Category: World

Wall Street has clawed back losses incurred after President Donald Trump imposed global tariffs a month ago, capping the longest winning streak in two decades for US stocks.

Shares saw gains for the ninth day in a row for the first time since 2004 after a better-than-expected jobs report and rising hope of US-China trade talks.

Major US indexes were all up when the market closed on Friday – the S&P 500 and Nasdaq had both risen 1.5% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 1.4%.

The tech sector made the biggest gains, with Microsoft and Nvidia growing by more than 2%.

It came as the Department of Labor said on Friday that US employers had added 177,000 new jobs in April.

The report outpaced analysts’ predictions, although it was still a slowdown in hiring from the month beforehand. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%.

Another sign of encouragement for investors was Beijing’s announcement on Friday that it was considering an offer from Washington to hold trade talks with the US.

At 145%, China faces the highest import taxes by far.

For some analysts the jobs figures tamped down recession fears in the wake of commerce department data this week showing a contraction in the US economy for the first time in three years.

“There is nothing to complain about here,” Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, said in a research note.

“You cannot find any evidence of a nascent recession in these figures.”

Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, also saw cause for optimism.

“The economy will weaken in the coming months but, with this underlying momentum, the US has a decent chance of averting recession if it can step back from the tariff brink in time,” she said.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0z65dq771o

Yu, a 32-year-old internet and trade worker from Hangzhou, used to drive around in a German-made Porsche 718.

She has since traded that for a grey six-seater by leading Chinese EV maker Li Auto, which she said boasts better “smart driving” and navigation features, delivering a superior overall experience.

The price and prestige might not be the same, said Yu, who wished to be identified only by her first name – but her shift to domestic Chinese-made products has not stopped at car choices.

“My husband and I were joking the other day and counting how many American brands we had at home – turns out it was only MacBooks and iPhones and even those were made in China.”

Another Chinese consumer, working in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector, told CNA that many in China were “living perfectly well without American goods”.

“Phones, computers, routers, watches are all from Huawei, my TV is from TCL Technology and my air-conditioner is from Gree,” said the worker, who asked not to be named, referring to two major Chinese electronics manufacturers from Guangdong province.

“Good quality, good service and fair prices – if US-made goods met those criteria, I’d choose them too.”

“The last time I saw a truly American product was a few days ago at Costco in China,” he said. “(It was) US beef but I didn’t buy any because it tastes gamey and has that mad-cow precedent.”

FROM EXPORTING GLOBALLY TO BUYING LOCALLY

A dramatic shift is underway as a result of US President Donald Trump’s multi-front trade war, with Chinese brands, exporters and companies pivoting to the massive domestic consumer market to sell and promote their products originally bound for overseas.

Chinese consumers have also been increasingly embracing local goods and brands over foreign products, experts told CNA.

“This domestic substitution is a long-term strategy, not just targeting American brands or products,” said Dan Wang, China director at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy.

“The idea (for Chinese consumers) is to substitute as much as possible to be self-sufficient and US brands certainly hurt the most because of the bilateral tensions.”

Since his return to the White House in January, Trump’s ratcheting up of tariffs against China, to as high as 145 per cent, has plunged the two largest economies into a new phase of global uncertainty.

Official trade talks have yet to take place but Beijing has unveiled plans to help tariff-hit firms and said it was “evaluating” an offer from Washington to hold talks, according to China’s Commerce Ministry on Friday (May 2).

The door was open for discussions, the ministry said in a statement, adding that Washington needed to show “sincerity” in negotiations and should be prepared to take action in “correcting erroneous practices” and cancel unilateral tariffs.

“Attempting to use talks as a pretext to engage in coercion and extortion would not work,” it said.

Beijing has also granted tariff exemptions on select products, reportedly creating a “white list” of items which included pharmaceuticals, microchips, aircraft engines, US ethane, and was asking firms to identify critical goods they need levy-free, according to a Reuters report on Apr 25.

Government officials in the manufacturing hub of Xiamen, also recently surveyed firms to assess the impact of tariffs on local businesses, the Reuters report said, quoting a source with “direct knowledge of the matter”.

Analysts told CNA that such targeted outreach reflected Beijing’s awareness of the underlying industrial strain.

Eurasia Group’s Wang said the pressure was building on Chinese producers rather than shoppers, with small- and medium-sized manufacturers (SMEs) particularly exposed.

“SME bankruptcy is real because of this tariff war,” Wang said, also warning of a broader employment impact as certain sectors remain deeply tied to US exports and technologies.

Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at the Dutch banking and financial group ING, said ongoing efforts by Beijing reflected a wider focus on price consciousness among Chinese consumers.

“The tariff scenario is definitely going to move (Chinese) demand further away from those products,” Song said.

In China, imported foreign goods are also relatively “easier to substitute” with locally made options, Song said. “The impact on Chinese consumers would be relatively minor.”

Zhu, a 25-year-old living in Shanghai, said he noticed a growing trend of “resisting” American brands and products. “I can’t actually find anything around me that’s made in the US,” he said.

An avid guitarist, Zhu has also noticed prices of American guitars “skyrocketing” under recent tariffs. “People have just stopped buying them,” he said, adding that it wasn’t due to fear but defiance.

“I feel our national fighting spirit has been ignited. I see people online saying, ‘Let’s fight back!’”

American brands, though, were already losing ground in China before this latest wave of tariffs, noted observers.

“Chinese consumers already have a preference for European brands or Japanese brands, if it comes to a foreign brand,” Wang said. “Even for cosmetics, there has been some substantial substitution with domestic production.”

“American brands, they’re not doing that great when it comes to consumer goods (in China).”

PROTECTING AMERICAN CONSUMERS

But what about the impact of the tariff war on American consumers?

While Beijing has been quietly insulating strategic imports, US officials have also been taking bigger steps to shield American consumers from the full brunt of the trade war, most notably in the tech industry.

According to official data, top US imports from China have largely been electrical machinery and equipment parts, valued at around US$123.8 billion and making up 28.2 per cent of total imports.

To avoid blowback and protect US tech giants like Apple whose products are made and produced in China, Chinese-imported devices like smartphones, laptops and other electronics, as well as semiconductor chips, solar cells and flat panel TV displays, have been excluded from Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.

“This is kind of a sign that Trump will listen if there’s a strong enough voice lobbying against (tariffs),” Song said.

Commonly used devices like iPhones were spared for political reasons, Wang said.
“For something like iPhones to suddenly get (even more) expensive because they’re already expensive (to begin with), or even disappear from many of the markets in the US, it’s probably too much of a political pushback, even for Trump.”

But bigger costs would still likely show up on US store shelves in the coming months, Wang added. “American consumers will have fewer selections so it’s direct damage, basically.”

BLACK FRIDAY, CHRISTMAS AT RISK?

The bigger pinch is now around the corner, analysts said. “It should actually get worse in the coming months,” Song said.

“Once (current stocks and) inventory is depleted, companies will be forced to choose between empty shelves or paying the tariffs.”

“The inflation pressure is real,” Wang said, adding that the impact would be especially felt during key retail periods like annual Black Friday sales, back-to-school seasons and Christmas.

US e-commerce giant Amazon has already cancelled orders for multiple products sourced from China and other Asian countries and have been sourcing new suppliers.

The National Retail Federation (NRF), which includes members like superchain retailers Target and Walmart, has forecast a sharp decline in US imports for the second half of 2025, a stark signal of caution heading into crucial sales periods ahead.

For American consumers, finding alternatives to Chinese-made goods would be significantly more difficult, analysts said, noting that China’s dominance in low-cost manufacturing – from electronics and toys to household goods – created dependencies that were not easily replaced.

“A lot of these products don’t really have a cheaper alternative,” said Song, who noted that US firms had once attempted to diversify their sourcing during the first US-China trade war but found it harder than expected.

“It’s not like … you can immediately ramp up production in Vietnam or Mexico,” Song said.

“The cost will be pushed on to the US consumer.”

“It’s highly unlikely that the US can build a strong supply chain, just like China does,” said Wang, adding that while some companies were investing in domestic facilities, they still would not match China’s scale, speed or cost efficiency.

According to data from Vizion, a real-time AI container tracking platform, US import bookings on massive container ships dropped by 64 per cent in March and April as Trump’s sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs kicked off.

German shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd reported a 30 per cent cancellation rate from customers on shipments from China to the US, according to a company spokesperson who cited a “massive increase” in demand for consignments from Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

IMPACT IN THE YEAR AHEAD

Despite the escalating tit-for-tat, analysts said neither Beijing nor Washington appeared ready for full consumer-level decoupling.

If China really wanted to accelerate the break, it could spark consumer nationalism, Wang said, as it had done in past disputes with Japan and South Korea. “But the Chinese government so far has refrained from doing that.”

According to trade data, the United States bought US$439 billion worth of goods from China in 2024 – more than three times the US$143.5 billion it sold in return.

While she acknowledged that inflation may be more visible in the US, she argued that the broader risk lies with China.

“For the US, most of the problem is in the potential recession, but it’s not caused by tariffs,” she said.

“Inflation might be caused by tariffs, but it doesn’t seem that the American people are as worried about inflation as they worry about recession. So I think the risk to China is bigger.”

Others added that global uncertainty would continue in the months ahead.

It’s a “waiting game”, Song said. “We’re in a test of endurance right now – which side will feel the pain first and which side has to lower its head and come to the table.”

Experts previously told CNA that many Chinese factories were already seeing supply outpace demand and also noted that not all goods intended for US markets would appeal to Chinese buyers.

China would not be immune to pressure, Wang said.

“Although China can produce everything, the indirect impact from overflooding its massive consumer market would be pretty big.”

Sky-high tariffs are unsustainable, experts said, but even if rates are eventually scaled back, relations between the world’s two biggest economies have already changed.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/us-tariffs-impact-china-chinese-consumers-domestic-5104481

Power has started returning in most areas affected by an outage in Indonesia’s resort island of Bali on Friday (May 2), officials said, and efforts were continuing to fully restore services.

A power outage hit a number of regions of Bali on Friday from 4pm, said state utility Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN).

The island’s airport was also impacted but inbound and outbound flight traffic continued using backup generators, the airport’s general manager Ahmad Syaugi Shahab said in a statement, although several departures had experienced delays.

Images shared on social media showed road traffic holdups in Bali as a result of the outage and long lines at the airport check-in counters.

Power began to return a few hours after the blackout.

“State utility PLN managed to restore most of the electricity supply in Bali,” the spokesperson of President Prabowo Subianto, Prasetyo Hadi said in a statement after calling PLN’s CEO.

“God willing, power connection in Bali will be fully restored tonight (Friday night),” he said.

PLN prioritised restoring electricity to key infrastructure such as government offices, hospitals, the airport, as well as hotels, said Prasetyo.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/indonesia-bali-power-outage-blackout-5104951

MASS evacuations have been sparked after a huge 7.5-magnitude earthquake south of Chile and Argentina.

Civilians were forced to flee across the entire coastal section of the Strait of Magellan after a strong earthquake in Drake Passage.

The United States Geological Survey confirmed the mega quake, saying that it had struck between Cape Horn and Antarctica.

They added that its epicentre was under the ocean 173 miles south of the Argentinian city of Ushuaia.

The Chilean National Disaster Prevention and Response Service said that the coastal area of Magallenes region in the south of the country would be evacuated due to the tsunami risk.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric said on X after the alert: “We call for evacuation of the coastline throughout the Magallanes region.”

Chile’s disaster agency advised residents to “act calmly and follow the instructions of authorities and response teams” following the quake.

Pictures showed civilians fleeing buildings as part of evacuations in dramatic scenes.

Tense footage showed people leaving their homes and walking towards a safety checkpoint in the South American country.

Town streets were flooded as the evacuations were sparked across the south.

The coastal areas were evacuated due to the “hazardous waves” which came following the quake in Drake Passage.

According to the National Seismological Center, the earthquake occurred when the clock was about to strike 9:00a.m.

The agency first indicated that the quake had a magnitude of 7.5 on Friday morning.

It reportedly had a depth of 6.2 miles.

The Chilean Navy’s Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service (SHOA) issued the warning after the quake occurred 135 miles south of Puerto Williams, in the Magallanes region.

They also issued a precautionary warning for the Antarctic territory.

The National Disaster Prevention and Response System said that they “continue to assess the impact on people and damage to infrastructure and basic services”.

They added that the results of would be reported through incident or emergency reports prepared by SENAPRED, the National Disaster Prevention and Response Service.

Argentina did not immediately issue a similar tsunami warning.

No reports of damage or casualties have been released yet.

Local media reported that the evacuations are a precautionary measure.

Residents were being asked to evacuate to safe areas which are 30 metres above sea level.

In 2016, a major 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck southern Chile, prompting thousands to evacuate coastal areas.

The quake’s depth was about 21.5 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey said, and a tsunami warning was issued.

And according to media reports, the shake was felt in the southwest Argentine city of Bariloche.

It comes after a massive 7.1-magnitude earthquake rocked the Tonga coast, also sparking a tsunami warning.

The US Geological Survey said the tremor hit about 62 miles northeast of the main island of Tongatapu.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14152953/tsunami-warning-issued-chile/

BILL Gates’ daughter has revealed her billionaire dad has Asperger’s syndrome – a condition the Microsoft co-founder has never publicly confirmed himself.

Phoebe Gates, 22, made the offhand remark during the popular Call Her Daddy podcast while discussing what it’s like bringing dates home to one of the world’s most famous — and reportedly awkward — dads.

In a comment that quickly raised eyebrows, Phoebe told host Alex Cooper: “My dad is pretty socially awkward. He’s said he, you know, has Asperger’s.”

The disclosure marks the first time a member of Bill Gates’ family has specifically named the condition.

While the tech giant, 69, has previously spoken about identifying with traits on the autism spectrum, he’s never officially confirmed any diagnosis.

Listeners immediately latched onto the moment, sending the quote viral across social media.

“Not exactly surprising,” one user posted on X.

“There seems to be a lot of self-diagnosing going on here,” another wrote.

“Being high in trait disagreeableness, focused, highly intelligent does not necessarily mean one is ‘on the spectrum.’”

Phoebe made the remark while describing the challenges of dating under her father’s watchful – and sometimes uncomfortable – gaze.

“Bringing a guy home is terrifying for the guy. It’s also kind of hilarious for me,” she said, recalling how Gates once drove her and a boyfriend to a school dance while listening to NPR in silence.

“So uncomfortable but so funny.”

The Microsoft mogul and philanthropist has not responded publicly to the viral moment.

But in his 2023 memoir Source Code, Gates did write: “I probably would’ve been diagnosed today, and that’s not a bad thing — it’s part of who I am.”

“I was a hyper-focused kid. I would get so lost in what I was doing, I’d forget to eat,” he shared.

In a February interview with Axios, Gates also opened up about feeling different growing up.

“I always knew I was different in ways that confused people in terms of my energy level and intensity, and going off and just studying things,” he said.

“It’s a little confusing when you’re a kid, that you’re different, or people react to you in some ways, or your social skills — you’re miscuing on various things.”

While Phoebe’s comment may have been unintentional, it adds to the growing conversation around neurodiversity – especially among high-achieving people.

In recent years, more public figures, including Tesla mogul Elon Musk, have openly acknowledged being on the autism spectrum.

Phoebe, who has not commented further on the matter, also opened up about her relationship with boyfriend Arthur Donald, 26 — grandson of Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney.

She joked about her lack of musical knowledge, recalling the time Donald trying to impress her by taking her to an Elton John concert.

“And Elton John comes out in like a bedazzled tracksuit. I’m like, ‘Is Elton John gay?’ His entire family starts dying laughing,” she said.

Even now, nearly two years into their relationship, she says the McCartney clan still rib her over the moment.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14149991/bill-gates-aspergers-daughter-phoebe-call-her-daddy/

The X account of Pakistan minister Ataullah Tarar, who claimed that India may soon conduct a military strike on Pakistan, citing “credible intelligence” has been blocked in India. The move comes amid tensions between both countries over the Pahalgam terror attack.

Pakistan’s Information and Broadcasting Minister Ataullah Tarar’s X account has been blocked in India, days after he claimed that Islambad had “credible intelligence” that New Delhi may carry out a military strike on the neighbouring country within 24 to 36 hours in the wake of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack.

A screenshot of Tarar’s X account showed a message that it was withheld in India in response to a legal demand. The profile picture and the cover image of Tarar’s X account are blank.

