio stations that have relied on its grants for nearly six decades.
The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a $9 billion funding cut to public media and foreign aid last month.

This included the elimination of $1.1 billion earmarked for the CPB — which distributes funding to news outlets National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service — over the next two years.

“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison said.
CPB informed its employees that the majority of its staff will be let go as of September end, except a small transition team that will remain through January 2026 to ensure closeout of operations.
Created by the U.S. Congress in 1967, the CPB distributed more than $500 million annually to the PBS, NPR and more than 1,500 locally operated public radio and television stations.

U.S. President Donald Trump and many of his fellow Republicans argue that financing public broadcasting is an unnecessary expense and that its news coverage suffers from an anti-right bias.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/corporation-public-broadcasting-close-after-funding-cut-blow-local-media-2025-08-01/

The Embassy of India in Ireland on Friday advised Indian nationals to take reasonable precautions for their personal security and avoid deserted areas, especially at odd hours.

In the advisory issued on X, the Embassy noted the rise in the instances of physical attacks reported against Indian citizens in Ireland recently. The Embassy also shared its contact details, including email and mobile number, for Indian nationals.

“There has been an increase in the instances of physical attacks reported against Indian citizens in Ireland recently. The Embassy is in touch with the authorities concerned of Ireland in this regard. At the same time, all Indian citizens in Ireland are advised to take reasonable precautions for their personal security and avoid deserted areas, especially in odd hours,” the Indian Embassy in Ireland posted on X.

See more

#MEAIndia @MEAIndia pic.twitter.com/RBmnRd4ZEs

— India in Ireland (Embassy of India, Dublin) (@IndiainIreland) August 1, 2025

The advisory from the Indian Embassy comes after an Indian national was violently assaulted in Tallaght – a southwestern outer suburb of Dublin, on July 26. Following the incident, the Indian Embassy in Ireland said on Wednesday that it is in touch with the victim and the victim’s family and is providing all assistance.

In a post on X, the Indian Embassy in Ireland had stated, “Regarding the recent incident of physical attack on an Indian national that happened in Tallaght, Dublin, the Embassy is in touch with the victim and his family. All the requisite assistances are being offered. Embassy is also in touch with the relevant Irish authorities in this regard.”

An Garda Siochana, Ireland’s national police and security service, had also launched a probe after a man was violently assaulted and partially stripped by a group of attackers in Tallaght. The man, who is in his 40s, and originally from India, was injured after he was set upon and severely beaten by a group of young men before passersby came to his rescue. His trousers were also removed by the attackers, The Irish Times reported.

According to the Irish media, the attack was being probed as a possible hate crime. The group had falsely accused the man of acting inappropriately around children. These claims were later shared on the internet, including by prominent far-right and anti-immigrant accounts.

The police authorities said that the man was taken to Tallaght University Hospital with injuries and discharged from the hospital. Investigators believe some of the attackers have conducted other unprovoked attacks on foreign nationals in the Tallaght area recently.

Paul Murphy, a People Before Profit TD for the area, condemned the attack on the man and said that it’s “horrifying to see a vicious attack like this happen in our neighbourhood.”

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/india-issues-advisory-after-attack-on-citizens-in-ireland-tallaght-take-precautions-9004089

 

When he began his trade war, President Donald Trump said his goal was to bring American jobs and manufacturing back to the US, reduce trade deficits and create a more level playing field for American companies competing globally.

But after months of negotiations and many countries’ refusal to meet America’s demands, his strategy has taken a more punitive turn.

US companies have been here before.

Under Trump’s first administration, when he imposed tariffs on Chinese exports, they scrambled to limit their exposure to Beijing, with many shifting production to Vietnam, Thailand and India to avoid higher levies.

But his battery of new tariffs does not spare any of these economies. Stocks saw a sell-off, with benchmark indexes in Taiwan and South Korea in the red on Friday.

Both countries are central to Asia’s sprawling electronics production.

The details are still hazy, but US firms from Apple to Nvidia will likely be paying more for their supply chains – they source critical components from several Asian countries and assemble devices in the region.

Now they are on the hook – for iPhones, chips, batteries, and scores of other tiny components that power modern lives.

It’s not good news for Asian economies that have grown and become richer because of exports and foreign investment – from Japanese cars to South Korean electronics to Taiwanese chips.

Soaring demand for all these goods fuelled trade surpluses with Washington over the years – and has driven President Trump’s charge that Asian manufacturing has been taking American jobs away.

In May, Trump told Apple CEO Tim Cook: “We put up with all the plants you built in China for years… we are not interested in you building in India, India can take care of themselves.”

Apple earns roughly half its revenue by selling iPhones that are manufactured in China, Vietnam and India.

The tech giant reported bumper earnings for the three months to June, hours before Trump’s tariff announcement on Thursday night, but now the future looks more uncertain.

Chief executive Tim Cook told analysts on a conference call that tariffs had already cost Apple $800m (£600m) in the previous quarter, and may add $1.1bn in costs to the next quarter.

Tech companies typically plan years ahead, but Trump’s unpredictable tariff policy has paralysed businesses.

Amazon’s online marketplace, for instance, is just as dependent on China for what it sells in the US.

But it’s not yet clear what rates Chinese imports into the US could face because Beijing has yet to strike a deal with Washington – it has until 12 August to do so.

Before they agreed to de-escalate, the two sides imposed tit-for-tat tariffs that reached a staggering 145% on some goods.

But it’s no longer just about China.

On Thursday, Mr Cook said that most iPhones sold in the US now come from India. But Trump has just levelled a 25% tariff on Indian imports, after Delhi was unable to clinch a deal in time.

Other firms chose to re-route their goods bound for the US through Vietnam and Thailand after the tariffs in Trump’s first term. It became so common that it was called the “China+1” strategy. But this time, these trans-shipped goods are also being targeted.

In fact, trans-shipping has been a big part of the US negotiations with Asian countries. Vietnamese imports face a 20% US levy but trans-shipped goods face 40%, according to Trump.

It’s harder still for advanced manufacturing like semiconductors – more than half of the world’s chips, and most of its advanced ones, come from Taiwan. It is now subject to a 20% tariff.

Chips are the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, but also central to US efforts to gain a technological lead over China. So it is another US company, Nvidia, that will pay steep levies to put advanced chips by Taiwan’s TSMC inside its AI products.

But perhaps the biggest casualty of Trump’s tariffs could well be Asia’s e-commerce giants – as well as the American companies that rely on Chinese sellers and marketplaces.

In a surprise move this week, Trump ditched the “de minimis” rule which exempted parcels under $800 from customs duties.

He first did this in May, targeting such parcels from China and Hong Kong – and this was a blow for retailers like Shein and Temu, whose huge success has come from online sales in the West.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ykd997kjjo

In late July, lawyer Indira Jaising mounted a challenge against the legal age for having sex in India – which is 18 years – in the Supreme Court, renewing conversations around the criminalisation of teen sex.

Ms Jaising argued that consensual sex between 16 and 18-year-olds is neither exploitative nor abusive and urged the court to exempt it from criminal prosecution.

“The purpose of age-based laws is to prevent abuse, not to criminalise consensual, age-appropriate intimacy,” Ms Jaising has said in her written submissions to the court.

But the federal government has opposed this, saying that introducing such an exemption would jeopardise the safety and protection of children (persons under the age of 18, according to Indian laws), opening them up to abuse and exploitation.

The case has re-ignited debate around consent and whether Indian laws, especially the country’s main law against child sexual abuse – Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 or Pocso – should be altered to introduce a provision exempting 16 to 18 year-olds having consensual sex from their ambit.

Child rights activists say exempting teens protects their autonomy, while opponents warn it could fuel crimes like trafficking and child marriage.

Experts question whether teens can bear the burden of proof if abused. More importantly, who decides the age of consent laws – and whose interests do they truly serve?

Like many countries, India has struggled to set its age of sexual consent. Unlike the US, where it varies by state, India enforces a uniform age nationwide.

India’s legal age for having sex is also much higher than most European countries, or places like UK and Canada, where it is 16.

It was 10 years when India’s criminal code was enacted in 1860 and was increased to 16 in 1940 when the code was amended.

Pocso introduced the next major change, pushing the “age of consent” to 18 years in 2012. A year later, India’s criminal laws were amended to reflect this change and the country’s new criminal code, introduced in 2024, has adhered to this revised age.

But over the past decade or so, many child rights activists and even courts have taken a critical view of the country’s legal age to have sex and have called for it to be lowered to 16 years.

They say the law criminalises consensual teen relationships and is often misused by adults to control or block relationships – especially those of girls.

Sex remains a taboo topic in the country even though studies have shown that millions of Indian teenagers are sexually active.

“As a society, we’re also divided along caste, class and religious lines, which makes the [age of consent] law even more susceptible to misuse,” says Sharmila Raje, co-founder of Foundation for Child Protection-Muskaan, a non-profit working to prevent child sexual abuse for over two decades.

In 2022, the Karnataka High court directed India’s Law Commission – an executive panel that advices the government on legal reform – to rethink the age of consent under Pocso, “so as to take into consideration the ground realities”.

It noted several cases where girls over 16 fell in love, eloped, and had sex, only for the boy to be charged with rape and abduction under Pocso and criminal law.

In its report the following year, the Law Commission ruled out lowering the age of consent, but recommended “guided judicial discretion” during sentencing in cases involving “tacit approval” from children aged 16 to 18 years, meaning where the relationship has been consensual.

Though this is yet to be implemented, courts across the country have been using this principle to allow for appeals, grant bail, make acquittals and even quash cases after taking into consideration the facts of the case and the victim’s testimony.

Many child rights activists, including Ms Raje, urge this provision be codified to standardise enforcement; left as a suggestion, courts may ignore it.

In April, the Madras High Court overturned the acquittal in a case where the 17-year-old victim was in a relationship with the 23-year-old accused and the two eloped after the victim’s parents arranged her marriage to another man. The accused was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

“The court adopted a literal interpretation of the Pocso Act,” Shruthi Ramakrishnan, a researcher at Enfold Proactive Health Trust – a child rights charity – noted in her column in The Indian Express newspaper, calling it a “grave miscarriage of justice”.

Ms Jaising argues that judicial discretion at sentencing isn’t enough, as the accused still faces lengthy investigations and trials.

India’s judicial system is infamously slow with millions of cases pending across all court levels. A research paper by India Child Protection Fund found that as of January 2023, nearly 250,000 Pocso cases were pending in special courts set up to try these cases.

“The process is the punishment for many,” Ms Jaising notes.

“A case-by-case approach leaving it to the discretion of judges is also not the best solution as it can result in uneven results and does not take into account the possibility of bias,” she adds.

She urges the court to add a “close-in-age exception” for consensual sex between 16- and 18-year-olds in Pocso and related laws. This “close-in-age exception” would prevent consensual acts between peers in that age group from being treated as crimes.

Lawyer and child rights activist Bhuwan Ribhu warns that a blanket exception could be misused in cases of kidnapping, trafficking, and child marriage. He advocates judicial discretion paired with a justice system overhaul.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgely5d84jo

Joe Biden’s allies are prepared to “escalate” and reveal unflattering stories about Kamala Harris should the former vice president decide to talk about the former president’s cognitive decline, according to a veteran political journalist.

The stories about Harris’ tenure as Biden’s No. 2 are “Palinesque,” 2WAY’s Mark Halperin said Friday, a reference to former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

“I will tell you, and this has never been reported, barely at all: if the Biden people decide that Kamala is coming after Joe Biden, wait till you hear the ‘Palinesque’ stories about how much they tried to help her be prepared to be vice president and be in a position to run. And how much they decided, ‘Not happening. She’s not up to this,’” Halperin said on “The Morning Meeting” show.

In the aftermath of late Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) loss to former President Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, leaks from campaign staffers suggested that Palin, McCain’s running mate, was woefully unprepared for the job.

In one infamous report, campaign staffers claimed that Palin did not know Africa was a continent and that she could not name the three countries that formed the North American Free Trade Agreement – the United States, Canada and Mexico.

“If the Biden people feel threatened, you will hear stories about Kamala Harris as vice president that will not make her look good,” Halperin said.

“So there’s a closeness to the couples,” he added. “It’s not like they’re at war currently, but I’m telling you, if Joe Biden feels threatened, if his people feel threatened by her, this is gonna escalate in a big way.”

Halperin argued that Harris would have a “hard time defending against the stories if that dam bursts.”

Journalists Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper detail some of the frustrations Biden loyalists had with the VP in their recent book, “Original Sin.”

In the book, Harris was described as a “regular headache” for the White House, according to Biden people.

“She often shied away from politically tough assignments when Biden had accepted such assignments as vice president,” the authors write. “She even turned down seemingly simple asks, such as headlining DC’s Gridiron Club dinner.“

“Many on the Biden team felt that Harris didn’t put in the work and was also just not a very nice person,” according to the book. “Several quietly expressed buyer’s remorse: They should have picked [Michigan Gov. Gretchen] Whitmer” as Biden’s running mate in 2020.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/08/01/us-news/biden-people-prepared-to-unload-palinesque-stories-about-kamala-harris-if-she-discusses-his-cognitive-decline-report/

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta gave a 24-year-old artificial intelligence whiz a staggering $250 million compensation package, raising the bar in the recruiting wars for top talent — while also raising questions about economic inequality in an AI-dominated future.

Matt Deitke, who recently dropped out of a computer science doctoral program at the University of Washington, initially turned down Zuckerberg’s “low-ball” offer of approximately $125 million over four years, according to the New York Times.

But when the Facebook founder, a former whiz kid himself, met with Deitke and doubled the offer to roughly $250 million — with potentially $100 million paid in the first year alone — the young researcher accepted what may be one of the largest employment packages in corporate history, the Times reported.

“When computer scientists are paid like professional athletes, we have reached the climax of the ‘Revenge of the Nerds!’” Professor David Autor, an economist at MIT, told The Post on Friday.

Deitke’s journey illustrates how quickly fortunes can be made in AI’s limited talent pool.

After leaving his doctoral program, he worked at Seattle’s Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, where he led the development of Molmo, an AI chatbot capable of processing images, sounds, and text — exactly the type of multimodal system Meta is pursuing.

In November, Deitke co-founded Vercept, a startup focused on AI agents that can autonomously perform tasks using internet-based software. With approximately 10 employees, Vercept raised $16.5 million from investors including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

His groundbreaking work on 3D datasets, embodied AI environments and multimodal models earned him widespread acclaim, including an Outstanding Paper Award at NeurIPS 2022. The award, one of the highest accolades in the AI research community, is handed out to around a dozen researchers out of more than 10,000 submissions.

The deal to lock up Deitke underscores Meta’s aggressive push to compete in artificial intelligence.

Meta has reportedly paid out more than $1 billion to build an all-star roster, including luring away Ruoming Pang, former head of Apple’s AI models team, to join its Superintelligence Labs team with a compensation package reportedly worth more than $200 million.

The company said capital expenditures will go up to $72 billion for 2025, an increase of approximately $30 billion year-over-year, in its earnings report Wednesday.

While proponents argue that competition drives innovation, critics worry about the concentration of power among a few companies and individuals capable of shaping AI’s development.

Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor of Information Studies and Design/Media Arts at UCLA and founder of the university’s Digital Cultures Lab, said the direction that companies like Meta are taking with artificial intelligence is “foundational to why our economy is becoming more unequal by the day.”

“These firms are awarding hundreds of millions of dollars to a handful of elite researchers while simultaneously laying off thousands of workers—many of whom, like content moderators, are not even classified as full employees,” Srinivasan told the New York Post.

“These are the very jobs Meta and similar companies intend to replace with the AI systems they’re aggressively developing.”

Srinivasan, who advises US policymakers on technology policy and has written extensively on the societal impact of AI, said this model of development rewards those advancing large language models while “displacing and disenfranchising the workers whose labor, ironically, generated the data powering those models in the first place.”

“This is cognitive task automation,” he said. “It’s HR, administrative work, paralegal work — even driving for Uber. If data can be collected on a job, it can be mimicked by a machine. All of those forms of income are on the chopping block.”

Asked whether universal basic income might address mass displacement, Srinivasan, who hosts the Utopias podcast, called it “highly insufficient.”

“Yes, UBI gives people money, but it doesn’t address the fundamental issue: no one is being paid for the data that makes these AI systems possible,” he said.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/08/01/business/meta-pays-250m-to-lure-24-year-old-ai-whiz-kid-we-have-reached-the-climax-of-revenge-of-the-nerds/

US President Donald Trump has announced reciprocal tariffs on countries as the August 1 deadline came to an end. The administration has stuck to the 25% tariff on India. However, the “additional penalties”, which Trump had threatened to impose on India for doing business with Russia, remains unclear.

Pakistan, which announced a deal with the US on Thursday, has received a 19% tariff rate, while Bangladesh’s rate, which earlier stood at 35%, has been brought down to 20%. Pakistan was earlier hit with a 29% reciprocal tariff in April.

“These modifications shall be effective with respect to goods entered for consumption, or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, on or after 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time 7 days after the date of this order,” the White House statement said.

This means that the tariffs will take effect on August 7. White House officials told CNBC-TV18 exclusively that this should not be treated as an extension but just more time for the customs department to prepare their systems accordingly to collect the new tariffs.

In an interaction with CNBC on Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the entire trade team is frustrated with India, as it has not been a great global actor due to its dealings with China.

The US has also decided to impose a 20% tariff on Taiwan, 19% each on Cambodia and Thailand, a 30% tariff on South Africa, and a 15% tariff on Turkey. The Trump administration has also imposed a 15% tariff on Israel and South Korea, along with a 39% tariff on Switzerland, which has triggered a fall in the Swiss Franc against the US Dollar.

Canada’s tariffs have also been raised to 35% from 25% earlier, after the country decided to recognise Palestine as an independent state. However, the goods compliant under the US-Mexico-Canada agreement have been exempt.

Source : https://www.cnbctv18.com/world/donald-trump-reciprocal-tariffs-india-pakisan-bangladesh-trade-deficit-deadline-impact-19646986.htm

First comes love…

Alec and Hilaria Baldwin are drumming up baby speculation after sharing a weird foot rubbing video with fans.

The “30 Rock” actor, 67, and his wife, 41, already share seven children, but the affectionate footage left their followers believing there might be room for one more.

Taking to Instagram, Hilaria posted the video showing her seductively dancing on Alec to Celine Dion’s 1985 ballad “The Power of Love” as he sat in a chair.

At one point, she sits near him and puts both of her feet on his chest.

Alec takes his wife’s cue and begins rubbing her tootsies.

“Foot rub time…makes sense to me 🤗,” the yoga instructor and author captioned the video.

Fans immediately flooded her post with comments warning her about what foot rubbing can lead to.

“Here comes baby #8!” one person noted. “He was looking like he was gonna make baby #8,” wrote another.

Another encouraging follower commented, “You promised him a life of fun after the storm, and you are delivering it like a boss,” alluding to their life after the 2021 fatal shooting of “Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Others questioned why the couple, who wed in 2012, needed to put their PDA on social media.

“Not sure why you need all this attention. It’s too much!” one wrote under the video.

Hilaria stood by her husband in the wake of the tragedy that took place on the Santa Fe, New Mexico, set of his Western movie.

Alec initially faced charges of involuntary manslaughter after it was revealed that the loaded prop gun he was holding during rehearsals went off.

Hutchins and the film’s director, Joel Souza, were hit.

She died shortly after, but Souza survived.

The involuntary manslaughter charges against Alec were dismissed in July 2024 after a judge found that the prosecution had withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense.

Just over a month ago, Alec and several fellow “Rust” producers reached a settlement in a civil lawsuit brought on by three crew members who claim they were traumatized by the events that took place on set that day.

The actor always maintained his innocence, with his wife never straying from his side.

In February, Hilaria revealed that Alec is “always asking” her for more kids.

“I don’t really want one, but every now and then, when the baby gets older and grows up to be about 2, I look at [Hilaria] and I go, ‘Time to have another,’” Alec confessed shortly after.

While Hilaria agreed that their children were “really cute,” she admitted, “My body’s really tired.”

While they have seven together, he has his firstborn, daughter, Ireland Baldwin, 29, from his first marriage to actress Kim Basinger.

The two were married from 1993 to 2002.

He’s also a dad to his kids with Hilaria: Carmen, 11, Rafael, 10, Leonardo, 9, Romeo, 7, twins Eduardo and María, 4, and Ilaria, 2.

Hilaria and Alec have also experienced pregnancy loss.

Before having her two youngest babies, the podcaster wrote in a 2021 Instagram post: “After 5 babies out of my body, 3 chemical pregnancies, 1 miscarriage at 9 weeks, one at 4 months and a round of ivf, resulting in Marilu — my body has gone on quite a journey for the family we have.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/07/31/entertainment/alec-and-hilaria-baldwin-spark-baby-8-rumors-with-foot-rubbing-video/

A baby boy has been born to an Ohio couple from an embryo that was frozen for more than 30 years, reportedly setting a new world record.

Lindsey, 35, and Tim Pierce, 34, welcomed their son, Thaddeus Daniel Pierce, on Saturday. Ms Pierce told MIT Technology Review her family thought “it’s like something from a sci-fi movie”.

It is believed to be longest that an embryo has been frozen before resulting in a successful live birth. The previous record-holder was a pair of twins who were born in 2022 from embryos frozen in 1992.

The Pierces had tried to have a child for seven years before they decided to adopt the embryo Linda Archerd, 62, made with her then-husband in 1994 through IVF.

At the time, Ms Archerd initially created four embryos. One became her now-30-year-old daughter, and the other three were left in storage.

Despite separating from her husband, she did not want to get rid of the embryos, donate them for research or give them to another family anonymously.

She said it was important that she was involved with the baby, as they would be related to her adult daughter.

Ms Archerd paid thousands of dollars a year for storage until she found a Christian embryo adoption agency, Nightlight Christian Adoptions, which runs a programme known as Snowflakes. Many of these agencies consider their programmes to be saving lives.

The programme used by Ms Archerd allows donors to choose a couple, meaning they can state religious, racial and nationality preferences.

Ms Archerd’s preference was for a married Caucasian, Christian couple living in the US, as she didn’t want to “go out of the country”, she told MIT Technology Review.

She ultimately matched with the Pierces.

The IVF clinic in Tennessee at which the couple underwent the procedure, Rejoice Fertility, said its aim was to transfer any embryo it received, no matter the age or conditions.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3wne86ex9qo

Top White House officials told a group of rare earths firms last week that they are pursuing a pandemic-era approach to boost U.S. critical minerals production and curb China’s market dominance by guaranteeing a minimum price for their products, five sources familiar with the plan told Reuters.
The previously unreported July 24 meeting was led by Peter Navarro, President Donald Trump’s trade advisor, and David Copley, a National Security Council official tasked with supply chain strategy. It included ten rare earths companies plus tech giants Apple (AAPL.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O), and Corning (GLW.N), which all rely on consistent supply of critical minerals to make electronics, the sources said.

Navarro and Copley told the meeting that a floor price for rare earths extended to MP Materials (MP.N), earlier this month as part of a multibillion-dollar investment by the Pentagon was “not a one-off” and that similar deals were also in the works, the sources said.
U.S. critical minerals firms, which complain that China’s market dominance makes investing in mining projects risky, have long sought a federally backed price guarantee.
Rare earths, a group of 17 metals used to make magnets that turn power into motion, and other critical minerals are used widely across the electronics sector, including the manufacture of cell phones and weapons.

The officials detailed Trump’s desire to quickly boost U.S. rare earths output – through mining, processing, recycling and magnet production – in a manner that would evoke the speed of 2020’s Operation Warp Speed, which developed the COVID-19 vaccine in less than a year.
Navarro confirmed the meeting to Reuters. He said the administration aims to “move in ‘Trump Time,’ which is to say as fast as possible while maintaining efficiency” to remedy perceived vulnerabilities in the U.S. critical minerals industry. Navarro did not comment on whether he mentioned the price floor at the meeting.
“Our goal is to build out our supply chains from mines to end use products across the entire critical mineral spectrum, and the companies assembled at the meeting have the potential to play important roles in this effort,” Navarro said.

China – the world’s largest producer of rare earths for more than 30 years – halted exports in March as part of a trade spat with Washington that showed some signs of easing late last month, even as the broader tensions remain.
Beyond the price floor, Navarro and Copley advised attendees to avail themselves of existing government financial support, including billions of dollars worth of incentives in Trump’s tax and spending bill approved on July 4, the sources said.
Copley did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Apple signed a supply deal with MP after the Pentagon’s investment this month. At the Washington meeting, Navarro and Copley said Trump would like to see more tech companies invest in the rare earths sector, either through seed investing or by making buyouts, all of the sources said.

Apple and Corning did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Microsoft declined to comment.

EXPORT BAN REQUEST

While the attendees asked Navarro to support a ban on exports of equipment containing rare earth magnets to spur domestic recycling, Navarro told them he would push for that only after the U.S. rare earths industry is more developed so as not to prematurely give China leverage in the ongoing trade spat, according to the sources.
When asked about a potential ban, Navarro told Reuters: “All policy options are on the table. As President Trump loves to say, ‘Let’s see what happens.'”
Attendees included Phoenix Tailings, which is building a rare earths processing facility in New Hampshire, Momentum Technologies, which developed a modular battery and magnet recycling system, Vulcan Elements, which has built a pilot facility for rare earth magnets, and rare earths recyclers REEcycle and Cyclic Materials.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/land-use-biodiversity/trump-administration-expand-price-support-us-rare-earths-projects-sources-say-2025-07-31/

Hulk Hogan’s official cause of death has been revealed.

Page Six can exclusively confirm that the pro wrestling legend died from acute myocardial infarction — commonly known as a heart attack — which is when blood flow to the heart muscle is suddenly blocked, causing tissue damage, per the Pinellas County Forensic Science Center.

The document obtained by Page Six also shows Hogan had a history of atrial fibrillation (AFib), which is a heart condition characterized by an irregular and often rapid heart rate.

Per the District Six Medical Examiner’s record, the former WWE superstar also had a history of leukemia CLL, a type of cancer that affects white blood cells called lymphocytes.

It does not appear that it was public knowledge that Hogan, born Terry Bollea, had ever battled cancer.

His manner of death was ruled natural. The Pinellas County Forensic Science Center provided the latest updates in a cremation summary approval report.

A spokesperson for the medical examiner’s office tells Page Six, “I am not aware when Mr. Bollea will be cremated, only that we received a request for cremation approval.”

On July 24, Hogan went into cardiac arrest at his home in Clearwater, Fla., and was transported via ambulance to Morton Plant Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was 71.

“Unfortunately, we must confirm that Terry Bollea, aka Hulk Hogan, passed away this morning,” his reps told Page Six at the time. “We are heartbroken. He was such a great human being and friend.”

Hogan’s death came after weeks of speculation that his health was poor after he underwent a delicate neck surgery in May.

However, his wife, Sky Daily, tried to quiet the noise, reportedly writing via social media on July 12, “No, he’s definitely not in a coma! His heart is strong, and there was never any lack of oxygen or brain damage. None of those rumors are true.”

She then explained that Hogan had been “recovering from a major four-level Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusin (ACDF), which is an intense surgery with a long and layered healing process.”

The fitness trainer concluded at the time, “He’s healing and we’re taking it one day at a time with love, strength, and patience.”

Hogan’s manager, Jimmy Hart, added via X on June 22, days before the wrestler died, “Hulk is doing great, doing phenomenal! Last night at karaoke with Nick [Hogan] was absolutely fantastic, baby!!!”

Since Hogan’s passing, his loved ones have issued public statements over the devastating loss.

Daily, 46, wrote via Instagram on July 25 that her heart was “in pieces,” adding, “This loss is sudden and impossible to process.”

Hogan’s son, Nick Hogan, also paid a tribute to his “best friend” via Instagram and wrote in part alongside a carousel of throwback photos, “This has been overwhelming and extremely difficult.”

The “Hogan Knows Best” alum was also present for the WWE’s televised memorial during “Monday Night Raw,” and was seen visibly moved by the occassion.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/07/31/celebrity-news/hulk-hogans-cause-of-death-revealed/

Eight men and 20 women between the ages of 21 and 61 have been arrested for their suspected involvement in vice-related offences, the police said on Thursday (Jul 31).

The 28 were arrested on Wednesday after the police and Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) officers conducted raids in the vicinity of Jalan Layang Layang, Pasir Panjang Road, Boon Lay Avenue, Craig Road, Jurong West Street 71, Beach Road, Tai Seng Avenue, Bencoolen Street, Kim Yam Road, Onan Road, Orchard Road and Jalan Kemaman.

During the operation, assets amounting to more than S$610,000 (US$470,000) comprising cash, funds in bank accounts, two luxury cars and 18 luxury watches, as well as two mobile phones, laptops and vice-related paraphernalia, were seized, police said.

Three men, aged between 30 and 45, will be charged in court on Friday under the Women’s Charter for allegedly facilitating the operation of the online vice syndicate.

Investigations against the other persons are ongoing.

The police said they will continue to take tough enforcement actions against those involved in syndicated vice activities and suspend activities that “threaten public safety, peace and good order of the community”.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/28-arrested-over-s610000-seized-in-police-raids-vice-related-activities-5270301

Demand for drugs, including weight-loss injections, is sending people to dangerous places to get their medicine. But spotting dodgy marketplaces is not easy.

Amid rising demand for popular medications, experts and industry groups are concerned regulators may not be able to keep pace with the speed of counterfeiters.

“A doctor simply writes down the prescription. They don’t care where the patient buys the drug,” said Saifuddin Ahmed, a public health practitioner and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University in the US.

“It is critically important that a health care provider should be engaged. The [regulators are] not enough,” Ahmed told DW.

Nowhere else is the challenge more obvious than with the huge demand for products like Wegovy and Zepbound.

They contain active compounds called semaglutide or tirzepatide, which were originally designed to treat type 2 diabetes. But these drugs were found to have a side effect that triggered substantial, sustained weight loss.

Demand rose from people wanting to lose weight, and that caused a shortage. Fakes have filled the gap.

Fake drugs are a global problem

Drug counterfeiting is a major global problem. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that one in 10 pharmaceuticals are fakes that carry no guarantee of any health benefits.

While this is mainly a problem in low-and-middle income countries, especially parts of Africa and Asia, around 1% of people in high-income nations also obtain medication from unregulated sources.

In some cases, these drugs may have no effect. In other cases, however, ingredients in the fake medication may lead to adverse reactions or create new health problems.

“Purchasing medicine online from unregulated, unlicensed sources can expose patients to potentially unsafe products that have not undergone appropriate evaluation or approval, or do not meet quality standards,” said the US regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2023, when it issued its first warnings about the problem.