In a late-night press conference, Tarar claimed early Wednesday that Pakistan had received “credible intelligence”, indicating India may carry out a military strike within the next 24 to 36 hours. This came a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi granted the Indian armed forces “complete operational freedom” to respond to the Pahalgam terror attack, which claimed 26 lives, government sources told India Today TV.

“Pakistan has credible intelligence that India intends to launch a military strike within the next 24 to 36 hours using the Pahalgam incident as a false pretext,” he claimed.

Tarar warned that any act of aggression would be met with a decisive response and hold India accountable for any serious consequences in the region.

Asserting that Pakistan itself was “a victim of terrorism”, the minister said Islamabad had “open-heartedly offered a credible, transparent, and independent investigation by a neutral commission of experts to ascertain the truth”.

Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack, one of the worst such assaults in the Kashmir Valley in recent years.

Earlier, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told news agency Reuters that a military incursion by India was imminent. Pakistan was on high alert but would only use its nuclear weapons if “there is a direct threat to our existence”, Asif said.

The Indian government has blocked the Instagram accounts of several Pakistani actors, including Hania Aamir and Mahira Khan, in the wake of the Pahalgam massacre. Other Pakistani celebrities whose Instagram accounts have been disabled in India are – Ali Zafar, Sanam Saeed, Bilal Abbas, Iqra Aziz, Imran Abbas and Sajal Aly.

Earlier, the YouTube channel of Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s YouTube channel was blocked in India. Other YouTube channels restricted in India are – Dawn News, Irshad Bhatti, SAMAA TV, ARY NEWS, BOL NEWS, Raftar, The Pakistan Reference, Geo News, Samaa Sports, GNN, Uzair Cricket, Umar Cheema Exclusive, Asma Shirazi, Muneeb Farooq, SUNO News and Razi Naama.

ABOUT PAHALGAM TERROR ATTACK

On April 22, terrorists opened fire on a group of tourists visiting the Baisaran valley, a meadow which is accessible only by foot or horseback. In the process, 26 people, including a Nepali national, were killed in the carnage.

Terrorists singled out non-Muslim tourists and shot them at point-blank range after being asked to recite the Kalma, or the Islamic declaration of faith.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has held a flurry of key security and cabinet meetings this week, has vowed that his government will hunt down the terrorists involved in the Pahalgam attack.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/pakistan-minister-ataullah-tarar-x-account-blocked-india-warning-indian-strike-pahalgam-attack-2718885-2025-05-03

Russia launched a mass drone attack late on Friday in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, hitting a high-rise apartment block, triggering fires and injuring 46 people, officials said.
Mayor Ihor Terekhov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said there had been strikes in 12 locations in four central districts of the city, a repeated target of Russian air attacks lying 30 km (19 miles) from the country’s northeastern border.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced the drone strikes, which hit Ukrainian cities several times a week. He said dozens of drones had been launched and Ukraine’s allies were moving too slowly in helping beef up its air defence capability.
“There were no military targets, nor could there be any. Russia strikes dwellings when Ukrainians are in their homes, when they are putting their children to bed,” Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram.
“As the world delays decisions, almost every night in Ukraine turns into a horror that results in the loss of lives. Ukraine needs stronger air defences. Stronger and real decisions from our partners: the United States, Europe, all our partners who seek peace.”

Terekhov said a house had also been hit. An 11-year-old child was among the injured. Eight of those hurt were being treated in hospital.
Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said emergency crews were working through the night to tackle the aftermath of the attack despite fears of repeat strikes.
Pictures posted online showed firefighters battling flames, charred building facades with smashed windows and cars aflame in streets littered with rubble.
Regional authorities said four people were also injured in a Russian joint drone and artillery attack on localities east of Nikopol in southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region.
In southern Kherson region, a village resident died when a fallen drone detonated as he was trying to carry it away from a house.
Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians, though many thousands have been killed since it launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.

Russia’s Defence Ministry, meanwhile, reported that its air defence units had destroyed 10 Ukrainian drones in an hour: eight over the border region of Bryansk and two over Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-drones-hit-apartment-block-ukraines-kharkiv-least-nine-hurt-2025-05-02/

CHILLING video has caught the moment a humanoid robot flew into a rage and lashed out at its handlers.

CCTV footage from a factory floor shows it attached to a miniature crane.

One man was sitting behind a computer screen and another stood nearby.

They were chatting away when the machine suddenly began moving – seemingly of its own accord.

It raised its arms in the air and brought them down again, repeating the motion with increasing speed and violence, as reported by NeedToKnow.

The robot then began walking forward in an apparent bid to break free from the crane.

The men could be seen flinching and cowering as they moved out of its path.

The computer monitor toppled onto the floor, and other items were knocked over on the desk.

Eventually, one of the men pulled the crane from behind in a bid to stop the spree of destruction.

It is not clear when or where the dystopian scenes unfolded.

One viewer wrote, “So it begins.”

Another said, “Can’t wait for the robot v. human war.”

A third joked, “I know that one. That’s an AssSpanker 3000 prototype.”

A fourth remarked, “Well, nice to know that the robot apocalypse can be stopped with a small crane hoist at least.”

And a fifth replied: “For now.”

Seven people have been killed in a fiery collision between a tour van and a pickup truck near Yellowstone National Park, Idaho State Police said Friday.

The cause of the crash, which happened just before 7:15 p.m. Thursday, 16 miles outside the park, remains under investigation. Both vehicles caught fire.

Six of the 14 tourists in the van died, as well as the driver of the Dodge Ram pickup.

Another eight people were injured and were transported to hospital.

“It is a very dangerous highway,” said Roger Merrill, 60, who witnessed the vehicles burn after the crash. “It’s extremely busy.”

A video he captured shows a banged up red pickup truck, and what appears to be a passenger van completely engulfed in flames, with a thick plume of black smoke billowing in the air, as paramedics and firefighters run toward the scene.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/05/02/us-news/fiery-yellowstone-crash-leaves-7-dead-after-pickup-truck-and-tour-van-collide/

There were various potential names for the rare earths, minerals, natural resources and economic agreement that the US and Ukraine had hoped to conclude immediately after the inauguration of US President Donald Trump in January.

In the end, after a number of attempts and amendments, an agreement to establish a United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Fund was signed between Washington and Kyiv on April 30.

It consists of just 10 pages, with a two-page appendix. “Together with the United States, we are creating the Fund that will attract global investment into our country,” Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko posted on Facebook. The agreement does not mention any Ukrainian debt obligations to the US, nor does it change Kyiv’s course towards European integration.

What is the fund supposed to do?

Svyrydenko said that the US would make contributions to the fund. In addition to direct funds, she said, it could include air defense systems for Ukraine. For its part, Kyiv will contribute 50% of revenues from new licenses for extracting raw materials to the fund and can also make additional contributions.

The idea then is that fund invest the money into projects for extracting fossil fuels, oil and gas, as well as intor related infrastructure or recycling, she said. Accordingly, Ukraine and the USA are to jointly determine the specific investment projects for which the money will be used. The fund may only invest in Ukraine.

“We expect that the first 10 years of profits and income of the fund will not be distributed, but can only be invested in Ukraine, in new projects or reconstruction. These conditions will be discussed further,” the minister posted on Facebook.

The US-Ukrainian minerals deal still needs to be ratified by the Ukrainian parliament. But the opposition European Solidarity faction is unhappy that lawmakers were not included in the negotiations and has demanded that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hold talks with representatives of the parliamentary groups and factions.

When will the first investments come?

“An agreement with the US is essential for Ukraine today,” Ilya Neskhodovskyi, head of the analytical department of the Ukrainian think tank National Interests Advocacy Network, or ANTS, told DW.

“We pay and give up part of our revenues, but in return we receive military and financial support as well as American investment,” he said. “As the Americans will control the way the investments are made, it is assumed that they will then be more willing to invest in the Ukrainian economy.”

However, the money will not start flowing immediately. Experts believe that investment can only be expected after the end of the “hot phase” of Russia’s war against Ukraine, a freeze in the conflict, or the signing of a peace agreement.