In 2024, the WHO issued a global warning that batches of fake Ozempic were flooding the black market.

More recently, in July 2025, data from the UK National Pharmacy Association found one in five Britons had attempted to obtain weight loss treatments in the previous year.

It warned that the high demand for these medicines carried the risk that people would “resort to unregulated online suppliers instead of regulated pharmacies.”

Where are people buying counterfeit medicine?

Unregulated pharmaceuticals are being sold via online-only pharmacies, international drug shopping and organized criminal distributors.

These digital marketplaces are not online stores for established pharmacies, but sites that seemingly offer medicine at a fraction of the usual cost.

The drugs may look identical to genuine medicines online, but when delivered often have spelling errors on the packet or incorrect ingredient listings.

But it’s not only fake drugs or placebos. Regulators have raised concern about compounding, where medicines that have been approved individually can be formulated to produce non-regulated “compounds” for individual patients.

In some regions of the world, including the US, trained pharmacists are allowed to compound medicines, but even then, the practice is less regulated than the stringent approvals that drug manufacturers must meet to bring their products to market.

For example, when the FDA temporarily allowed the compounding of weight loss drugs to address a product shortage, some pharmacists used semaglutide salts — which are not approved by regulators — instead of semaglutide itself. This led to reports of side effects.

And it wasn’t just trained compounding pharmacies that were formulating these products in the US. Ahmed said, “this is done in [places] like gymnasiums and spas.”

The FDA has now stopped allowing compounded versions of these weight loss drugs, but it is concerned that unregulated online pharmacies are still making substandard products available.

Raising awareness about fake drugs

To address concerns that consumers may seek unsafe products from unregulated sources, the FDA operates a campaign called BeSafeRx that provides guidance for consumers to identify genuine pharmaceuticals.

In the European Union, safety features on medicines are mandated, and include standardized labeling practices. In a statement provided to DW, the European Medicines Agency said “patients should only use online retailers registered with the national competent authorities in the EU Member States, to reduce the risk of buying substandard or falsified medicines.”

Europol, which is responsible for law enforcement for pharmaceutical crime across member states, has coordinated regular actions across the bloc in collaboration with US and Colombian partners. In a 2023 operation, more than 1,284 people were charged for offenses related to the trafficking of counterfeit and misused medicines and doping substances.

As well as local awareness campaigns and enforcement initiatives, the key measure, Ahmed said, was to help improve awareness between patients and their health practitioners.

Ahmed heads the Johns Hopkins University’s BESAFE initiative, which investigates risks and interventions to prevent the uptake of substandard and counterfeit medication.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/fake-medication-is-a-problem-across-the-world/a-73485009

A flight from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam has been forced to divert after encountering severe turbulence. The Delta jet was diverted to Minneapolis with some passengers sent for hospital treatment.

Twenty-five people were hospitalized after a Delta airlines flight from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam encountered severe turbulence and was forced to make an emergency landing in Minneapolis, the airline said late on Wednesday.

Flight DL56 landed safely at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport at around 7:25 p.m. local time, where it was met by paramedics and fire crews.

What do we know about Flight DL56?

According to the airport, the turbulence caused injuries onboard, prompting medical teams to treat passengers at the gate and transport 25 individuals to local hospitals for evaluation and care.

“We are grateful for the support of all emergency responders involved,” Delta said in a statement.

Flight tracking data from Flightradar24 shows the aircraft experienced a sharp altitude change roughly 40 minutes into the flight, climbing more than 1,000 feet in under 30 seconds before descending about 1,350 feet in the next half-minute. The plane then diverted course toward Minneapolis, where it landed approximately 90 minutes later.

While serious injuries from in-flight turbulence are rare, scientists have said they may become more common as climate change alters atmospheric conditions.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/turbulence-forces-us-dutch-flight-to-land-dozens-injured/a-73477450

Ukrainian lawmakers have passed revised legislation to restore the independence of anti-corruption bodies. Meanwhile, eight people were killed and dozens injured in Russian airstrikes overnight.

The German foreign minister called the situation in Gaza “beyond imagination” and said Israel needs to show it is not pursuing a policy of expulsion and annexation. Meanwhile, a US special envoy prepares to visit Gaza.

VLADIMIR Putin’s crony has hit back at Donald Trump with a thinly veiled nuclear threat as relations continue to sour between Moscow and DC.

It comes as nine people, including a child, have been killed in Putin’s latest nightly blitz on Ukraine.

Dmitry Medvedev, who was Russian President between 2008 and 2012, has threatened America with nuclear annihilation in the tit-for-tat row with Trump.

He said: “If some words of the former Russian president [Medvedev] cause such a nervous reaction in the entire, formidable US president, then Russia is right in everything and will continue to go its own way.

“And about the “dead economy” of India and Russia and “entering dangerous territory” – well, let him remember his favorite films about the “walking dead”, as well as how dangerous a “dead hand” that does not exist in nature can be.”

Medvedev may be referring to Moscow’s “Dead Hand” nuclear weapons system which is designed to launch a retaliation strike even if the Kremlin leadership is wiped out.

It is not clear what Medvedev is talking about when he mentions Trump’s favourite film and the “walking dead”.

He responded after Trump took a shot at Russia and India complaining about trade and telling Medvedev to “watch his words”.

Trump said: “I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care.

“We have done very little business with India, their Tariffs are too high, among the highest in the World. Likewise, Russia and the USA do almost no business together.

“Tell Medvedev, the failed former President of Russia, who thinks he’s still President, to watch his words.

“He’s entering very dangerous territory!”

Trump posted after the Russian had previously compared Trump to “Sleepy Joe” Biden and threatened war in his incendiary remarks.

He added: “Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war.

“Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country. Don’t go down the Sleepy Joe road!”

Tyrant Vlad continues to bomb Ukraine despite Trump’s shortened peace deadline quickly dwindling.

Some 107 people have been injured, including nine children, in the latest salvo of missiles and drones across Ukraine.

Seven were killed in Kyiv and 62 were injured there after Vlad sent eight Iskander-K cruise missiles and 309 Shahed drones with five hitting buildings directly, the armed forces said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a video of burning ruins, saying people were still trapped under the rubble of one residential building.

He said: “Kyiv. Missile strike. Directly into a residential building. People under the rubble. All services are on site. Russian terrorists.”

The brave leader later added: “Today, the world once again saw Russia’s response to our desire for peace, shared with America and Europe.

“New, showcase killings. That is why peace without strength is impossible.”

Heartbreaking scenes saw rescuers carrying the dead child across the rubble of the collapsed nine-storey apartment building in the Sviatoshynskyi district of Kyiv.

A report said Iskander-K cruise missiles with cluster warheads were used on Kyiv to “increase civilian casualties”.

Huge explosions could be seen across the Kyiv skyline overnight.

As dawn broke fires continued to burn while rescue workers surveyed the destroyed buildings.

Bombs also struck Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Sumy, and Zaporizhzhia.

The latest strike shows Putin has no intention of avoiding Trump’s ire and cutting a peace deal with Ukraine.

The US President has repeatedly said that the nightly bombing of civilians shows him Vlad isn’t serious about peace.

Trump’s shortened 10-day deadline could now see massive sanctions slapped on Russia or those who buy Moscow’s oil by August 8.

Putin is building up towards sending 1,000 drones and missiles at Ukraine a night.

The deadly blitzes are intended to sap morale and hammer civilian infrastructure.

But Trump has agreed to sell air defences to Ukraine and provide them with long range missiles to hit bombers, airstrips, and factories.

The continued salvos have only further deepened the war of words between Washington DC and Moscow.

Trump slammed tyrant Putin while visiting Scotland earlier this week as he has not taken Trump’s peace efforts seriously.

Trump said was “very disappointed” with him and said there was “no reason” to not implement sanctions earlier on Russia.

He has made getting peace in Ukraine a priority and has talked to Putin directly as he has tried to get him to cut a deal.

But the tyrant has not moved away from his maximalist demands and will only sign a deal that leaves Ukraine defenceless.

Vlad has spent months talking up the prospect of peace, but appears to have alienated Trump after launching huge barrages at Ukrainian civilians.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14872650/donald-trump-russia-ukraine-bombing/

APPLE’S latest ad has been mocked by bemused onlookers for resembling the male member.

The manhood gaffe was spotted on a billboard in Miami that was meant to show off the company’s creative tech features on iPhone and iPad.

It’s been shared by the company on Instagram too.

The ad is supposed to show a shark photo alongside a cartoon scuba diver.

However, the scuba diver has an oversized pointing finger that looks more like a penis.

Even local press put out a story asking: “Did Apple Put a Giant Phallic Symbol on I-95?”

The hilarious – and seemingly unintentional – move has caught the attention of the public for all the wrong reasons.

“Don’t tell me I’m the only one,” one stunned onlooker wrote on Reddit sharing an image of the billboard.

“Can’t believe it got through legal,” another commented.

“They saw it only up close and thought nothing of it,” a third joked.

The ad is meant to be part of a “shot on iPhone, drawn on iPad” campaign with work by several artists.

It’s not the first time Apple has raised eyebrows with ads.

Last year the tech giant caused controversy by airing a “crush” promo for the new iPad where numerous musical instruments, cameras, books, games and artwork were destroyed by a hydraulic press.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/14879859/hilarious-apple-gaffe-billboard-ad-rude/

Family members broke down in tears as they learned more about the tragedy during a congressional hearing on Thursday

THE pilots aboard the Black Hawk that collided with an American Airlines flight in January had a brief conversation seconds before the crash that appeared to suggest they were about to turn out of the plane’s path.

More disturbing details are coming to light about the crash that left all 67 people involved dead in Washington DC as the National Transportation Safety Board probes the tragedy.

The NTSB is conducting three days of hearings to try to determine what caused the collision near Ronald Reagan National Airport on January 29.

On Thursday, transportation officials released a transcript of everything that was said in the Black Hawk cockpit in the moments leading up to the crash.

In one fateful moment, the pilots discussed turning east toward the Washington DC bank ot the Potomac River, which could have avoided the tragedy entirely.

A voice recording was recovered from the helicopter that captured pilot instructor Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, speaking with his copilot, trainee Captain Rebecca M. Lobach, 28, The New York Times reported.

At one point, he said, “All right, kinda come left for me ma’am, I think that’s why he’s asking,” referring to the air traffic controller’s guidance.

“Sure,” replied Lobach, who was at the Black Hawk’s controls.

Eaves then said, “We’re kinda —” before abruptly stopping as Lobach said, “OK. Fine.”

“Out towards the middle,” Eaves finished.

Two seconds later, they crashed into the plane.

The disturbing transcript comes as the NTSB showed a new video from the end of the runway that captured the crash.

Before they played the video, the investigators paused and told family members they could leave the room or look away.

After viewing the haunting footage, some people in the audience broke down into heaving sobs as they clutched pictures of their gone-too-soon loved ones.

SECOND BY SECOND TIMELINE

About 15 seconds before the crash, the air traffic controller asked the Black Hawk if it could see the passenger plane, according to audio transcripts.

Three seconds after this, the controller told the helicopter to pass behind the American Airlines flight.

But while the controller said this, a Black Hawk crew member pressed their microphone and the message never came through.

The NTSB is investigating how the Army crew’s actions were able to completely stop transmissions.

The helicopter was piloted by trainee Captain Rebecca Lobach, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Eaves, and Staff Sergeant Ryan O’Hara.

Choppers flying in that zone are only cleared to ascend to an altitude of 200 feet, but for some reason, the Black Hawk was hovering well above that.

Transportation officials testified Wednesday that the pilots may have been getting inaccurate readings because of an altimeter error.

During the rest of the 15-flight, the Army soldiers made small talk and laughed amongst themselves while Eaves guided.

At one point, Lobach described the radio transmissions from air traffic control as “pretty muffled.”

Nearly two and a half minutes before the crash, Eaves told his trainee to “come down for me” as they were flying at 300 feet instead of the approved 200.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14886623/washington-dc-plane-crash-black-hawk-pilot-conversation/

The incident took place at Green Mountain Park in the Hada area on July 31 and was recorded in disturbing clips that went viral on social media.

A terrifying video of a thrill ride collapsing mid-air at an amusement park near Taif, Saudi Arabia, has gone viral on social media.

The incident took place at Green Mountain Park in the Hada area on July 31 and has left at least 23 people injured, The Khaleej Times reports citing Saudi Arabia daily Okaz.

The footage shows riders enjoying the ‘360 Degrees’ ride—a pendulum-style attraction—swinging back and forth when the central support pole suddenly snaps in half. The arm of the ride crashes down with a deafening thud, sending people hurtling down while still strapped into their seats.

Witnesses at the scene reported that the pole broke with such force that its sharp recoil struck passengers seated on the opposite side. Others sustained wounds from the impact of the fall or from being thrown about as the ride collapsed.

According to Okaz, local hospitals in Taif were placed on high alert and declared a Code Yellow emergency. Medical teams treated victims at the scene before transferring them to hospitals for further care.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/trending-news/story/horror-at-saudi-amusement-park-as-ride-snaps-mid-air-with-people-on-board-terrifying-video-2764289-2025-07-31

Social media has long been a search engine for thrill seekers planning out their next adventure off the beaten track.

But mountain rescue teams say some quests for picture perfect views are in fact putting lives at risk.

Call-outs for those under-25 have risen by 90% over the last five years, driven by TikTok and Instagram videos depicting “secret” beauty spots that are often remote and dangerous.

In one case, highlighted by BBC Wales’ SOS Extreme Rescues, a young couple used TikTok videos to research a trip to part of a north Wales world heritage site.

But it ended with Nathaniel and Charlie from Leeds “hanging on for dear life” – stranded high in a quarry on a crumbling cliff, with a storm blowing in.

“We use social media to see all these amazing places, and then we figure out how we are going to get to them,” said delivery driver Nathaniel, who met trainee nurse Charlie at the hospital where they both work.

“We wake up and say ‘Oh, we’re going here’. It’s just spontaneous all the time,” added Charlie.

They had headed out to Eryri National Park for a fresh adventure with two other friends, but Charlie was still unaware of the final destination.

“Nathaniel said they had something planned for us. They wouldn’t show us the TikTok, so it was a complete surprise,” said Charlie.

The surprise was hidden deep in the historic Dinorwig Quarry, in Gwynedd – which was the world’s second largest slate quarry when it was opened more than 200 years ago.

It is a maze of paths, tunnels and mines, all set on staggered gigantic terraces cut into the mountainside overlooking Llanberis on the edge of the national park.

It closed in 1969, and was named as part of a new Unesco World Heritage Site in 2021.

Most of the quarry is privately owned and officially off limits, with no public access.

It is dotted with warning signs, fences and locked gates.

But that has not stopped it becoming a magnet for adventurers, especially rock climbers.

Those well equipped and experienced sports enthusiasts have been generally tolerated in the quarry.

However, since the explosion in social media, the location has also been attracting thousands of less experienced visitors, often unaware of the dangers hiding in the old workings and mountains of slate debris.

Only recently, a massive rock slide in the quarry was captured on camera, as thousands of tonnes of slate rock peeled away from one of the faces on a terrace near to where Nathaniel and Charlie were headed.

“When we got there, there was like a lagoon, blue, crystal clear water. We saw loads of caves, and then we actually found the surprise, a hidden waterfall,” explained Charlie.

“It was so pretty.”

Nathaniel said they had climbed quite high into the quarry and were enjoying the day.

“Then, as we were getting down, that’s when everything went really bad,” he said.

“Everything that we were standing on was just crumbling away.

“I was like ‘Charlie, I can’t think of a way down, without one of us getting seriously injured’.”

While their two friends in the group did find a way out, Nathaniel and Charlie found themselves completely stranded.

They were left with only one option – to dial 999 and ask for help.

It led to the UK’s busiest mountain rescue team being called out to save them.

Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team tops the league for all call outs across Wales and England, with well over 300 rescue “shouts” in 2024.

“There was definitely the potential for them to injure themselves if they’d tried to move from where they were,” said team member Dave Murray.

Add to that a named storm was now making itself felt, the couple’s predicament was getting worse by the minute.

“We had 70mph winds. Bits of slate flicking up. We got little cuts on us from the wind blowing it at our faces,” said Nathaniel.

“We were in such an open area, it was freezing. Obviously scared – and we were holding on for dear life,” added Charlie.

But there was relief when the rescue team finally reached them, and used a series of rope relays to safely get them off the quarry cliff face.

“I’ve constantly got it on my head that I nearly killed my best friend,” said Nathaniel.

“I couldn’t find the words to apologise.”

According to Mountain Rescue England and Wales, the body overseeing rescue teams across the two nations, there has been an alarming leap in the number of call-outs for younger people.

In 2019, 166 calls involved those between the ages of 18 and 24.

Fast forward five years, and that figure stands at 314 – a 90% increase.

It has led mountain rescue teams to make repeated warnings about following social media posts, as they face the pressure to deal with mounting calls for help.

“I’ve seen videos of people who make it look easy. But somebody seeing that video – for them – it might be well beyond their limits,” said Llanberis Mountain Rescue’s Dave Murray, as in Nathaniel and Charlie’s case.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3jwzj2j74o

High-resolution imaging of tattoos found on a 2,500 year old Siberian “ice mummy” have revealed decorations that a modern tattooist would find challenging to produce, according to researchers.

The intricate tattoos of leopards, a stag, a rooster, and a mythical half-lion and half-eagle creature on the woman’s body shed light on an ancient warrior culture.

Archaeologists worked with a tattooist, who reproduces ancient skin decorations on his own body, to understand how exactly they were made.

The tattooed woman, aged about 50, was from the nomadic horse-riding Pazyryk people who lived on the vast steppe between China and Europe.

The scans revealed “intricate crisp and uniform” tattooing that could not be seen with the naked eye.

“The insights really drive home to me the point of how sophisticated these people were,” lead author Dr Gino Caspari from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology and the University of Bern, told BBC News.

It is difficult to uncover detailed information about ancient social and cultural practices because most evidence is destroyed over time. It is even harder to get up close to the details of one person’s life.

The Pazyryk “ice mummies” were found inside ice tombs in the Altai mountains in Siberia in the 19th century, but it has been difficult to see the tattoos.

Now using near-infrared digital photography in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia experts have created high resolution scans of the decorations for the first time.

“This made me feel like we were much closer to seeing the people behind the art, how they worked and learned. The images came alive,” Dr Caspari said.

On her right forearm, the Pazyryk woman had an image of leopards around the head of a deer.

On the left arm, the mythical griffin creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle appears to be fighting with a stag.

“Twisted hind bodies and really intense battle scenes of wild animals are typical of the culture,” Dr Caspari said.

But the woman also had a rooster on her thumb, showing “an intriguing style with a certain uniqueness,” says Dr Caspari.

The team worked with researcher Daniel Riday who reproduces ancient tattoo designs on his body using historical methods.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has announced the UK will recognise a Palestinian state in September unless Israel meets certain conditions, including agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza and reviving the prospect of a two-state solution.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted furiously to the announcement, saying the decision rewarded “Hamas’s monstrous terrorism”.

What would it mean if recognition does go ahead, and what difference would it make?

Chile’s central and southern coastlines are facing erosion that could cause at least 10 beaches to disappear within a decade, according to a team of scientists in the South American country, which stretches for several thousand km (miles) along the Pacific Ocean.
“It will be very difficult for these beaches to survive the next 10 years,” said Carolina Martinez, director of the Coastal Observatory at Universidad Catolica, in an interview this month on the Renaca beach near the popular coastal city of Vina del Mar.

Her team has tracked erosion on 67 beaches, finding that 86% are steadily shrinking — even during spring and summer, when they typically recover.
Ten in particular, which already had high erosion in 2023, have continued to rapidly lose ground, with rates now about twice as high.
The causes are both natural and human-made, Martinez said.
She pointed to intense and increasingly frequent swells driven by climate change, along with rising sea levels, sudden downpours, and heat waves, as key factors. Unchecked urbanization and the degradation of river basins that supply sand to the coast have also contributed.

In Puerto Saavedra, in the southern region of Araucania, storm surges have carved sinkholes into roads and cliffs, cutting off access to some communities. The saltwater is damaging forests, too.
“We’re seeing cliffs and sandy shores retreating rapidly,” Martínez said.
Some local businesses in popular tourist towns are already feeling the impact. “Last year was brutal … the beach disappeared,” said Maria Harris, who owns a beachfront restaurant in Valparaiso. “There was no space between us and the sea.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chiles-coastal-erosion-could-erase-10-beaches-within-decade-scientists-say-2025-07-30/

A very powerful magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Russia’s Far Eastern Kamchatka coast on Wednesday triggered tsunami warnings as far away as French Polynesia and Chile, and was followed by an eruption of the most active volcano on the peninsula.
The shallow quake damaged buildings and injured several people in the remote Russian region, while much of Japan’s eastern seaboard – devastated by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in 2011 – was ordered to evacuate, as were parts of Hawaii.

By the evening, Japan, Hawaii and Russia had downgraded most tsunami warnings. But authorities in French Polynesia warned residents of several of the remote Marquesas Islands to move to higher ground and expect waves as high as 2.5 metres (8 feet).
Tsunami waves began hitting the Marquesas on Wednesday but were forecast to be smaller than initially feared, local authorities said.
Some initial wave surges were reported on Nuku Hiva, the largest of the Marquesas, about 1,400 km northeast of Tahiti, and between five to 10 additional waves were expected in the coming hours, the high commission said.

Russian scientists said the quake in Kamchatka was the most powerful to hit the region since 1952. The U.S. Geological Survey said it was shallow, at a depth of 19.3 km (12 miles), and centred 119 km (74 miles) east-southeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a city of 165,000.
“It felt like the walls could collapse any moment. The shaking lasted continuously for at least three minutes,” said Yaroslav, 25, in the city.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there had been no casualties in Russia, crediting solid building construction and the smooth operation of alert systems.
In Severo-Kurilsk in the northern Kuril Islands, tsunami waves exceeded 3 metres, with the largest up to 5 metres, Russia’s RIA news agency reported. A quake of magnitude 6.07 later struck the Kuril Islands that lie between Kamchatka and northern Japan, the German Research Center for Geosciences said.

Tsunami waves partially flooded the port and a fish processing plant in the town, sweeping vessels from moorings, regional officials and Russia’s emergency ministry said. Verified drone footage showed the town’s entire shoreline submerged, with taller buildings and some storage facilities surrounded by water.
The Klyuchevskoy volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula began erupting later, a geological monitoring service said. Located around 450 km (280 miles) north of the regional capital, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Klyuchevskoy is one of the highest volcanoes in the world.
“A descent of burning hot lava is observed on the western slope. Powerful glow above the volcano, explosions,” the Russian Academy of Sciences’ United Geophysical Service said on Telegram.

WAVES IN HAWAII, JAPAN

Hawaii recorded waves of up to 1.7 metres while in Japan the largest recorded came to 1.3 metres, officials said.

Flights out of Honolulu airport resumed in the evening, the transportation department said.
Waves of nearly half a metre were observed as far away as California, with smaller ones reaching Canada’s province of British Columbia. But a tsunami advisory was cancelled for coastal British Columbia as well as coastal areas of south Alaska.
In French Polynesia, waves hit some islands in the early morning hours. In other parts, wave heights were expected to remain below 30 cm, not requiring evacuation or sheltering.
While the Marquesas are high-rising volcanic islands, much of French Polynesia consists of low-lying atolls.

WARNINGS ACROSS THE PACIFIC

Authorities in Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, some 970 km (600 miles) off South America’s western coast, ordered precautionary evacuations to safe zones.
Tsunami alarms sounded in coastal towns across Japan’s Pacific coast and evacuation orders were issued for tens of thousands of people.
Workers evacuated the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, where a meltdown following the 2011 tsunami caused a radioactive disaster, operator TEPCO said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said no injuries or damage had been reported, and there were no irregularities at any nuclear plants.

‘RING OF FIRE’

Kamchatka and Russia’s Far East sit on the Pacific Ring of Fire, a geologically active region that is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The quake occurred on what is known as a “megathrust fault” where the denser Pacific Plate is sliding underneath the lighter North American Plate, according to scientists.
The Pacific Plate has been on the move, making the Kamchatka Peninsula off Russia’s Far East coast especially vulnerable, and bigger aftershocks could not be ruled out, they said.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/huge-quake-russia-triggers-tsunami-warnings-around-pacific-2025-07-30/

More details have surfaced about Katy Perry and former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s surprising dinner date.

The unlikely couple has reportedly been in contact for weeks after meeting at an event and bonding over their shared interests about making the world a better place, a source told the US Sun.

“Justin always enjoys nice company, and Katy is the kind of woman that really caught his attention,” an insider, who worked with Trudeau while he was in office, told the outlet.

“Justin has been single for a while and has enjoyed getting to know her,” the source added, referring to the politician separating from his wife, Sophie Trudeau, in 2023.

“He likes her personality, and they are two people who really enjoy chatting about different topics, and they click very well so far, as they are going to see each other again very soon.”

Perry, 40, and Justin, 53, reportedly have plans to meet up in the United States.

“Whatever happens, happens. He is a single man, so [he] is on the market and ready to start something new with a woman after a few rough moments after splitting from his wife,” the source continued.

“He is feeling that talking to her and getting to know her is very refreshing, like a breath of fresh air in his life. He was happy to connect with her so well, and that she appreciates him being a normal, respectful person who was very understanding of her recent separation from Orlando Bloom.

“He isn’t the kind of guy that would rush things, and she seems to enjoy that a lot. It’s a gentlemanly way to behave.”

A second source, who also worked closely with Justin, claimed the pair had been waiting to meet up “for a while” and that Perry agreed “very quickly.”

“Justin isn’t shy about his romantic life, and he took her on a date, and he was very, very excited to do so and kept talking about it in the last few days,” the insider said.

“He feels like a young adult again, he is very excited about the process so far, and he really enjoys [getting] to know her and to talk about many, many topics with her. Justin isn’t a guy who is easy to ‘catch’ and he has been having a lot of women trying to date him since he separated from his wife.”

Page Six has reached out to reps for both Perry and Justin for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Although Trudeau had hoped their date would be “quiet” and “private,” he and Perry were spotted dining together at Le Violon in Montreal, Canada, according to photos first obtained by TMZ.

An eyewitness told the outlet that the pair enjoyed cocktails and shared several dishes, including one with lobster, and even met with the chef and the kitchen staff.

Perry and the politician were also seen enjoying a romantic stroll in Montreal with the musician’s dog, Nugget.

According to TMZ, the two walked around together for about an hour. However, they did not show any signs of PDA.

Earlier this month, the “Hot N Cold” songstress and her then-fiancé, Orlando Bloom, confirmed their split in a joint statement after 10 years together.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/07/30/celebrity-news/inside-katy-perry-and-former-canadian-prime-minister-justin-trudeaus-surprising-dinner-date/

Belly’s simple and chić wedding dress from Season 3 of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” was approved by Kim Kardashian, who once wore a version of it at Paris Fashion Week.

On July 30, fans watched as the college student, played by Lola Tung, picked out the silk gown on the sale rack of a prom dress store.

While the dress was labeled as “not fancy enough” and “plain” in the series, the Victoria Beckham-designed Floor-Length Cami Dress costs more than $1,000.

The dress was inspired by slip dresses from the 1990s, “one of Victoria’s favourite decades,” according to her website.

The Spice Girls singer, 51, designed the dress with acrepe back satin and a showstopping deep V in the back to provide a “light feeling.”

“In classic ivory, it’s an effortless piece for any occasion,” the description reads.

Beckham took to Facebook in 2023 to share a video of herself donning a pink version of the dress in her massive closet.

“I created this dress exclusively for Kim Kardashian to wear at my VB SS24 show in Paris,” she captioned the video.

“I immediately wanted it! The shape is simple, flattering and comes in a beautiful baby pink colour!! Kisses xx.”

Karashian, 44, arrived fashionably late to Beckham’s show at Paris Fashion Week in October 2023.

She turned heads as she walked into the venue in the pink slinky gown before sitting in the front row alongside Anna Wintour, Victoria’s husband David Beckham and their children, Harper, Cruz, and Brooklyn.

The Skims founder made a statement entrance in the dress, accessorizing with a diamond choker necklace and a cross on a longer chain.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/07/30/style/bellys-wedding-dress-from-the-summer-i-turned-pretty-is-kim-kardashian-approved/

Not everything in Hailey Bieber’s beauty regimen is Rhode.

In her new Vogue “Beauty Secrets” video, the star spilled her “very, very simple makeup routine,” which includes viral finds like Make Beauty Skin Mimetic Concealer.

“I’m not somebody who likes to use makeup a lot in the daytime” Bieber said, adding that she opts for the lightweight concealer instead of full-coverage foundation.

While she used the Beauty Pie Pro Angled Concealer Brush to blend out the formula “in just a couple areas for brightening,” she noted she typically applies it with her fingers for a “more effortless look.”

The beauty mogul’s not the only star saving time with the skin-mimicking makeup, as Courteney Cox used it in her own “efficient” makeup routine video earlier this summer.

“This one thing is my base and concealer,” she raved of the “one-stop-shop” product, designed to provide a smooth, your-skin-but-better finish.

You needn’t be famous to reap the beauty buy’s benefits, however; Page Six’s social media team is collectively obsessed.

“This is seriously the best concealer I’ve ever used,” says Social Media Manager Brooke Matalon. “It’s so skin-like and dewy, and the glow actually lasts all day without looking greasy or oily. I honestly don’t know how I did my makeup before this.”

@pagesix
Never have I ever tried a Hailey-approved product I didn’t like

♬ Flashed Junk Mind – 2025 – Milky Chance & ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra

Meanwhile, Senior Commerce Social Media Manager Michelle Moezam says her makeup routine is “forever changed” since testing it out.

“When I join Zoom calls, I get compliments about the beat — and in person, people will say my skin looks so smooth,” she adds. “The lightweight feeling is the best part.”

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/07/30/style/hailey-bieber-and-courteney-cox-love-make-beauty-skin-mimetic-concealer-and-so-do-our-editors/

Andy Cohen is giving Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson’s budding romance his stamp of approval.

The Bravo executive, notably, was “dear friend[s]” with the actor’s late wife, Natasha Richardson — and thinks Anderson is “just like” her.

While attending the “Naked Gun” premiere party Monday, Cohen told Neeson, “She is an independent woman just like Tash was. She loves to cook. She has her own thing going on. She has two boys.”

The “Radio Andy” host, 57, insisted to listeners Wednesday that Anderson, 58, and Neeson, 73, “just work.”

He explained, “She is a formidable human being, Pamela Anderson. She really is. What she’s been through and how she kind of reclaimed herself and redefined herself [is impressive].”