“New projects are out of the question now during the war. I don’t think they will be possible before the middle of next year,” said Anatoliy Amelin from the Ukrainian Institute for the Future. “Companies that plan to invest in Ukraine, be it in raw materials, mining or processing, must take this into account in their budgets for next year,” he added, speculating that, at best, US investment would come to Ukraine from 2027 and 2028. “The US is still motivated to help us, but the next aid will accumulate as debt obligations in the fund.”

Will US military aid be resumed?

At the same time, experts also pointed out that the agreement is politically advantageous for Ukraine, as it continues cooperation with the US, including in terms of intensifying military aid. “This is a huge political and diplomatic victory for Ukraine!,” wrote Tymofiy Mylovanov, the head of the Kyiv School of Economics and former Ukrainian economy minister on Facebook. It “gives Trump an internal political victory, and because of this a more positive attitude to Ukraine.”

He continued: “Ukraine was able to protect its interests in this agreement! All the draconian wishes of the other side, despite the insane pressure that is hard to imagine, have been canceled. And the deal seems fair.”

According to media reports, immediately after the agreement was signed, Trump agreed to sell at least $50 million (€44m) worth of weapons to Ukraine for the first time during his second term of office.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/activists-say-drones-hit-aid-boat-heading-gaza-blame-israel-5105816

A group of activists organising an aid boat for Gaza said it was attacked on Friday (May 2) by drones in international waters off Malta as they headed towards the Palestinian territory, accusing Israel of attacking the vessel.

The Maltese government said it responded to a distress call from the vessel and offered immediate support.

It said all crew members were safe, while making no mention of an alleged attack.

“At 00:23 Maltese time (2223 GMT on Thursday), the Conscience, a Freedom Flotilla Coalition ship, came under direct attack in international waters,” the activist group said in a statement.

“Armed drones attacked the front of an unarmed civilian vessel twice, causing a fire and a substantial breach in the hull,” it added, blaming Israel.

“Israeli ambassadors must be summoned and answer to violations of international law, including the ongoing blockade and the bombing of our civilian vessel in international waters.”

The Israeli military did not provide an immediate response when contacted by AFP.

The strike, the activists said, appeared to target the boat’s generator.

Following the distress call, the Malta Vessel Traffic Services body dispatched a tugboat and offered support.

“The tug arrived on scene and began firefighting operations. By 0128 hrs, the fire was reported under control,” the Maltese statement said.

“DESPERATELY-NEEDED AID”

The activists said another vessel was dispatched from Cyprus after the aid boat sent out a distress signal, though Cypriot authorities have yet to confirm this.

The activists were on what they called a “mission to challenge Israel’s illegal and deadly siege of Gaza, and to deliver desperately needed, life-saving aid”.

Israel has since Mar 2 blocked all aid deliveries to Gaza, and resumed intense military operations in the territory in mid-March, with a two-month ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in tatters.

The Red Cross warned Friday that the humanitarian response in Gaza was on the “verge of total collapse” after two months of Israel blocking aid to the territory.

A previous “Freedom Flotilla” launched from southern Türkiye in 2010 ended in bloodshed when Israeli forces stormed the Mavi Marmara vessel, killing 10 and wounding 28.

Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023, which sparked the Gaza war, resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Thursday that at least 2,326 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,418.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/activists-say-drones-hit-aid-boat-heading-gaza-blame-israel-5105816

Iran had a grand plan for Syria – taken right from the playbook of a country it considers its arch-enemy.
Just as the United States solidified its global dominance by investing billions in rebuilding Europe after the Second World War, Iran would do the same in the Middle East by reconstructing a war-ravaged Syria.
The ambitious program, outlined in a 33-page official Iranian study, makes several references to “The Marshall Plan,” America’s blueprint for resurrecting post-War Europe. The U.S. strategy succeeded: It made Europe “reliant on America,” a presentation accompanying the study says, by “creating economic, political and socio-cultural dependence.”
The document, dated May 2022 and authored by an Iranian economic-policy unit stationed in Syria, was found by Reuters reporters in Iran’s looted Damascus embassy when they visited the building in December. It was among hundreds of other papers they uncovered there and at other locations around the capital – letters, contracts and infrastructure plans – that reveal how Iran planned to recoup the billions it spent saving President Bashar al-Assad during the country’s long-running civil war. The Syria-strategy document envisions building an economic empire, while also deepening influence over Iran’s ally.

“A $400 billion opportunity,” reads one bullet point in the study.
These imperial hopes were crushed when rebels hostile to Iran toppled Assad in December. The deposed dictator fled for Russia. Iran’s paramilitaries, diplomats and companies beat their own hasty exit. Its embassy in Damascus was ransacked by Syrians celebrating Assad’s demise.
The building was littered with documents highlighting the challenges facing Iranian investors. The documents and months of reporting reveal new insight into the doomed effort to turn Syria into a lucrative satellite state.

Reuters interviewed a dozen Iranian and Syrian businessmen, investigated the web of Iranian companies navigating the gray zones of sanctions, and visited some of Iran’s abandoned investments, which included religious sites, factories, military installations and more. Those investments were stymied by militant attacks, local corruption, and Western sanctions and bombing runs.
Among the investments was a €411 million power plant in coastal Latakia being built by an Iranian engineering firm. It stands idle. An oil extraction project is abandoned in Syria’s eastern desert. A $26 million Euphrates River rail bridge built by an Iranian charity linked to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei collapsed under a U.S. coalition airstrike years ago, and was neither repaired nor fully paid for.

The roughly 40 projects in the abandoned embassy files represent a fraction of Iran’s overall investment. But in this assortment alone, Reuters found that Syria’s outstanding debts to Iranian companies toward the end of the war amounted to at least $178 million. Former Iranian lawmakers have publicly estimated the total debt of Assad’s government to Iran at more than $30 billion.
Hassan Shakhesi, a private Iranian trader, lost €16 million in vehicle parts he shipped to Syria’s Latakia port just before Assad fled. “I’d set up an office and home in Syria. That’s gone,” said Shakhesi. He said he was never paid for the goods, which disappeared. “I hope Iran’s long history with Syria isn’t just wiped out. I’m now having to look at business elsewhere.”

Ultimately, Iran’s hopes to emulate the Marshall Plan and build an economic empire encompassing Syria went more the way of America’s debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Early intervention in Syria’s civil war on the side of Assad deepened Iran’s influence over this gateway to the Mediterranean Sea. The story of the squandered investments reveals the financial risk that brought, and how the mutual reliance of the pariah governments of Syria and Iran hurt both.

For Iran’s rulers, Assad’s fall and the collapse of their Syria plans come at a precarious time. They have been weakened by Israel’s decimation of the Islamic Republic’s key proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. They are under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to negotiate a deal that could neuter Iran’s nuclear program, or face possible military action if they balk. Iran’s regional rivals, including Turkey and Israel, are rushing to fill the vacuum left by its departure. The nascent Syrian government, for its part, has to contend with multiple frozen infrastructure projects as it tries to rebuild the war-ravaged country.

‘The Syrian people have a wound caused by Iran, and we need a lot of time to heal’

Reuters reporters discovered an array of documents as they visited Iran’s centers of soft power in Syria after Assad’s fall – diplomatic, economic and cultural offices. They photographed nearly 2,000 of the records, including trade contracts, economic plans and official cables, and left them where found. Reporters then used artificial intelligence, including the AI legal assistant CoCounsel owned by Thomson Reuters, to summarize and analyze the texts.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said in December he expected the new Syrian leadership to honor the country’s obligations. But it’s not a priority for the new government, led by a former rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, that fought Assad and his Iranian backers.

Iranian government officials did not respond to requests for comment about the findings by Reuters.
“The Syrian people have a wound caused by Iran, and we need a lot of time to heal,” the new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, said in an interview in December. Neither al-Sharaa nor other officials from Syria’s new government responded to requests for comment from Reuters about Iran’s role in the fallen regime. Sharaa’s HTS, initially an offshoot of Al Qaeda, severed those ties years ago and says it wants to build an inclusive and democratic Syria. Some Syrians, especially non-Sunni minorities, fear it retains the jihadist goal of establishing an Islamic government.
For most Syrians, the departure of Assad and the Iran-backed militias was cause to celebrate. Those Syrians who worked with Iranians have mixed feelings, however, about the exodus of Iranian business, which has left many of them without an income.