Co-host John Hill agreed that the duo are a “good match.”

Cohen added, “I and all of the friends in this circle are very much stanning whatever this is. Shipping.”

The “Watch What Happens Live” co-host noted that, “sweetie, it’s been 16 years” since Richardson died at age 45 in a tragic skiing accident.

The Broadway star and Neeson were married for more than a decade before Richardson’s March 2009 passing.

During their time together, the former couple welcomed sons Micheál, 30, and Daniel, 28.

Anderson, for her part, is the mother of sons Brandon, 29, and Dylan, 27, with her ex-husband Tommy Lee.

The “Baywatch” alum and Neeson both brought their boys to the New York City premiere of their cop comedy on Monday.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/07/30/celebrity-news/pamela-anderson-is-just-like-liam-neesons-late-wife-natasha-richardson-andy-cohen/

THE mysterious “missing minute” from the Jeffrey Epstein jail tape has been found after conspiracy theorists raged over how the vile billionaire died.

The FBI has a version of the surveillance footage filmed near the convicted paedo’s prison block on the night of his death – and it isn’t missing any seconds.

Around 11 hours of “full raw” CCTV footage released by the Department of Justice (DoJ) revealed Epstein’s final moments inside the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in New York City on August 9 and 10 in 2019.

It intended to show the vile billionaire had died by suicide as conspiracy theories raged over his death.

But forensic analysis showed the video was edited numerous times over several hours – with a minute missing.

The time code on the screen had jumped forward just before it struck midnight.

When attorney General Pam Bondi was questioned about the video a few weeks ago, she claimed the Bureau of Prisons told her it was an antiquated process that occurred every night when the recordings automatically reset.

Now government sources say the FBI, Bureau of Prisons, and DoJ inspector general all have a copy of a video that contains the bombshell “missing minute,” CBS News reports.

It currently remains unclear what the minute shows or why it was missing from the video released by the DoJ, the broadcaster added.

The FBI and the DoJ declined to comment – meanwhile the Bureau of Prisons said it “had no additional information to provide”.

The missing minute sent conspiracy theorists into a spiral as they believe Epstein was murdered to protect his powerful elite clients and pals.

He was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges when he died.

CCTV released a few weeks ago from inside the prison showed a grey-haired Epstein handcuffed in an orange jump suit being led to his cell by a guard at about 7.49pm.

The pair moved down a small flight of stairs on the left of the frame and walk to the right across the common area as they head to the cell.

Footage didn’t show Epstein’s cell door but it would capture anyone walking to it, the DoJ said.

Other than the guard leaving, no one walked across the common area towards Epstein’s cell or away from it.

At approximately 10.39pm, a guard appeared to walk in the direction of Epstein’s cell and then reappeared within view of the camera at 10.41pm.

This is believed to be the last time anyone entered the area of Epstein’s cell before the next morning.

Guards could then be seen walking around the common area at around 6.30am on the 10th as they deliver breakfast.

At approximately 6.33am, more guards enter the common area and walk towards the area of Epstein’s cell – presumably after he was found dead in his cell.

The disgraced financier was found hanged in jail on the 10th, but speculation has been rife that others were involved.

FBI deputy director Dan Bongino pledged to release the footage after it had been a Donald Trump campaign promise.

Bongino wants to end all debate by releasing proof that no one entered or left the cell before the suicide.

The FBI has now concluded Epstein died by suicide and that he had no “client list” used to blackmail powerful figures, Axios reports.

Investigators found “no credible evidence … that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals” and no “evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties”.

The video also supports a medical examiner’s findings that Epstein died by suicide.

Esptein pal Ghislaine Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking and related offences.

She’ll now be the only Epstein associate to face prison as the FBI said no more people would be charged.

Prince Andrew, 64, paid millions to Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre in an out-of-court settlement three years ago, while denying sexual assault accusations.

He stayed at Epstein’s New York home, and was accused of taking part in an “underage orgy” on Epstein’s Caribbean island.

In 2020, the FBI asked the Home Office for help to quiz Andrew but that investigation was paused last year.

Attorney general Pam Bondi released hundreds of pages of information connected to Epstein in March, promising it would disclose “a lot of names” and flight logs that would “make you sick”.

But the much-awaited release of flight logs and more was overhyped by Bondi and fell flat.

Elon Musk has also accused Trump of being in the files after the pair’s relationship broke apart.

Musk provided no evidence and later deleted the post saying he went “too far”.

Depraved Epstein was found unresponsive by guards in his cell who quickly performed CPR before he was taken to hospital.

He was pronounced dead shortly after with it ruled as suicide by hanging – which was later challenged by his own lawyers.

The jail had been told Epstein should have a cellmate, and that a guard must check on him every 30 minutes.

But on the night he died, his cellmate was transferred and not replaced and he was not checked on as often as required.

Two guards fell asleep at their desks – and later falsified their records.

Meanwhile, two cameras in front of Epstein’s cell malfunctioned that night – while another’s footage was “unusable”.

Protocol was also broken by removing Epstein’s body from his cell and failing to photograph it as it was found.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14861585/epstein-jail-tape-missing-minute-found/

DEVASTATING details have come to light about the midair collision between a Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines flight that killed 67 people in January.

New evidence from the National Transportation Safety Board’s six-month probe into the deadly crash included surveillance footage that left audience members in tears at a hearing on Wednesday.

This week, NTSB began three days of hearings to help determine what caused the collision near Washington’s Reagan National Airport on January 29.

The agency released thousands of pages of documents about the incidents suggesting the Army helicopter pilots never heard an air traffic controller’s command to pass behind the plane, the NTSB said.

NTSB also said there were major “discrepancies” in the altitude readouts on the Black Hawk helicopter, leading the crew to think they were flying lower than they actually were over the Potomac River.

At the beginning of the 10-hour hearing, officials showed an 11-minute animation showing the minutes leading up to the crash.

They also displayed new video from the end of the runway showing the crash, pausing to allow family members at the hearing the option to leave the room or look away from the haunting clip.

Families of the crash victims sitting in the audience broke down sobbing as officials played the newly released footage.

Some of the family members in attendance wore pictures of their loved ones on buttons or in lanyards around their necks.

The crash killed 60 passengers and four crew members on the American Airlines plane and three soldiers on the helicopter.

Transcripts of audio from the cockpit and air traffic control tower revealed what was said inside the aircraft before the crash.

About 15 seconds before the collision, the air traffic controller asked the Black Hawk if it could see the passenger plane.

Three seconds later, the controller told the helicopter to pass behind the passenger plane.

However, the Black Hawk crew pressed its microphone at the same time as the controller’s instruction and they didn’t hear the message, according to the transcript.

In the helicopter, the instructor told the pilot to change course, but it was too late.

Less than a second later, sounds of the crash were captured in the recordings as the plane fell into the icy river.

The crew members in the Black Hawk had problems understanding air traffic control transmissions, according to cockpit recordings.

Investigators also said the crew pointed out the bright lights of the Washington DC area during their flight.

The hearing also revealed more information about Captain Rebecca Lobach, one of the Black Hawk pilots.

Investigators said in 2022, Lobach failed a night vision goggle exam.

However, she passed other night vision goggle examinations since failing once.

During the three days of hearings, the NTSB will likely question the Army, PSA Airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration and more.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14870544/washington-dc-crash-american-airlines-black-hawk-video/

One of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck Russia’s Far East early Wednesday, sending tsunami waves into Japan and Hawaii and across the Pacific. No substantial damage has been reported so far, but authorities warned people away from shorelines and said the risk could last more than a day.

Ports on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia near the 8.8 magnitude quake’s epicenter flooded as residents fled inland, and frothy, white waves washed up to the shore in northern Japan. Cars jammed streets and highways in Hawaii’s capital, with standstill traffic even in areas away from the shoreline.

People went to evacuation centers in affected areas of Japan, with memories fresh of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused reactor meltdowns at a nuclear power plant. No abnormalities in operations at Japan’s nuclear plants were reported Wednesday.

Russian authorities said several people were injured, without giving a figure. In Japan, at least one person was injured.

A tsunami height of 3-4 meters (10 to 13 feet) was recorded in Kamchatka, 60 centimeters (2 feet) on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, and up to 1.4 feet (under 30 centimeters) above tide levels were observed in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.

Hawaii and Oregon warn residents of potential damage

The impact of the tsunami could last for hours or perhaps more than a day, said Dave Snider, tsunami warning coordinator with the National Tsunami Warning Center in Alaska

“A tsunami is not just one wave,” he said. “It’s a series of powerful waves over a long period of time. Tsunamis cross the ocean at hundreds of miles an hour — as fast as a jet airplane — in deep water. But when they get close to the shore, they slow down and start to pile up. And that’s where that inundation problem becomes a little bit more possible there.”

“In this case, because of the Earth basically sending out these huge ripples of water across the ocean, they’re going to be moving back and forth for quite a while,” which is why some communities may feel effects longer, he said.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said data from Midway Atoll, which is between Japan and Hawaii, measured waves from peak to trough of 6 feet (1.8 meters). He said waves hitting Hawaii could be bigger or smaller and it was too early to tell how large they would be. A tsunami of that size would be akin to a 3-foot (90-centimeter) wave riding on top of surf, he said.

“This is a longitudinal wave with great force driving through the shoreline and into land,” he said at a news conference.

Green said Black Hawk helicopters have been activated and high-water vehicles were ready to go in case authorities need to rescue people. “But please do not put yourself in harm’s way,” he said.

The Oregon Department of Emergency Management said on Facebook that small tsunami waves were expected along the coast starting around 11:40 p.m. local time, with wave heights between 1 to 2 feet (30 to 60 centimeters). It urged people to stay away from beaches, harbors and marinas and to remain in a safe location away from the coast until the advisory is lifted.

“This is not a major tsunami, but dangerous currents and strong waves may pose a risk to those near the water,” the department said.

Much of the West Coast, spanning California, Washington state, and the Canadian province of British Columbia, was also under a tsunami advisory.

A tsunami of less than 30 centimeters (under 1 foot) was forecast to hit parts of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The province’s emergency preparedness agency said waves were expected to reach remote Langara Island around 10:05 p.m. Tuesday and Tofino around 11:30 p.m. The agency said “multiple waves over time” were expected.

Russian regions report limited damage

The quake at 8:25 a.m. Japan time had a preliminary magnitude of 8.0, Japanese and U.S. seismologists said. The U.S. Geological Survey later updated its strength to 8.8 magnitude and a depth of 20.7 kilometers (13 miles).

The quake was centered about 119 kilometers (74 miles) east-southeast from the Russian city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which has a population of 180,000, on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Multiple aftershocks as strong as 6.9 magnitude followed.

Severokurilsk Mayor Alexander Ovsyannikov said the port in the city was flooded by tsunami waves, washing fishing boats into the sea. He said that no major damage was recorded.

Power supplies have been shut and the authorities were checking the power network after the flooding.

Among the world’s strongest recorded quakes

The earthquake appeared to be the strongest anywhere in the world since the 9.0 magnitude earthquake off northeastern Japan in March 2011 that caused a massive tsunami that set off meltdowns at a nuclear power plant. Only a few stronger earthquakes have ever been measured around the world.

The tsunami alert disrupted transportation in Japan, with ferries, trains and airports in the affected area suspending or delaying some operations.

A tsunami of 60 centimeters (2 feet) was recorded at Hamanaka town in Hokkaido and Kuji port in Iwate, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. Several areas reported smaller waves including 20 centimeters (8 inches) in Tokyo Bay five hours after the quake.

In Japan’s northern coastal town of Matsushima, dozens of residents took refuge at an evacuation center, where water bottles were distributed and an air conditioner was running. One person told NHK she came to the facility without hesitation based on the lesson from the 2011 tsunami.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi warned evacuees that they may not be able to return home by the end of the day, as the tsunami waves could remain high.

Japanese nuclear power plants reported no abnormalities. The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant damaged by the 2011 tsunami said about 4,000 workers are taking shelter on higher ground at the plant complex while monitoring remotely to ensure safety.

Philippine authorities advised people to stay away from the beach and coastal areas. “It may not be the largest of waves, but these can continue for hours and expose people swimming in the waters to danger,” Teresito Bacolcol of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology told The Associated Press.

Mexico’s navy warned that tsunami waves will start reaching the northern coast in Ensenada, near California, at around 02:22 a.m. Wednesday local time, and waves could progress along the Pacific coast to Chiapas state, around 07:15 a.m. local time.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/japan-russia-kamchatka-earthquake-tsunami-warning-a88cbe8a1e985cff54dc0ad849ea5ddb

 

First granddaughter and golf sensation Kai Trump teased her grandfather over his preferred caffeinated beverage in a video promoting her NIL deal with Accelerator Active Energy.

In the ad, the 18-year-old rising high school senior and University of Miami golf commit slaps a wicked drive off a tee and then makes her way to the cart where a crispy looking can of Diet Coke — President Trump’s go-to drink — and a can of the energy drink sit.

“Sorry grandpa,” Kai Trump said while choosing to sip from the Accelerator Active Energy drink.

Kai Trump announced her NIL deal with Accelerator earlier this month.

The energy drink brand also has sponsorship deals with college gymnast and social media influencer Livvy Dune and Taylor Swift’s boyfriend and Superbowl winning Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.

“It’s pretty cool, especially being partners with such great athletes and being up there with them,” Kai Trump told Fox Business about the deal.

The daughter of first son Donald Trump Jr. became a breakout star of the Republican National Convention last summer where she delivered a well-prepared speech to throngs of adoring GOPers.

Commenting on his daughter’s popularity after the speech, Donald Trump Jr. said to Fox News last year, “Get away, you little b-stards, and stay away.”

Earlier this year, the teen opened up about life with a Secret Service detail.

“It’s tough because you’re in high school and you want to have your privacy,” the golf phenom said in a video posted to her YouTube page.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/07/29/sports/kai-trump-teases-the-president-in-video-promoting-accelerator-energy-drink/

England’s triumphant squad had misgivings about how popular their Euro 2025 parade would be, but they need not have worried as 65,000 fans joined their celebrations in London – as well as members of the Royal Family.

The Lionesses held an open-top bus parade along The Mall after becoming back-to-back European champions with a dramatic win over Spain on Sunday.

Fans lined the route before gathering around a stage in front of the Queen Victoria Memorial outside Buckingham Palace, where some of the players were interviewed by former Lioness Alex Scott.

“I’ve been crying all the way down The Mall,” said captain Leah Williamson.

“This is unbelievable, probably one of the best things we’ve been a part of.”

The 28-year-old Arsenal defender added: “We’re making history every single step. Stay with us, this story is not done yet.”

Chloe Kelly, who scored England’s winning goal at 2022 and the decisive penalty in Sunday’s shootout, said: “Pressure, what pressure?”

The 27-year-old Arsenal forward described how special the team’s support has been at home and at the Euros in Switzerland.

She added: “[It is] so good to stand side by side with every single one of these girls throughout the whole tournament, and the staff that you don’t see behind the scenes. It’s incredible.”

Princess Beatrice of York attended the parade and there was a surprise for England coach Sarina Wiegman as her favourite singer Burna Boy joined the squad on stage.

The Dutchwoman then sang and danced along as the Nigerian sang his hit For My Hand.

“Yeah, Sarina’s got rhythm,” Washington Spirit defender Esme Morgan told BBC Radio 5 Live.

“She absolutely loves Burna Boy. I can’t believe it. Her face when they brought Burna Boy out was a picture. None of us could believe it to be honest and, yeah, she was busting out some moves and singing away, so that was a special moment.”

Starbucks says it will phase out its mobile order and pickup-only outlets because they “lack warmth”, as the world’s biggest coffee chain continues to shake-up its operations.

The company has around 90 shops in the US that have no seating for customers – an approach popular with some of its rivals.

The move will not affect the firm’s mobile ordering service, which accounts for almost a third of transactions, the BBC understands.

Starbucks boss Brian Niccol made the comments after the company’s earnings for the three months to the end of June showed that US same-store sales had fallen by 2% – the sixth quarterly decline in a row.

For the same period the company also reported that net income dropped by 47% to $558m (£418m) – worse than Wall Street expectations.

“We found this format to be overly transactional and lacking the warmth and human connection that defines our brand,” Mr Niccol told investors on Tuesday.

The same level of convenience can be provided by its traditional cafes through mobile ordering, added Mr Niccol, who was appointed the firm’s chief executive officer last year.

Instead, the company will prioritise “welcoming coffeehouses with great seats” and focus on delivering drinks in four minutes or less in its cafes and drive-throughs.

The BBC understands that some of the current pickup-only outlets will be converted to include seating.

Starbucks opened its first pickup-only outlet, which was designed to make collecting orders and delivery easier, in New York in 2019.

Mr Niccol is leading a “Back to Starbucks” initiative, which aims to provide better experiences for customers and boost the company’s financial performance.

At least 1,000 of its cafes in the US will be revamped by the end of next year, with a new look and plans to replace thousands of seats that were removed, said Mr Niccol.

In April, Mr Niccol said the firm will hire more baristas and scale back plans to roll out automation.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8jnj7ewgqo 

Britain said on Tuesday it would recognise a Palestinian state in September unless Israel takes steps to relieve suffering in Gaza, where starvation is spreading, and reaches a ceasefire in the nearly two-year war with Hamas.
The warning, which drew a harsh Israeli rebuke, came after a hunger monitor said a worst-case scenario of famine is unfolding and immediate action is needed to avoid widespread death. Palestinian authorities said more than 60,000 Palestinians were now confirmed killed by Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip.

The hunger alert and the new death toll are grim milestones in the current conflict that began in October 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel, sparking an offensive that has flattened much of the enclave and ignited hostilities across the Middle East.
The alert by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) raised the prospect that the starvation crisis in Gaza could be formally classified as a famine, in the hope that this might raise the pressure on Israel to let in far more food.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s warning heightens pressure on Israel amid an international outcry over its conduct of the war. France announced last week it would recognise Palestinian statehood in September, a move that enraged the Israeli government.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a post on X that Starmer’s decision “rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism & punishes its victims,” adding that “A jihadist state on Israel’s border TODAY will threaten Britain TOMORROW.”
U.S. President Donald Trump said he did not discuss Britain’s plans on Palestinian statehood during talks with Starmer in Scotland on Monday, when he told reporters he did “not mind” if Britain made such a move.
But on Tuesday he said aboard Air Force One that he did not think Hamas “should be rewarded” with recognition of Palestinian independence.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas described Starmer’s decision as “bold,” according to Palestinian state news agency WAFA.
Starmer told his cabinet that Britain would recognize Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly in September “unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, reaches a ceasefire, makes clear there will be no annexation in the West Bank, and commits to a long-term peace process that delivers a two-state solution,” his government said.

The move, if carried through, would be mostly symbolic, with Israel occupying the territories where the Palestinians have long aimed to establish that state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital.
It makes Israel more isolated on the international stage as a growing number of countries call for it to allow unfettered aid into Gaza, where it controls all entry and exit points to the besieged coastal territory.
However, Trump’s administration – Israel’s closest and most influential ally – has made clear it has no intention of joining others in recognising Palestinian statehood anytime soon. Since returning to office in January, Trump has been vague about whether or not he would support an eventual Palestinian state.
Starmer held separate phone calls with Netanyahu and Abbas on Tuesday before making his announcement.

EVIDENCE OF STARVATION, MALNUTRITION, DISEASE

With the international furore over Gaza’s ordeal growing, Israel announced steps over the weekend to ease aid access. But the U.N. World Food Programme said on Tuesday it was not getting the permissions it needed to deliver enough aid since Israel began humanitarian pauses in warfare on Sunday.
“Mounting evidence shows that widespread starvation, malnutrition and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths,” the IPC said, adding that “famine thresholds” have been reached for food consumption in most of Gaza.
It said it would quickly carry out the formal analysis that could allow it to classify Gaza as “in famine”.
Gaza health authorities have been reporting more and more people dying from hunger-related causes. The total stands at 147, among them 88 children, most of whom died in the last few weeks.
Images of emaciated Palestinian children have shocked the world, with Israel’s strongest ally Trump declaring that many people were starving. He promised to set up new “food centres”.
Israel has denied pursuing a policy of starvation. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Tuesday that the situation in Gaza was “tough” but there were lies about starvation there.

DEADLIEST CONFLICT

The Gazan casualty figures, which are often cited by the U.N. and have previously been described as reliable by the World Health Organisation, underline the war as the deadliest involving Israel since its establishment in 1948.
Israel launched its offensive in response to Hamas’ cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, when militants killed some 1,200 people and took another 251 hostage – Israel’s deadliest ever day. Since Israel launched ground operations in Gaza in October 2023, 454 soldiers have been killed.
The new Palestinian toll does not distinguish between fighters and civilians. Thousands more bodies are believed to be buried under rubble, meaning the true toll is likely to be significantly higher, Palestinian officials and rescue workers say.
Israeli airstrikes overnight killed at least 30 Palestinians in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, Gaza health authorities said. Doctors at Al-Awda Hospital said at least 14 women and 12 children were among the dead.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/britain-warns-israel-it-could-recognise-palestinian-state-gaza-starvation-2025-07-29/

Growers and researchers in the driest inhabited continent have dramatically increased crop yields through new agricultural techniques, despite intensifying environmental challenges. Innovations in water-use efficiency, soil re-engineering and seed technology have helped feed a rising global population.

In a newly sown wheat field, Curtis Liebeck scoops up a fistful of sandy soil and lets it pour through his fingers. The light-brown dirt bears little resemblance to the dark, clumpy earth of rainier nations.
The Liebeck farm, 300 kilometers (186 miles) from Perth in Western Australia, gets half the rain of the wheatbelts of central Kansas or northern France. Growing-season rainfall across the state’s crop lands has declined by about one-fifth over three decades.
That should make farming harder. But Liebeck’s wheat yield has doubled since 2015.
Liebeck, 32, is part of a revolution in farm management that has enabled Australia to produce around 15 million metric tons more wheat annually than in the 1980s, despite hotter, drier conditions. The increase is equivalent to around 7% of all wheat shipped around the planet each year and more than the annual harvest of Britain.

Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity have exceeded those in the United States, Canada and Europe, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, and continue to rise while those of other developed markets slow or reverse.
The ability of Australia’s farmers to produce more wheat for a growing global population owes largely to a cluster of innovations since the 1980s that changed the seeds farmers plant, how they plant them, and how they cultivate the soil, many growers and researchers say. These advances have been turbocharged by Australia’s system of applied research, and by a relentless quest for efficiency among farmers who receive minimal subsidies.

This account of how Australia’s wheat growers defied the climate odds is based on interviews with more than 20 farmers and researchers, a review of more than a dozen academic papers and an examination of decades of farm and weather data. Reuters visited four farms, a seed-breeding company and two government research facilities.
Australia isn’t the biggest wheat producer, and its fields aren’t the most fruitful. But it is important for two reasons. Its modest population means its additional production feeds other countries. And it is the driest inhabited continent, where increasing climate volatility might have rendered some agriculture unviable. Yet it is among the world’s top wheat exporters.

Australia’s success has influenced research in other nations that have dry crop lands, including the U.S. and Canada, five scientists told Reuters. Some Australian practices, to be sure, such as soil re-engineering, haven’t been replicated as widely, sometimes because ground conditions are less suitable. But the country’s focus on closing the gap between theoretical maximum crop yields and real-world outcomes has spurred global efforts to improve productivity over the past 15 years, coinciding with intensifying climate change.

Liebeck’s farm in 2023 received its lowest rainfall in half a century, yet it produced 1 ton of wheat per hectare — to the amazement of his 66-year-old father, Ken.
“I asked dad what it would have been like in his day and he said, ‘Absolute disaster,’” Liebeck said.
The elder Liebeck told Reuters he would have produced just 400 kg a hectare in such conditions around the turn of the millennium.

BEACH SAND

Farming in Australia has always been precarious. The weather swings between drought, heat, fire and flood. The soil is short of nutrients.
Western Australia, the top wheat-exporting region, has seen the biggest decline in average rainfall of Australia’s cropping areas over the past three decades, official weather data show. Rainfall patterns have shifted, with more falling in summer, when fields are fallow, and less in winter, when crops are growing.

The state also has some of the poorest soils.
“Imagine beach sand,” said Tress Walmsley, CEO of Perth-based seed-breeding company InterGrain, which develops wheat varieties that can better cope with Australian conditions. “These soils are nutrient-depleted, often toxic and water-repellent. And at the end of each season, the crop runs out of water.”
Thirst for water provided the spark for many of the changes in Australian agriculture. In 1984, scientists Reg French and Jeff Schultz calculated that in optimum conditions, after evaporation, Australia’s farmers should be able to produce 20 kilograms of wheat per hectare for every millimeter of rain during the April-to-October growing season — about four times what they were achieving.

The discovery allowed producers to plot on a graph what they had grown and what they might have grown, said John Kirkegaard, a plant scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the Australian government’s national science agency. This turned the focus of growers and researchers to closing the yield gap, and they began benchmarking water-use efficiency to extract more crop per drop.
A key step was switching to no-till agriculture. Constant plowing to control weeds damaged soil and exposed it to evaporation, reducing the amount of water stored for crops.

No-till methods, using herbicides instead of plowing, grew out of 1930s dust-bowl America. Australian adoption jumped from roughly 5% in the early 1980s to about 80%, according to the Grains Research and Development Corp. In Western Australia, it’s more than 90%.
One drawback was that over time, farm equipment driven over untilled fields compacted the deeper levels of the soil, hindering water infiltration and root growth. To address that, farmers began to restructure soils, spreading lime to reduce acidity, then employing other kinds of heavy machinery.
Liebeck points to his deep ripper, a massive, bright-orange steel frame with 10 metal claws that tear through the soil at up to 84 centimeters deep. It generates such resistance that his 540-horsepower tractor can haul it only at walking pace.
The ripper, and another device called a spader, a rotating cylinder with protruding shovel heads, break up compacted layers of earth. While plowing, ripping and spading are all tillage methods, no-till farming refers to eschewing the traditional practice of plowing to kill weeds and prepare fields for planting each year. Ripping and spading are less-frequent but bolder interventions, often performed at much greater depths. They change the structure and constituents of the soil, churning unproductive layers into a more-absorbent mix that better holds water and nutrients.

Hauling the ripper through a field can improve his wheat yield by between 36% and 50%, Liebeck said. The machine cost A$220,000 (US$143,396). “A bit dear for a glorified shovel,” he said, but it “digs up profit.”
Rippers and spaders are used elsewhere, but rarely as intensively as in Australia, according to farmers and researchers. In wetter areas such as Europe, rippers are harder to pull through heavy soil that is typically plowed.
Two-thirds of Western Australia’s roughly 4,000 growers had deep-ripped, spaded or inverted their soil by 2023, state government-commissioned research found, up from 52% in 2019.
Efforts to improve Australian soil echo practices in Europe and North America to drain land and reclaim it from the sea, said Kirkegaard. “But the sorts of strategies in Australia that are now making previously poor farming land into good farming land are probably unique,” he said.

Other innovations helped growers curb disease. They introduced new crop rotations, including canola, an oil seed also known as rapeseed, and lupins, a legume used for animal feed. Canola area shot from 50,000 hectares in Australia in 1989 to around 3.5 million hectares today, agriculture ministry data show.
Farmers began sowing two to four weeks earlier, sometimes in dry ground, so plants would flower at optimal times, Kirkegaard said. Sowing now starts around mid-April, giving wheat several months to grow during the southern winter and spring, when water remains available, so that it can mature before the summer heat arrives toward the end of the year.

TAKE-OFF

Productivity took off. Western Australian farmers in the early 1980s grew 3.3 kg of wheat per hectare for every millimeter of growing-season rain, a third below the national average, government data show. In 2024, they achieved 9.3 kg per millimeter, just one-fifth shy of the 11.5 kg nationally.
Those improvements helped Australia double its wheat exports in the last four decades to well over 20 million tons a year. Most goes to Southeast Asia and the Middle East, where populations have grown rapidly.
Rising production has kept a lid on prices. A bushel of wheat on the Chicago Board of Trade, the global benchmark, averaged about $3.50 during the 1980s. The world population has soared by 3.5 billion people since then but a Chicago bushel costs around $5.50, an increase far below the rate of inflation.

A serious threat to Australian wheat supply would cause prices to rise considerably, said Dennis Voznesenski, an agricultural analyst at Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The country accounts for a similar proportion of global exports as Ukraine did before Russia’s invasion, he noted. Wheat prices rose by about 60% when the war disrupted production and exports.
There is room for further productivity gains, farmers and researchers say.

Advances in seed breeding and farm management have lifted maximum theoretical yields to around 25 kg per millimeter, which should rise to 30 kg and perhaps beyond, said Kirkegaard.
Researchers and breeders are testing wheat varieties whose coleoptiles – the protective sheath that surrounds the shoot – can push up from a soil depth of 10 to 12 centimeters rather than the usual 2 to 4 cm, allowing seeds to be planted into subsoil moisture, according to Greg Rebetzke, a CSIRO scientist. Field trials show long coleoptiles should increase yields by up to 20%, and several varieties should be available commercially in Australia within five years, he said.
“People are now looking at some of the drought technologies we’ve developed and asking if they’ll be useful in their countries,” Rebetzke said, identifying Canada, India, Bangladesh and sub-Saharan Africa as sources of interest. “The dry environment we have is very much the future of some countries that are wetter now.”
Government scientists in Western Australia are experimenting with further re-engineering of soil, adding ingredients such as clay, compost and gypsum to increase the earth’s capacity to hold water and produce wheat, said Gaus Azam, the researcher leading the project.
Ty Fulwood, a grower in Grass Valley, east of Perth, showed Reuters the upshot of those efforts. “They are literally trying to create the perfect soil in 10-centimeter-depth increments,” he said, standing in one of his fields surrounded by test strips of re-engineered earth, where varying amounts of clay had been added to the top half-meter of soil to identify the best growth-enhancing mix.
It’s expensive, Fulwood said, but if the promised doubling of yields is demonstrated, farmers and researchers will put money into it.

“We should always be cautious because we are disturbing the natural soil. But the benefits outweigh the risks.”

Adaptation has limits, to be sure. Wheat doesn’t thrive in hot conditions, which accelerate evaporation and growth phases. Rainfall is not only diminishing but is becoming less reliable.
Plant scientist Zvi Hochman, in a 2017 paper, found hotter, drier conditions had reduced Australia’s maximum achievable wheat yield by 27% between 1990 and 2015.
“With continued effort we can move from achieving 55% of potential yields to about 80%, but going beyond that in a variable climate is likely to be uneconomic,” Hochman told Reuters.
And there are downsides to the new ways. Greater use of herbicides can harm the environment and encourage weed strains that are resistant to the chemicals, scientific studies show. Australian farmers are using more synthetic nitrogen as fertilizer — albeit less per hectare than many others, according to the U.N. — which is manufactured using natural gas, a contributor to atmospheric carbon emissions. And they are intervening on a massive scale in the earth.
“We should always be cautious because we are disturbing the natural soil,” said Azam, the researcher. “But the benefits outweigh the risks.”