“Iran was here, that was just the reality, and I made a living from it for a while,” said a Syrian engineer who worked on the idled Latakia power plant.
The engineer asked not to be named for fear of reprisals for working for an Iranian company, after a spate of revenge killings last month against Syrians associated with the old regime. He said the Latakia project was hobbled by financial problems, Syrian corruption and underqualified workers from Iran, but that once completed would have boosted Syria’s struggling grid.
“The power plant was something for the future of Syria,” he said.

IRAN’S MAN IN SYRIA

The man tasked with executing Iran’s economic plans in Syria was a bearded construction manager from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps named Abbas Akbari. He was promoted with fanfare in March 2022 to lead a unit called the Headquarters for Developing Economic Relations of Iran and Syria. Its task was to boost trade and recoup Iran’s investment. His team produced the study that held up the Marshall Plan as a model.
Akbari enlisted comrades in the Revolutionary Guards, an elite branch of Iran’s military, to help with logistics on civilian projects.
Reuters found letters signed by Akbari in Iran’s looted embassy. The documents include details of projects he supported and the money spent. Near the scattered papers was a vault and a pack of C4 explosives discovered by fighters who were guarding the building. Akbari did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Iran’s foray into Syria began long before Akbari’s arrival. Mapna Group, an Iranian infrastructure conglomerate that hired the Syrian engineer who worked on the Latakia project, won its first major contract in 2008 to expand a power plant near Damascus. That was soon followed by a second contract to build another plant near the city of Homs.

Iran’s doomed investments in Syria

Iran’s hopes to mimic the U.S. Marshall Plan by rebuilding Syria were dashed by the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Reuters found documents outlining Iranian investments and how they went wrong.

The deals were part of a growing Iranian investment in Syria in the years ahead of the 2011 uprising against Assad, as U.S. sanctions shut off both countries to the West. They were the fruit of a relationship dating back to the Iranian revolution of 1979, which led to the overthrow of the Shah and the establishment of the Islamic Republic.
Assad’s father, President Hafez al-Assad, was the first Arab leader to recognise the republic and helped arm Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fledgling Shi’ite Muslim theocracy in its 1980s war with Iraq. They fought Israel during the Lebanese civil war – Iran via its Hezbollah proxy – and later sent fighters and weapons to resist the American occupation of Iraq after 2003.
Iran’s political investments in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon paid off for years. Like Iran, Iraq and Lebanon have significant populations of Shi’ite Muslims, and Shi’ite paramilitaries nurtured by the Revolutionary Guards dominated successive governments in Baghdad and Beirut. Syria became the key transit route for weapons and personnel across the “Axis of Resistance,” the name Iran gives to the armed groups and states it supports against Israel and the West.

Japan could use its $1 trillion-plus holdings of U.S. Treasuries as a card in trade talks with Washington, its finance minister said on Friday, raising explicitly for the first time its leverage as a massive creditor to the United States.
While Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato did not threaten to sell holdings, his remarks touch on a critical concern global investors have about what Japan and China, the two largest owners of U.S. government debt, might do in seeking tariff concessions from the Trump administration.

The Treasury market saw a huge global sell-off last month after U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision on April 2 to slap sweeping tariffs on trading partners, including key strategic allies such as Japan.
Kato said in a television interview the primary purpose of Japan’s U.S. Treasury holdings – the largest in the world – is to ensure it has sufficient liquidity to conduct yen intervention when necessary.
“But we obviously need to put all cards on the table in negotiations. It could be among such cards,” he said when asked whether Japan, in trade talks with the U.S., could reassure Washington it will not sell its Treasury holdings in the market.

“Whether we actually use that card, however, is a different question,” Kato added.
The U.S. Treasury Department did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment outside of office hours.
Kato’s remarks contrast with those he made last month, when he ruled out using Japan’s U.S. Treasury holdings in trade negotiations.
On Friday, Kato declined to comment on whether Tokyo’s U.S. bond holdings came up in his bilateral meeting with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week.
However, he said the huge market sell-off in Treasuries in April likely affected Washington’s approach in talks with Japan.
Japan’s and China’s presence in the Treasury market makes them a huge point of attention whenever U.S. yields spike, although little is known about their trading activity.
While Japan, as a close U.S. ally, is seen as less likely to use its Treasury holdings as a bargaining tool, some analysts speculate that China may liquidate its holdings as a “nuclear” option as trade tensions with the U.S. escalate.

So far, there are few signs of such a sell-off. Foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries rose 3.4% in February, data from the Treasury Department showed last month, with the two largest owners, Japan and China, building up their U.S. debt positions.
But even hints of their huge market presence could be a key weapon for Japan, which otherwise has little leverage due to its economy’s huge reliance on the U.S. car market.
“Playing the card early, while the U.S. bond market is in the minds of the administration after recent weeks, is a smart move,” said Martin Whetton, head of financial markets strategy at Westpac in Sydney. “They don’t have to do anything. But they can put themselves in a solid position to negotiate. It is, after all, the art of the deal.”
Japan’s top trade negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, said he deepened talks on trade, non-tariff measures and economic security cooperation in his second round of talks with Bessent in Washington on Thursday. He also said the two sides hoped to hold their next meeting in mid-May.

USE ALL TOOLS

The U.S. Treasury sell-off in April was among factors that led Trump to announce a 90-day pause on his “reciprocal” tariff plan, with Bessent likely playing a key role, according to sources close to the White House.
Aside from the tariffs, Japan has also faced criticism from Trump that it was intentionally weakening the yen to give its exports a trade advantage – an accusation Tokyo denies.
Kato said his meeting with Bessent last week did not discuss any desirable exchange rate or a possible framework to control currency moves.
Analysts say Japan’s huge Treasury holdings can also be used as a bargaining tool in any differences Washington has with Tokyo over currencies.
“(It) should be a card if not an ace card for the negotiation,” said Naka Matsuzawa, chief macro strategist at Nomura Securities in Tokyo. “It would work not only to flatten the (bond yield) curve in the two countries but also avoid other outrageous requests such as artificial yen appreciation.”
But there are at the same time limits to such threats as unloading Treasuries would hurt Japan and China by disrupting markets and causing huge losses on their remaining holdings.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/japans-us-treasury-holdings-among-tools-trade-talks-finance-minister-kato-says-2025-05-01/

Israel attacked a target near the presidential palace in the Syrian capital Damascus, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said early on Friday, reiterating his vow to protect members of the Druze community.
It marks the second time Israel has struck Syria in as many days, following through on a promise to defend the minority group, which was involved in sectarian violence against Sunni gunmen earlier this week.

The Druze adhere to a faith that is an offshoot of Islam and have followers in Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
The strikes reflect Israel’s deep mistrust of the Sunni Islamists who toppled Bashar al-Assad in December, posing a further challenge to interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s efforts to establish control over the fractured nation.
“Israel struck last night near the presidential palace in Damascus,” Netanyahu said in a joint statement with Defense Minister Israel Katz.
“This is a clear message to the Syrian regime: We will not allow (Syrian) forces to deploy south of Damascus or any threat to the Druze community.”

The Israeli military said in a statement it struck “adjacent to the area of the Palace of Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa in Damascus”, without specifying the target. There was no immediate comment from Syria’s authorities.
Since Assad was ousted in December, Israel has seized ground in the southwest, vowed to protect the Druze, lobbied Washington to keep the neighbouring state weak, and has blown up much of the Syrian army’s heavy weapons in the days after he was toppled.
Sharaa, who was an al Qaeda commander before renouncing ties to the group in 2016, has repeatedly vowed to govern Syria in an inclusive way. But incidents of sectarian violence, including the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, have hardened fears among minority groups about the now dominant Islamists.
This week’s sectarian violence began on Tuesday with clashes between Druze and Sunni gunmen in the predominantly Druze area of Jaramana, sparked by a voice recording cursing the Prophet Mohammad and which the Sunni militants suspected was made by a Druze.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-attacks-target-near-syrian-presidential-palace-netanyahu-says-2025-05-02/

Detailed Army plans for a potential military parade on President Donald Trump’s birthday in June call for more than 6,600 soldiers, at least 150 vehicles, 50 helicopters, seven bands and possibly a couple thousand civilians, The Associated Press has learned.

The planning documents, obtained by the AP, are dated April 29 and 30 and have not been publicly released. They represent the Army’s most recent blueprint for its long-planned 250th anniversary festival on the National Mall and the newly added element — a large military parade that Trump has long wanted but is still being discussed.

The Army anniversary just happens to coincide with Trump’s 79th birthday on June 14.

While the slides do not include any price estimates, it would likely cost tens of millions of dollars to put on a parade of that size. Costs would include the movement of military vehicles, equipment, aircraft and troops from across the country to Washington and the need to feed and house thousands of service members.

High costs halted Trump’s push for a parade in his first term, and the tanks and other heavy vehicles that are part of the Army’s latest plans have raised concerns from city officials about damage to roads.

Asked about plans for a parade, Army spokesman Steve Warren said Thursday that no final decisions have been made.

Col. Dave Butler, another Army spokesman, added that the Army is excited about the plans for its anniversary.

“We want to make it into an event that the entire nation can celebrate with us,” said Butler. “We want Americans to know their Army and their soldiers. A parade might become part of that, and we think that will be an excellent addition to what we already have planned.”

Others familiar with the documents, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans have not been finalized, said they represent the Army’s plans as it prepares for any White House approval of the parade. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

There has been no formal approval yet. Changes to the plans have been made in recent weeks and more are likely.

In a Truth Social post Thursday night that did not mention the June 14 plans, Trump wrote, “We are going to start celebrating our victories again!” He vowed to rename May 8, now known as Victory in Europe Day, as “Victory Day for World War II,” and to change November 11, Veterans Day, to “Victory Day for World War I.”

What would go into the potential Army parade

Much of the equipment would have to be brought in by train or flown in.

Some equipment and troops were already going to be included in the Army’s birthday celebration, which has been in the works for more than a year. The festival was set to involve an array of activities and displays on the National Mall, including a fitness competition, climbing wall, armored vehicles, Humvees, helicopters and other equipment.

A parade, however, would increase the equipment and troops involved. According to the plans, as many as 6,300 of the service members would be marching in the parade, while the remainder would be responsible for other tasks and support.

The Army’s early festival plans did not include a parade, but officials confirmed last month that the Army had started discussions about adding one.

The plans say the parade would showcase the Army’s 250 years of service and foresee bringing in soldiers from at least 11 corps and divisions nationwide. Those could include a Stryker battalion with two companies of Stryker vehicles, a tank battalion and two companies of tanks, an infantry battalion with Bradley vehicles, Paladin artillery vehicles, Howitzers and infantry vehicles.

There would be seven Army bands and a parachute jump by the Golden Knights. And documents suggest that civilian participants would include historical vehicles and aircraft and two bands, along with people from veterans groups, military colleges and reenactor organizations.

According to the plan, the parade would be classified as a national special security event, and that request has been submitted by the National Park Service and is under review.

And it is expected that the evening parade would be followed by a concert and fireworks.

One of the documents raises concerns about some limitations, which include where troops would be housed and “significant concerns regarding security requirements” as equipment flows into the city. It says the biggest unknown so far is which units would be participating.

Trump has long wanted a big military parade

In his first term, Trump proposed having a parade after seeing one in France on Bastille Day in 2017. Trump said that after watching the two-hour procession along the famed Champs-Elysees that he wanted an even grander one on Pennsylvania Avenue.

That plan was ultimately dumped due to the huge costs — with one estimate of a $92 million price tag — and other logistical issues. Among those were objections from city officials who said including tanks and other heavy armored vehicles would tear up the roads.

Trump said in a social media post in 2018 that he was canceling the event over the costs and accused local politicians of price gouging.

This year, as plans progressed for the Army to host its birthday festival in Washington, talk about a parade began anew.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser acknowledged in April that the administration reached out to the city about holding a parade on June 14 that would stretch from Arlington, Virginia, where the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery are located, across the Potomac River and into Washington.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/army-parade-trump-birthday-96bb9c8e9af1ef285c56fdc3d1ba4b35

DOGE has its day!

Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency team expressed their gratitude Thursday to the federal employees partnering with the cost-cutting agency as they work around the clock to eliminate wasteful spending and modernize the workforce.

The billionaire tech entrepreneur, 53, and several male staffers told Fox News host Jesse Watters that they’ve seen increased willingness from federal workers and agencies to collaborate with DOGE to improve government operations — noting that conflict is often a rare exception that’s heightened in the media.

“We’d like to just give a big thank you to all the government employees who are helping reduce the waste and fraud, because this is — we really couldn’t do it without you,” Musk said during a 10 p.m. staff meeting inside DOGE headquarters that was highlighted on “Jesse Watters Primetime.”

“I’m not trying to sort of say all government employees are bad. That’s absolutely not the case. It’s just that there actually just does need to be a serious effort to reduce the waste and fraud. And we’re just making that happen,” the DOGE chief continued.

“There is conflict, but that is the exception. That’s actually true of history in general. There’s — people study the wars a lot, but actually most of the time there wasn’t a war. It’s just not as exciting.”

Members of his team said that while they’ve lost friendships and experienced some pushback from certain federal agencies — it’s all worth it in the end to serve their country.

Though one agency has been particularly resistant to their efforts: The United States Institute of Peace.

“I mean, any given company, any given organizational name is going to kind of be the opposite of the title,” Musk quipped as one of his workers explained finding loaded guns inside the agency’s headquarters as workers deleted a vast amount of financial information.

They cited congressionally approved funds being spent on private jets and a $130,000 contract with a former member of the Taliban — but didn’t clarify what the contracted services were for. Their findings have since been referred to the Department of Justice and FBI

“I think it’s a great example, because most Americans don’t know what’s going on at a lot of these smaller agencies,” one DOGE-ian told Watters.

“And this is, I think, the most extreme case of some of the wasteful spending that we’re finding.”

Other agencies, like the Federal Employees Retirement System, have been much more open to enhancing and streamlining their workload from an archaic filing system to a digital platform.

“It’s very prehistoric, like dinosaurs would think this is kind of old,” Musk said.

The tech mogul said his staffers have no plans to take their “eye off the ball” and assured DOGE will remain a “long-term enterprise” even after his status as a special government employee ends on May 30.

“It’s a long-term enterprise because if we take our eye off the ball, the waste and fraud will come roaring back,” Musk said.

“We’re trying to have it be such that the funding is removed, the grants are gone. There’s a lot of work required to restart the waste and fraud. And that will at least slow it down.”

The richest man alive has boasted $160 billion cuts in annual spending after settling a $1 trillion goal — though the precise amount of money that DOGE has cut is unclear.

President Trump tapped the X owner to lead the temporary organization to discover and eliminate wasteful government spending, fraud and abuse.

Musk quickly tore through Washington during Trump’s initial months back in the White House — leading efforts to gut the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and its 10,000 employees.

He also backed the Office of Management and Budget on a similar mission to shutter the 1,700-person Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while analyzing the federal bureaucracy from the Education Department to the Pentagon.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/05/01/us-news/elon-musk-vows-doge-will-not-take-its-eye-off-the-ball-after-he-steps-down-from-cost-cutting-agency/

On Friday morning, a spokesperson for China’s ministry of commerce announced that Beijing was assessing the possibility of tariff negotiations with the United States.

It was news the rest of the world had been waiting to hear as astonishingly high tariffs – up to 245% on some Chinese exports to the US – throttle trade between the world’s two biggest economies, raising the spectre of a recession.

“US officials have repeatedly expressed their willingness to negotiate with China on tariffs,” the spokesperson told reporters.

“China’s position is consistent. If we fight, we will fight to the end; if we talk, the door is open… If the US wants to talk, it should show its sincerity and be prepared to correct its wrong practices and cancel unilateral tariffs.”

The statement comes a day after a Weibo account linked to Chinese state media said the US had been seeking to initiate discussions, and a week after Trump claimed discussions were already underway – a suggestion Beijing denied.

“China has no need to talk to the United States,” Yuyuantantian, a Weibo account affiliated with China Central Television (CCTV), said in Thursday’s post. “From the perspective of negotiations, the United States must be the more anxious party at present.”

Such comments follow a cycle of assertions and denials from both the US and China, as each side refuses to publicly initiate discussions.

The question is not whether those discussions will take place, but rather when, under what circumstances and at whose behest.

Madonna, Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross will all be attending the glamorous Met Gala, also known as fashion’s biggest night, Page Six hears.