OTHER NATIONS

Challenging soil and weather conditions keep Australian yields low by global standards. Last year’s 2.6 tons per hectare lagged behind the U.S. (3.5 tons), China (5.9 tons), and Britain (7.3 tons), USDA data show.
Some developing nations, including China and India, have made faster progress than Australia in improving wheat yields since the 1980s, according to the USDA. But productivity growth in many advanced economies has been slower, which global researchers attribute in part to soil degradation and restrictions on fertilizers and pesticides.
Farmers and scientists credit Australia’s system of applied research and low subsidies for helping to set it apart.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/investigations/less-rain-more-wheat-how-australian-farmers-defied-climate-doom-2025-07-29/

U.S. President Donald Trump is getting his tariffs. Companies are making it clear how they intend to deal with it – passing them on to American consumers.
Throughout the spring, big retailers and consumer product makers warned that levies on imported goods would squeeze their operations, forcing them to choose between lower earnings and passing on higher costs to customers.

In the case of Procter & Gamble (PG.N), and others, it is both of those things.

On Tuesday, the packaging giant, which makes household basics spanning from Bounty paper towel to Tide detergent, issued a sour outlook for 2025 and sent a message to big retailers like Walmart (WMT.N) that it would have to raise prices on some U.S. goods from next week.

This challenge facing companies in coming quarters will likely feed through to everyday consumers. P&G said it would raise prices on about a quarter of its products in the U.S. to help offset the cost of new tariffs.
Price hikes are in the mid-single digits across categories, a spokesperson for the company said.
While U.S. stock indexes have soared to record highs this year, built on massive investment in technology shares, many consumer bellwethers have struggled.

Since Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” tariff announcements, P&G shares have declined 19%; Nestle (NESN.S), is down 20%; Kimberly-Clark (KMB.O), has lost 11%, and PepsiCo (PEP.O), is off nearly 7%, while the benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX), stock index has gained more than 13%.
Consumer goods, food and drink companies have struggled with lackluster sales since the pandemic, as shoppers have balked at increasingly expensive name-brand packaged food. Nestle said last week that consumers in North America remained wary of paying more at the cash register.
More price hikes will deepen investor worries about how big brands are navigating the combined challenge of thrifty consumers and hefty costs created by Trump’s trade war.
“You’re going to see companies like Walmart, Amazon, and Best Buy forced to pass price increases to consumers,” said Bill George, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic and executive education fellow at Harvard Business School.

“Main Street has yet to see the fallout from increased tariffs – and they’re going to go higher.”
Between July 16 and 25, companies in the Reuters global tariff tracker said they expected to lose a combined $7.1 billion to $8.3 billion for the full year.
GM (GM.N), Ford (F.N), and other carmakers have absorbed the cost of tariffs – totaling billions of dollars – so far.
Many companies shipped more goods and raw materials into the U.S. before tariffs hit. Economists and analysts reckon that hoarding has helped some delay hiking prices until later in the year and explains why tariffs have not yet shown up in U.S. inflation data.
Andrew Wilson, International Chamber of Commerce deputy secretary general, estimates inflation will be felt once companies have run down inventory, but that might not be until the fourth quarter or first quarter of next year.

Others like Ray Ban-maker EssilorLuxottica have already hiked prices.
Swiss watch and jewelry maker Swatch (UHR.S),  increased prices by about 5% after Trump announced tariffs in April with “zero impact” on sales, CEO Nick Hayek told Reuters recently.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-gets-tariffs-americans-get-price-hikes-2025-07-29/

Combs’ lawyer argued that conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn are dangerous, noting that others convicted of similar prostitution-related offenses were typically released before sentencing.

Music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs is asking a judge to free him on a US$50 million (S$64 million) bond while he awaits sentencing in October after a jury found him not guilty of the most serious federal charges he faced earlier this month.

In a court filing Tuesday (Jul 29), Combs’ lawyer argued that conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn are dangerous, noting that others convicted of similar prostitution-related offenses were typically released before sentencing.

“Sean Combs should not be in jail for this conduct,” Marc Agnifilo said. “In fact, he may be the only person currently in a United States jail for being any sort of john, and certainly the only person in jail for hiring adult male escorts for him and his girlfriend.”

A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Manhattan did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Prosecutors have previously insisted he remains a flight risk.

Combs, 55, faces up to a decade in prison on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution for flying people around the country, including his girlfriends and male sex workers, for sexual encounters. A conviction on racketeering conspiracy or sex trafficking could have put one of hip-hop’s celebrated figures in prison for life.

Immediately after he was acquitted on Jul 2, Agnifilo had asked that Combs be released on bond.

But Judge Arun Subramanian denied it, saying Combs at the time had not met the burden of showing by clear and convincing evidence a “lack of danger to any person or the community”.

Source : https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/entertainment/sean-combs-diddy-asks-release-bail-bond-468756

Indonesia has signed a contract to buy 48 KAAN fighter jets from Türkiye, the Indonesian defence ministry said on Tuesday (Jul 29), sealing the latest purchase by the Southeast Asian nation aimed at modernising its ageing military hardware.

In order to strengthen its air force, Jakarta also ordered 42 French Rafale jets worth US$8.1 billion in 2022. It is also considering ordering China’s J-10 fighter jets and continues talks to purchase the US-made F-15EX jets.

Indonesia and Türkiye “signed an implementation contract” last Saturday on the sidelines of the International Defence Industry Fair in Istanbul, defence ministry spokesperson Frega Wenas Inkriwang said in a statement.

He did not provide details of the contract value or delivery dates.

KAAN is Türkiye’s first national combat aircraft and it completed its first flight in February last year, but serial production is not expected to begin until 2028.

Türkiye’s defence ministry called the jet a fifth-generation aircraft and said it will be powered by two General Electric F-110 engines, which are also used in the fourth-generation Lockheed Martin F-16 jets.

Defence Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeedin witnessed the agreement signing, Frega said, adding the contract signing reaffirms the commitment of both governments to strengthen joint technology development and expand Indonesia’s defence industry capacity.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/indonesia-turkiye-turkey-kaan-fighter-jets-military-prabowo-5264191

The divisions now are a stark contrast with times of peace, when the lives of Thais and Cambodians along the border were very much intertwined, locals tell CNA.

SURIN, Thailand/ODDAR MEANCHEY, Cambodia: It is a rare sight in Thailand to see a 7-Eleven with its doors locked up.

But on the main highway through Surin province, the ubiquitous convenience store was one of many that remained closed on Tuesday (Jul 29) even after the ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia came into force.

The Chong Chom border crossing, a major trade route, also remained closed.

Artillery fire may have fallen silent, but life is yet to return to normal on both sides of the disputed border between Thailand and Cambodia, where deadly fighting has seen at least 38 people killed and forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate since last Thursday.

Among the hastily abandoned market stalls, shops and small restaurant in Chong Chom, Teerawat Saendang cast a lonely figure sitting at the counter of his grocery store.

The 65-year-old returned on Tuesday to check on his business after sheltering with relatives in a safe area in neighbouring Buriram province.

“I have been away for a full four days, so I was worried about my belongings — many were left outside. I will go back (to the safe area) around 4 or 5 pm. I don’t dare to stay,” he said.

For residents who chose to stay put, however, it was community spirit that spurred them to carry on with business as usual.

At a market in the Thai town of Prasat, some 30km north, small-goods seller Yuttana Akarapoowadol said: “I want to help displaced people get food. If I close, there will be no food for them.”

Fellow shop owner Nathana Aekthananonkul has also kept her shop open to provide food and essentials like meat, eggs and underwear to soldiers on the frontline.

“We see how much the soldiers are struggling,” she said.

“Whether living on the frontline or being away from their homes and loved ones, to do this duty, they have already sacrificed,” she added. “If we abandon them, it would be selfish.”

In Cambodia, locals showed the same solidarity with their countrymen and soldiers on the frontline.

Nammuy Heng, chief executive of DJI Agriculture Drone, is one of the volunteers at a relief camp in Oddar Meanchey who have helped gather two tonnes of food for the evacuees and military personnel there.

“One reason is because I really want to encourage my military … I want to tell them that they are not alone,” said Nammuy.

“The second thing is that I really want to share the love (with) the people.”

For evacuee Ouk Pov, it is the second time she has had to flee her home due to fighting between both countries – the first was in 2011, when troops clashed over the Preah Vihear temple.

“Since we’re near the border, our village leader told us to evacuate. It’s a hot zone for bombing. Back in 2011, a bomb fell near my house — there was a big fire and shattered glass flew into our home,” Ouk said.

“This time, no bombs landed directly near our house but bullets flew so low they hit and damaged our roof.”

The divisions now are a stark contrast with times of relative peace, when the lives of Thais and Cambodians along the border were very much intertwined, locals told CNA.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/cambodia-thailand-border-conflict-ceasefire-locals-solidarity-5264851

Justin Bieber admitted he can be self-centered in a reflective new social media post.

“Thanking Jesus for his patience with me this morning,” he wrote via X Tuesday. “I can be extremely selfish and impatient yet Jesus always has his arms open toward me.”

Alongside several photos of the “Yummy” singer enjoying time out in nature, he added, “Let’s have a good day, let’s go outside Get in nature.”

The trio of pics showed Bieber, 31, descending stairs down a tree-lined path to a body of water. He wore a T-shirt and shorts, and accessorized with a pair of hot pink sunglasses and hiking boots.

See more

Let’s have a good day, let’s go outside

Get in nature

Thanking Jesus for his patience with me this morning

I can be extremely selfish and impatient yet Jesus always has his arms open toward me 🤗🤗🤗 pic.twitter.com/oU8UITHcyU

— Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) July 29, 2025

Social media users took to the comments thread with supportive messages for the “Baby” crooner.

“This is the justin bieber i stan,” wrote one person, while another remarked, “Imagine walking through a forest and seeing Justin Bieber.”

“Stop being so hard on yourself, you’re literally a human, sir!!” wrote a third, while a fan account gushed, “We love you, thank you for everything and thank you for Swag! We, the fans, are super happy and excited about this album it gets better with each listen!”

The pop star’s candid post comes two weeks after he admitted to marriage struggles with wife Hailey, 28, via his new album “Swag.”

“Girl, we better stop before we say some s–t / We’ve been testing our patience / I think we better off if we just take a break / And remember what grace is,” he sings in “Walking Away.”

“Baby, I ain’t walking away. You were my diamond / Gave you a ring / I made you a promise. I told you, ‘I’d change’ / It’s just human nature / These growing pains / And baby, I ain’t walking away.”

Despite putting on a united front in family photos for the album’s long-awaited surprise release, a source told Page Six earlier in July that Justin “doesn’t particularly handle [fame] well.”

“Imagine being 14 and famous and people either love you for no reason just because you’re who you are, or they hate you? There’s not a lot of in between,” the insider divulged.

“A lot of people wouldn’t deal well with that to begin with. It breaks a lot of people. I’m concerned about him.”

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/07/29/celebrity-news/justin-bieber-admits-he-can-be-extremely-selfish/

JUSTIN Trudeau and Katy Perry were spotted enjoying a night out in Canada after the singer split with Orlando Bloom earlier this year, sparking romance rumors between the pair.

Perry, who was in Canada for her tour, was photographed dining with the former Canadian Prime Minister on Monday night.

The two seemed to be in deep conversation with each other at Le Violon in Montreal.

Perry, 40, has just separated from longtime beau Orlando Bloom this summer after nine years together, while Trudeau announced the separation from wife Sophie after 18 years of marriage in 2023.

The restaurant’s chef, Danny Smiles, told TMZ, however, that it seemed like a dinner between friends.

The report said lobster and cocktails were on the menu for the pair.

The two went to the kitchen afterward to thank the staff, according to the outlet, and were nice throughout.

The chef even divulged that Trudeau, 53, picked up the tab.

Before the dinner, the two were spotted walking together with Perry’s dog, TMZ reported.

The pair have both had a whirlwind year, from the pop star going on a space trip and touring to Trudeau stepping down as Canada’s PM.

Perry had been engaged to Bloom, 48, since 2019, and welcomed a daughter, Daisy Dove Bloom a year later.

Rumors had swirled that things had gone sour between the pair for months, with The Sun reporting in June that Bloom did not think Perry’s Blue Origin space trip “was a good idea.”

“He always thought it was a stupid idea and she wouldn’t get anything positive out of it,” the source said.

A close source told The Sun that Perry had told friends in January that the “relationship was as good as done.”

Weeks ago, representatives for the couple told E! News that the pair have been “shifting their relationship over the past many months to focus on co-parenting.”

“They will continue to be seen together as a family, as their shared priority is—and always will be—raising their daughter with love, stability and mutual respect.”

Right after the breakup news, Perry teared up on stage while performing in Australia.

“Thank you Australia for always being there for me,” she said, fighting back tears in her eyes.

In June, Bloom was spotted with star Sydney Sweeney in Venice after the two attended the A-list studded Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez wedding.

The actress had also announced her split from fiancé Jonathan Davino earlier this year.

The two were together for 7 years.

Trudeau announced his separation from his wife, Sophie, 48, in 2023 after “many meaningful and difficult conversations,” he wrote on Instagram at the time.

The two married in 2005, and have three children together.

In January, he resigned as party leader after a controversial decade in power.

In 2019, photos emerged of Trudeau in brownface at a party in 2001, sparking massive outrage.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/14856753/katy-perry-justin-trudeau-dinner-date-orlando-bloom/

Ukrainians over the age of 60 will be allowed to enlist in the military following the enactment of a law signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukrainian officials also called a Russian strike on a prison a war crime.

Three killed in Russian strike on Ukraine army training unit

At least three Ukrainian soldiers were killed, and 18 others were wounded, in a Russian missile strike on a Ukrainian army training ground on Tuesday.

In a statement on Facebook, Ukraine’s Ground Forces said Russia “launched a missile strike on the territory of one of the training units of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

“Despite the security measures taken, unfortunately it was not possible to completely avoid losses among the personnel,” the army added.

An investigation into the incident has been opened to “find out all the circumstances and causes of the loss of personnel,” the statement added.

“If it is found that the actions or inaction of officials led to the death and injury of military personnel, the perpetrators will be brought to justice,” the military said.

It was not clear which training facility was struck.

This is not the first time a Ukrainian army training unit has been attacked by Russian missiles.

In June, the then-commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, Mykhailo Drapaty, resigned after 12 soldiers were killed and more than 60 others were wounded when Russian missiles hit a training ground in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

Khloé Kardashian threw her son, Tatum Thompson, an over-the-top “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse”-themed party for his 3rd birthday.

The Good American co-founder took to her Instagram Stories Monday to give an inside look at the bash — dubbed “Tatum’s Clubhouse.

She flaunted the entryway of her home, which featured a massive multicolored balloon arch and cardboard cutouts of characters Mickey Mouse and Pluto.

At the front door, a person dressed up as a Chip ‘N Dale character greeted guests, including Kardashian’s 7-year-old daughter, True Thompson.