Icon Ross will be at the swanky benefit taking place next Monday along with daughter, “Black-ish” star Tracee Ellis Ross and her son Evan, we hear.

Another source tells us Lauryn Hill will also be in attendance, after receiving an invite from gala co-chair Pharrell Williams.

Lorde, who just dropped the new song “What Was That,” Bebe Rexha, and singer Shaboozey, known for the hit “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” will also be there, according to a source.

Movie stars Angela Bassett and Demi Moore are also heading to Anna Wintour’s big night.

Sources tell Page Six we will also see comic Chris Rock and late night host Jimmy Fallon in their finest.

Singer Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren, who are starring in Broadway’s “The Last Five Years,” will be walking the carpet, too.

Walter Goggins, who has been garnering attention for the latest season of HBO hit “White Lotus,” will also be climbing the famous steps of the Met, as well as “Succession” star Sarah Snook, who is starring in “Dorian Gray” on Broadway.

We hear “Severance” star Adam Scott will also be there, as well as “Stranger Things” Caleb McLaughlin.

And “Saturday Night Live” star Ego Nwodim will be on hand interviewing guests for Vogue, says a source.

The theme for this year’s gala is “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” with the dress code, “Tailored for You.” It benefits the Met’s Costume Institute, as ever.

Invites for the event are hard to come by. Guests are brought by designers or brands, and have to be approved by Vogue’s Wintour.

A source previously told Page Six that other stars heading to this year’s glam event include singers Doechii, Shakira, Lizzo, Mary J. Blige, and models Amelia Gray and Ashley Graham.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/05/01/style/madonna-diana-ross-stevie-wonder-and-more-set-to-attend-met-gala/

The decision comes weeks after the national security adviser to Donald Trump was embroiled in the Signalgate scandal.

President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he would nominate his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, to become the US ambassador to the UN.

“I am pleased to announce that I will be nominating Mike Waltz to be the next United States Ambassador to the United Nations,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The announcement came hours after reports that Waltz and his deputy, Alex Wong, would be stepping down from their current roles, following mounting pressure over Waltz’s role in the Signalgate scandal.

They are the first reported departures from President Trump’s Cabinet just over 100 days into his presidency.

Waltz’ appointment as ambassador to the UN will still require confirmation from Congress.

The reluctance to fire Waltz appeared to be an attempt to distance the new Trump presidency from his first run which was mired by a frequent turnover of staff.

Why is Trump giving Waltz a new job?

In March, Waltz claimed “full responsibility” for erroneously adding a journalist to a group messaging chat in which senior members of President Donald Trump’s administration discussed impending military strikes in Yemen.

Waltz said he didn’t personally know The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, adding he wasn’t sure how he ended up in the highly sensitive chat on Signal.

At the time, Trump downplayed the lapse which he said “turned out not to be a serious one” and “the only glitch in two months,” while expressing his continued support for Waltz.

In his Thursday announcement, Trump did not mention the scandal, instead saying: “Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first. I know he will do the same in his new role.”

It was not clear yet who would replace the 51-year-old former Republican lawmaker from Florida. One source suggested to Reuters that Steve Witkoff, who has been involved in both the Middle East and the war in Ukraine could be an option.

However, Trump said that: “In the interim, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as National Security Advisor.”

What was Signalgate?

Signalgate, for which Waltz was considered the main person responsible, was a major embarrassment for the Trump administration.

It revolved around a chat on the Signal messaging platform that was being used to discuss imminent military strikes in Yemen.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, one of the several top Trump administration officials who were in the chat, shared details of the timing of several strikes targeting a member of the Houthi militant group.

The following is a part of the timeline he posted in the group, unaware that a journalist was also present:

“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”
“1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME.”

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/trump-taps-national-security-adviser-waltz-as-un-ambassador/a-72409147

Apple has for years relied on Chinese factories to make its iPhones. But it’s shifting some production to India to mitigate potential Trump tariffs.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said Thursday that India will play a major role in making iPhones destined for the US market.

“A majority of iPhones sold in the US will have India as their country of origin,” Cook said while announcing the company’s latest quarterly results.

Vietnam, meanwhile, would be the country of origin for almost all iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and AirPod products sold in the United States, Cook added.

The statement comes as the tech giant examines ways to mitigate the impact of US President Donald Trump’s tariff onslaught on its supply chains as well as sales and profit margins.

Trump’s tariffs put Apple in tough spot

Apple has for years relied on Chinese factories to make its iPhones.

But Trump’s hefty duties on imports to the US, especially the tit-for-tat tariff exchanges with China, put the company in a difficult spot.

The US president has since granted a temporary reprieve for tech products, including smartphones and semiconductors, but Washington has signaled that some levies could come in the weeks ahead.

Cook said Trump’s tariffs had a limited impact on Apple in the previous quarter, but he warned that the duties, if they remain in place, would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the company’s costs in the April-to-June quarter.

“We are not able to precisely estimate the impact of tariffs, as we are uncertain of potential future actions prior to the end of the quarter,” Cook said. “Assuming the current global tariff rates, policies and applications do not change for the balance of the quarter and no new tariffs are added, we estimate the impact to add $900 million (€797 million) to our costs.”

Shift to India but China remains key

The threat of tariffs has forced Apple to rethink its strategy.

The company has ramped up iPhone production in India in recent months, with an estimated 20% of iPhones currently being made in the South Asian country.

Despite the move to shift some production, most iPhones still continue to be produced in China, and Cook insisted on Thursday that it will continue to be where most Apple products are made for sale outside of the United States.

Apple’s sales in China, however, fell 2.3% to $16 billion in the March quarter.

The company is confronting fierce competition in the Chinese market where domestic makers such as Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo have been gaining market share.

Apple is also experiencing delays in rolling out artificial-intelligence features.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/apple-says-most-iphones-sold-in-us-will-be-from-india/a-72411418

Last month, JD Vance called Prime Minister Narendra Modi and strongly condemned the Pahalgam terror attack and conveyed his deepest condolences on the loss of lives.

US Vice President JD Vance said on Thursday that he hopes India will respond to Pakistan over the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir that killed 26 – in a way that would avoid a “broader regional conflict”. He also urged Pakistan to cooperate with India to “hunt down” the terrorists involved in the attack in Pahalgam.

“Our hope here is that India responds to this terrorist attack in a way that doesn’t lead to a broader regional conflict. And we hope, frankly, that Pakistan, to the extent that they’re responsible, cooperates with India to make sure that the terrorists sometimes operating in their territory are hunted down and dealt with,” Mr Vance said in a podcast interview with Fox News.

Mr Vance was on a India tour with his family when the deadly attack took place.

Last month, he called Prime Minister Narendra Modi and strongly condemned the terror attack and conveyed his deepest condolences on the loss of lives. He also expressed that the US stands with the people of India and is ready to provide all assistance in the joint fight against terrorism, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in a post on X.

The US Vice President also wrote on X: “Usha and I extend our condolences to the victims of the devastating terrorist attack in Pahalgam, India. Over the past few days, we have been overcome with the beauty of this country and its people. Our thoughts and prayers are with them as they mourn this horrific attack.”

Source: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/jd-vance-to-india-on-reply-to-pakistan-over-jammu-and-kashmir-pahalgam-terror-attack-avoid-regional-war-8308934#pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll

SCIENTISTS have discovered a hidden lid that keeps the vast reservoir of magma beneath the Yellowstone supervolcano at bay.

For years scientists have suspected that a mysterious chamber beneath the northeastern part of the Yellowstone caldera may hold molten rock.

How deep the reservoir lies, or just how much magma it holds is still up for debate.

But scientists say they have found a hidden magma cap atop this reservoir that helps stop the supervolcano from erupting.

There have long been questions over when Yellowstone’s expansive volcanic system could see an eruption.

Historically Yellowstone has erupted every about 600,000 years or so, but it has been stagnant for 630,000 years – meaning it is 30,000 years overdue.

But this cap – which stretches between 3.5 and 4 km (2.2 and 2.5 miles) below the Earth’s surface – allows the volcano to ‘breathe’, according to scientists.

They say new models show the cap to be regularly releasing small belches of gas that keep internal pressures stable and hold off an eruption.

Based on the timing of previous explosions, scientists at the United States Geological Survey predict the risk of a Yellowstone super-eruption is about 0.00014% each year.