Inside, the “Kardashians” star, 41, showed off Mickey Mouse-shaped backdrops, including one that read, “Tatum Turns 3.”

A person dressed up as Mickey Mouse was seen enthusiastically dancing with the birthday boy, who wore a tan shirt and Disney-themed jeans.

Donald Duck and Daisy Duck brought the fun to the backyard, as they were seen dancing and posing with Tatum.

Another duo dressed up as Goofy and Pluto also busted a few moves.

Balloons and cutouts of Disney characters, including Goofy, also filled the backyard.

Kardashian went all out for the party favors and recruited Stoney Clover Lane to customize Disney-themed bags for guests.

There was also a candy station for attendees to stock up on goodies.

Festivities at the event included a sensory station with trays filled with a Play-Doh-like compound and mini Disney figures, a slime station and a station to make beaded bracelets or necklaces.

Guests indulged in a variety of finger foods, such as chicken tenders, fries and a charcuterie board, labeled “Minnie’s Picnic Bread Basket.”

Kardashian shared a snap of Tatum’s cake, which was the shape of Mickey Mouse’s clubhouse as seen in the five-season series, which aired from 2006 to 2016.

The TV personality also celebrated her ex-boyfriend Tristan Thompson’s brother Amari Thompson’s 19th birthday, revealing a Cinderella’s castle-shaped cake.

“We have two cakes because we are celebrating Amari’s birthday and Tatum’s birthday,” she said in a clip.

Source :https://pagesix.com/2025/07/28/parents/inside-khloe-kardashians-disney-themed-bash-for-son-tatums-3rd-birthday/

Prince Harry has reportedly agreed to share his official schedule with the royal family as a peace offering to his dad, King Charles III, and brother Prince William.

The olive branch would help avoid conflicts between Harry and Meghan Markle’s events and royal family engagements, the Daily Mail reported Saturday.

The proposal is allegedly a way of shutting down claims that the Sussexes are trying to steal the spotlight from the British royals.

The move came days after Harry’s trip to Angola dominated headlines and buried Charles’ wife Queen Camilla’s 78th birthday portrait reveal.

Harry’s transparency could potentially pave the way for a face-to-face meeting between him and his estranged dad being scheduled into their busy itineraries, especially considering peace talks have allegedly been held between the two camps.

“Before that meeting between their aides in London, conflicts of interest or clashes of publicity were relished and even perhaps encouraged by the Sussexes,” an insider claimed to the outlet, adding, “Now, Harry has shifted into a new way of thinking. The tone is now all about ‘deconflicting’ with his family.”

The source explained that the Sussex household has offered to “draw up a ‘grid’ of his activities and share them with Buckingham Palace.”

In doing so, Kensington Palace would also be looped in on the plans, therefore keeping William and Kate Middleton informed.

“Harry still doesn’t like being controlled by the Royal machinery, and that won’t change,” the insider said. “However, if the Royal Family have full sight of his movements they can at least plan accordingly.”

The source called Harry’s peace offering a “significant gesture.”

Page Six has reached out to Harry’s rep for comment.

Harry, 40, has been on the outs with his father, 76, and older brother, 43, since he and Markle, also 43, resigned from their royal duties in 2020. They ultimately moved to Montecito, Calif., where they live with their two kids: Prince Archie, 6, and Princess Lilibet, 4.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/07/28/royal-family/prince-harrys-latest-peace-offering-to-estranged-dad-king-charles-brother-prince-william-revealed/

No economy rises or falls for just one reason, even a shock as big as Donald Trump’s trade policy, says Ruchir Sharma for the Financial Times.

At the beginning of the year, the world was in striking agreement on one point: If Donald Trump went ahead with tariffs, it would strengthen the dollar and trigger stagflation.

Chief executives, investors and commentators all said the same. Economists estimated that every percentage point increase in the tariff rate would shave 0.1 per cent off US growth and add 0.1 per cent to inflation. But so far, the consequences have been far less disruptive than just about anyone expected.

Some analysts still think that’s because Trump’s threats have been mostly posturing. But the effective US tariff rate has already risen from 2.5 per cent to 15 per cent. Tariff revenue is rolling in at an annual rate above US$300 billion, roughly four times the pace this time last year.

Many economists had assumed that, by lowering imports, tariffs would strengthen the dollar almost automatically, as an accounting identity. Instead, it suffered its worst fall over the first half of a year since the early 1970s.

This unexpected turn is now attributed to the fact that the dollar started the year historically overvalued. Many foreigners were heavily exposed to dollar assets. Of late, they have been hedging those risks and investing more outside the US. Many countries are increasingly attractive places to park money, in part because tariff threats inspired them to push economic reform and cut trade deals with non-US partners.

WHY STAGFLATION HAS YET TO MATERIALISE

The bigger mystery is why the stagflationary impact of tariffs has yet to materialise in the aggregate data. Is the US really enjoying a free lunch, taking in US$300 billion a year in tariff revenues with none of the expected heartburn?

By some estimates, foreign exporters are indeed absorbing 20 per cent of the costs – a much larger share than they did in response to tariffs in Trump’s first term. The remaining 80 per cent, however, is still getting paid in roughly equal shares by US corporations and consumers.

The likely answer is that the negative economic effect of tariffs is being countered by other forces, including the mania for artificial intelligence and more government stimulus.

Since January, estimates of what the big tech companies will spend this year on building out AI infrastructure have risen from US$60 billion to US$350 billion. Smaller businesses are scrambling to catch the wave too, further boosting growth. And all this excitement is neutralising the fear that trade policy uncertainty would dampen animal spirits and freeze new capex.

AI-driven bullishness is also lifting growth by keeping financial conditions loose, even with higher interest rates. According to a new index from the Federal Reserve, those conditions would be neutral, not loose, were it not for the stock market, which has continued rising this year due largely to AI stocks.

Meanwhile, the promise of tax relief makes it easier for US corporations to absorb a larger than expected share of the tariff costs, rather than pass it all on to consumers. Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is expected to save US businesses around US$100 billion this year and more than that in 2026, mainly in tax breaks.

ECONOMIES AREN’T SHAPED BY JUST ONE FACTOR

That is not to say tariffs have no negative economic effect. The costs are in fact starting to show up in higher prices for major household appliances, sporting goods and toys.

Yet the overall inflation rate has been held in check by falling rents and prices for other kinds of goods, including used cars and energy. And those prices are declining for reasons unrelated to tariffs; used-car prices are still retreating from highs created by supply disruptions during the pandemic.

So economists were not entirely wrong about the tariffs. And stagflation may yet materialise, particularly if the average effective rate continues to climb. But so far even a much higher rate has not been enough to overwhelm the larger forces sustaining growth and containing inflation.

In a way what we are seeing is a replay of 2023. That year, too, many expected a big shock (then mainly from Fed rate rises) to dramatically slow US growth, only to find the impact offset by the AI spending boom and the US government’s seemingly bottomless capacity to keep doling out fiscal support.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/trump-tariff-economy-us-dollar-stagflation-consumer-prices-5262491

North Korea said on Tuesday (Jul 29) the United States must accept that reality has changed since the countries’ summit meetings in the past, and no future dialogue would end its nuclear programme, state media KCNA reported.

Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un who is believed to speak for his brother, said she conceded that the personal relationship between Kim and US President Donald Trump “is not bad”.

But if Washington intended to use a personal relationship as a way to end the North’s nuclear weapons programme, the effort would only be the subject of “mockery”, Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by KCNA.

“If the US fails to accept the changed reality and persists in the failed past, the DPRK-US meeting will remain as a ‘hope’ of the US side,” she said. DPRK is short for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

North Korea’s capabilities as a nuclear weapons state and the geopolitical environment have radically changed since Kim and Trump held talks three times during the US president’s first term, she said.

“Any attempt to deny the position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state … will be thoroughly rejected,” she said.

Asked about the North Korean statement, a White House official said Trump was still committed to the goal he had for the three summit meetings he held with Kim in his first term.

“The president retains those objectives and remains open to engaging with Leader Kim to achieve a fully denuclearised North Korea,” the White House official told Reuters.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/north-korea-says-trump-must-accept-nuclear-reality-5263631

The militant “Islamic State” group has claimed responsibility for an attack on a Catholic church in eastern Congo, leaving more than 40 people dead. The attack put an end to months-long calm in the region.

At least 43 people were killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo after a Catholic church was attacked on Sunday.

Officials initially reported that Islamist Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels had carried out the attack in which terrorists raided the church located in the northeastern town of Komanda as worshippers gathered for prayer.

Later on Monday, the self-named “Islamic State” group (IS) announced on the messaging app Telegram that it had been behind the deadly incident.

What do we know about the attack on the Catholic church?

Nine children were among those killed, according to MONUSCO, the UN peacekeeping mission in the country.

According to reports, houses and shops surrounding the church were also set ablaze by the rebels.

“These targeted attacks on defenseless civilians, especially in places of worship, are not only revolting but also contrary to all norms of human rights and international humanitarian law,” the mission’s deputy chief, Vivian van de Perre, said in a statement.

Congo military denounces attack

Sunday’s attack marked the end of a months-long period of calm in the region of Ituri, bordering Uganda.

In February, 23 people had died in an attack by the ADF in the province’s Mambasa territory.

The Congolese military condemned what it described as a “large-scale massacre” on Sunday.

It said the ADF had decided to take “revenge on defenseless peaceful populations to spread terror.”

Eastern Congo is considered one of the world’s most dangerous regions.

Nearly 130 different armed groups are said to be active across the country, many of which are focused on controlling the region’s vast and valuable reserves of natural resources like coltan, cobalt, gold and diamonds.

Hostilities earlier this year between Congolese forces and the M23 rebel group ended in a truce on July 19.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/congo-over-40-killed-in-militant-attack-on-church/a-73433602

More than 20 provincial-level administrations in China now offer childcare subsidies. But analysts are skeptical that they will be able to reverse the declining population or spur spending.

The Chinese government will offer parents subsidies of 3,600 yuan ($500, €429) per child under the age of three per year, Beijing’s state media said Monday.

China’s population has declined for three consecutive years, the world’s second most populous nation — after India — is facing an emerging demographic crisis.

The number of births in 2024 — 9.54 million — was half as many as in 2016, the year that ended its one-child policy that was in place for more than three decades.

Marriage rates in China have also hit a record low. Young couples put off having babies due to the high cost of raising children and career concerns.

Provinces push to raise birth rates

More than 20 provincial-level administrations in China now offer childcare subsidies, according to official data.

In March, Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia in northern China, started giving families money to have more children. Couples with three or more children can get up to 100,000 yuan for each new baby.

In Shenyang, in northeastern Liaoning province, local authorities give families who have a third child 500 yuan per month until the child turns three.

In order to create a “fertility-friendly society”, China’s southwestern Sichuan province is proposing to increase marriage leave from 5 to 25 days, and more than double the current 60-day maternity leave to 150 days.

A positive step, but limited impact

Analysts said the subsidies are a positive step, but warned they won’t be enough on their own to reverse China’s population decline or lift its sluggish domestic spending.

Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, told Reuters that the new subsidy showed the government had recognized the “serious challenge” that low fertility poses to the economy.

Zichun Huang, China economist at Capital Economics, said the policy marked a “major milestone” in terms of direct handouts to households and could lay the groundwork for more fiscal transfers in the future.

But he also said the sums were too small to have a “near-term impact on the birth rate or consumption.”

“For young couples who just got married and already have a baby, it might actually encourage them to consider having a second child,” Wang Xue, a mother to a nine-year-old son from Beijing, told AFP.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/china-to-offer-500-per-child-in-move-to-boost-birth-rate/a-73441098

DONALD Trump has slashed the 50-day deadline for Vladimir Putin to cut a peace deal down to just the end of next week.

Trump has slammed the tyrant – who has not taken Trump’s peace efforts seriously – saying he was “very disappointed” with him during a press conference with Sir Keir Starmer in Scotland today.

Trump said Putin’s new deadline had been reduced down to “10 to 12” days from today, which would be August 6 to 8.

The President is clearly fed up with Vlad’s unwillingness to cut a peace deal and his nightly blitzes that target and kill civilians.

He said: “I’m disappointed in President Putin, very disappointed in him.

“So we’re going to have to look and I’m going to reduce that 50 days that I gave him to a lesser number.”

He later clarified saying: “I’m going to make a new deadline of about 10 or 12 days from today. There’s no reason in waiting, we just don’t see any progress being made.”

Trump said that the US would do secondary sanctions on Russia – slapping sanctions on those who buy oil from Moscow.

But that could all be avoided if Putin cuts a peace deal – which Trump thinks could still happen.

The new deadline will be announced tonight or tomorrow, with Trump saying “there’s no reason to wait”.

He said: “It [peace] should happen fast, so many people are dying.”

Trump also said he is not so interested in speaking to Putin anymore – due to the tyrant consistently bombing Ukraine after peace talks.

The deadline was set to end on September 5, but is now set to end a month earlier.

The Moscow stock market quickly dropped 1.2 per cent at the prospect of massive US sanctions on the economy.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has said that the “language of ultimatums, blackmail, and threats” is unacceptable to Moscow and that it views the threat of new sanctions as mundane.

A fortnight ago, Trump vowed to slap brutal 100 percent tariffs on Russia if Moscow did not reach a peace agreement with Ukraine within 50 days.

He also agreed to send US weapons – compromising of “everything” in their arsenal – to Nato so they can distribute them to Kyiv.

The meeting with Mark Rutte marked a shift in US policy more towards backing Ukraine after Vlad did not take peace seriously.

Trump has made getting peace in Ukraine a priority and has talked to Putin directly as he has tried to get him to cut a deal.

But the tyrant has not moved away from his maximalist demands and will only sign a deal that leaves Ukraine defenceless.

Vlad has spent months talking up the prospect of peace, but appears to have alienated Trump after launching huge barrages at Ukrainian civilians.

The Kremlin responded to the deadline at the time saying: “We of course want to understand what is behind this statement – 50 days.

“It used to be 24 hours, it used to be 100 days, we have been through all of this and we really want to understand what motivates the President of the United States.”

Trump’s deadline slashing comes after Putin launched his latest blitz on Ukraine with Poland scrambling jets in response.

Eight people, including a two-year-old girl, were injured in the strikes with shrapnel wounds after one bomb hit an apartment building in the capital.

Volodymyr Zelenksy addressed the latest blitz saying “our sky defenders intercepted several hundred Russian attack drones”.

One person is fighting for their life in a critical condition, while three others were hospitalised.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14838839/donald-trump-putin-peace-deadline/

Heavy rains hit northern China over the weekend and intensified around Beijing on Monday. President Xi Jinping has ordered an “all-out” search and rescue effort.

At least 30 people have died in the outskirts of Beijing after intense rainstorms battered China’s north, state media reported on Tuesday.

“The latest round of heavy rainstorms has left 30 people dead in Beijing as of midnight Monday,” state news agency Xinhua said.

Over 80,000 people have been evacuated from the Chinese capital, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

28 deaths were reported in the hilly district of Miyun and two in Yanqing, both of which are on the outskirts of the sprawling city, far from the downtown.

Torrential rain causes floods and landslides in northern China

Intense rainfall lashed northern China over the weekend, including in the provinces of Hebei, Jilin and Shandong. The rains intensified around Beijing on Monday.

The Huairou district in the capital’s north and Fangshan in the southwest were also badly impacted.

Roads and communication infrastructure were damaged, while over 130 villages were left without power.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/heavy-rain-in-beijing/a-73444229