If enough air was restricted in the supervolcano’s ‘throat’, scientists believe a catastrophic explosion could follow.

“For decades, we’ve known there’s magma beneath Yellowstone, but the exact depth and structure of its upper boundary has been a big question,” Earth scientist Brandon Schmandt from Rice University explained.

“What we’ve found is that this reservoir hasn’t shut down – it’s been sitting there for a couple million years, but it’s still dynamic.”

Using a new technique developed by Schmandt’s co-lead author Chenglong Duan, scientists sent vibrations into the ground to create a model of layers in Earth’s crust.

Duan says the technique has provided the “first super clear images of the top of the magma reservoir beneath Yellowstone caldera.”

The vibrations – seismic waves – flowed through the rock but began moving slowly, suggesting they were penetrating a muddy mixture of supercritical fluid and magma.

This was located between 3km and 8km deep.

“Seeing such a strong reflector at that depth was a surprise,” added Schmandt.

“It tells us that something physically distinct is happening there — likely a buildup of partially molten rock interspersed with gas bubbles.”

But atop this reservoir is a “sharply defined top” – the cap.

It is considered a ‘self-sealed’ lid because it is only slightly porous – meaning it can let out trace amounts of gases to release any pressure build up.

Beneath the lid there appears to be supercritical water, which is heated and pressurised to a point where the line between liquid and gas blur.

This process could result in an eruption, if not for the gradual cooling and crystallisation of the sludgy material in the upper crust which creates a minimally leaky magma cap.

It looks like the system is venting gas – which is good news.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/14146800/hidden-lid-that-stops-yellowstone-supervolcano-from-erupting-found-as-scientists-reveal-exact-chance-of-doomsday-event/

THIS is the shocking moment raging wildfires surge towards Jerusalem, as Israel declares a “national emergency”.

Cops have arrested 18 people on suspicion of arson following the monster inferno.

Shocking footage shows thick black smoke above the main highway linking Jerusalem to Tel Aviv as firefighters race to control the blaze.

Terrified drivers can be seen scrambling to get out of their vehicles as they flee from the scene.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, warned that the fires could reach the city and declared a “national emergency”.

Netanyahu said: “The western wind can push the fire easily towards the outskirts of [Jerusalem] – and even into the city itself.

“We need to bring as many fire engines as possible and create firebreaks well beyond the current fire lines … We are now in a national emergency, not just a local one.”

At least 12 people were treated in hospitals on Wednesday after inhaling smoke while another 10 people were treated in the field, according to Israeli emergency services.

Among them were two pregnant women and two infants under a year old.

18 people have been arrested on suspicion of arson, according to Netanyahu.

National security minister Itamar Ben Gvir also hinted that arson could be behind the fires.

Cops said they had arrested a resident of east Jerusalem who was caught “attempting to set fire to a field in the southern part of the city”.

The fire broke out around midday on Wednesday.

The flames quickly spread through a pine forest due to hot, dry conditions and strong winds.

Several communities were evacuated as a precaution as the smoke took over the area.

The fire has now burned about 5,000 acres making it the worst fire Israel has had in the past decade.

A spokesperson for Israels fire and rescue authority Tal Volvovitch said the fire has thankfully not damaged any homes.

The highway was reopened on Thursday and evacuation orders were lifted for a number of towns in the Jerusalem hills.

But efforts to extinguish the fires continue.

Israeli authorities said that ten firefighting planes were operating on Thursday morning.

They added that another eight aircraft to arrive during the course of the day.

Italy, Croatia, Spain, France, Ukraine, and Romania have all sent planes to help battle the flames, while North Macedonia and Cyprus have sent water-dropping aircraft.

The last time Israel saw fires like this was in 2010 when a massive forest fire burned for four days on northern Israels Mount Carmel.

The fires claimed 44 lives and destroyed around 12,000 acres of land.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/14143049/israel-wildfires-emergency-jerusalem-arsonists-arrested/

RUSSIA has launched a devastating drone strike on Odesa – just hours after the US and Ukraine signed a landmark mineral deal.

Two people were killed and at least 15 more were by Vladimir Putin’s blitz – marking a clear rebuke of the new agreement.

Raging fires were sparked and various buildings were damaged, according to emergency services.

Regional governor Oleh Kiper said: “The enemy attack damaged residential high-rises, private houses, a supermarket, a school, and cars.”

He confirmed that rescue workers were extinguishing flames following the horrific attack.

Ukraine’s state-owned railway Ukrzaliznytsia said the overnight attack damaged its tracks and various trains.

They said: “Railway employees are carrying out rapid repair work to ensure that freight trains run to ports without interruption.

“They are currently following an alternative route.”

The company added that one of the people killed in the strikes was a railway worker.

Ukraine’s air force said that mad Vlad launched five ballistic missiles and 170 drones during the overnight blitz.

74 drones were shot down while another 68 did not reach their targets, according to the force.

Images showed vile Vlad’s damage – with fiery infernos blazing up in apartments and civilians fleeing from their homes.

It comes mere hours after the Russian tyrant was dealt a massive blow due to Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky’s agreement to a critical minerals deal.

The long-awaited deal comes two months after a historic bust-up between The Don and his Ukrainian counterpart which shocked the world.

For Kyiv, the deal is central to binding it to Washington’s might and preventing any more Russian invasions after a peace deal.

Trump has vowed he wants peace in Ukraine, but has said that the US must be repaid for all the military support it has given the country.

The deal will provide Washington privileged access to new investment projects to develop Ukraine’s natural resources, including aluminium, graphite, oil and natural gas.

It also means America will continue to back Ukraine in the war.

Zelensky did not go to Washington to sign the deal – instead it was inked by Ukraine’s First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko.

She said after: “Together with the United States, we are creating the Fund that will attract global investment into our country.”

Trump initially was due to close the deal when Zelensky visited the White House back in February.

But plans were derailed after their historic White House row, which saw the infamous shouting match erupt and Trump asking Zelensky to leave.

After rounds of back-and-forth diplomatic negotiations, both Washington and Kyiv agreed to sign the deal Wednesday.

Announcing the signing of the deal in Washington, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it showed “both sides’ commitment to lasting peace and prosperity in Ukraine.”

He added: “This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centred on a free, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine over the long term.

“And to be clear, no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”

UNCLE SAM’S SECURITY
Ukrainian officials hope that signing the deal proposed by Trump will firm up American support for Kyiv in the more than three-year-old war.

A former Trump advisor told LBC the developing US-Ukraine minerals deal will be a “trip wire” that Russia will not cross.

He said: “It would engage the American military. It puts the Americans squarely in the middle of the Ukrainian state. It is a trip wire that Putin would dare not to cross.”

Trump had originally sought $500 billion in mineral wealth — around four times what the United States has contributed to Ukraine since the war.

He has previously baulked at offering security guarantees to Ukraine and has rejected its aspiration to join Nato.

But Trump said on Wednesday that a US presence on the ground would benefit Ukraine.

“The American presence will, I think, keep a lot of bad actors out of the country or certainly out of the area where we’re doing the digging,” Trump said at the cabinet meeting.

He reiterated that the US should get something for its prior aid to Kyiv, thus the effort to secure a deal for Ukraine’s plentiful deposits of rare earth minerals.

“I assume they’re going to honour the deal. We haven’t really seen the fruits of that deal yet. I suspect we will,” Trump said after a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

Ukraine holds some five per cent of the world’s mineral resources and rare earths, according to various estimates.

But work has not yet started on tapping many of the resources, and many sites are in territory now controlled by Russian forces.

Notably, Ukraine has around 20 per cent of the world’s graphite, an essential material for electric batteries, according to France’s Bureau of Geological and Mining Research.

Ukraine is also a major producer of manganese and titanium, and says it possesses the largest lithium deposits in Europe.

Russia controls about 20 per cent of Ukraine’s territory after more than three years of brutal fighting that has killed tens of thousand,s including civilians.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/14141597/russia-ukraine-drone-strike-odesa-vlad/

Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, many Western companies said they would fully withdraw. Nevertheless, some are holding on to their trademarks in the country.

According to a study by Ukraine’s Kyiv School of Economics, more than 460 international companies have ceased operations in Russia since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 by selling or liquidating their assets. According to the study, 59 global brands have left the Russian market.

Twenty-five of these companies are keeping their trademarks registered in Russia, DW learned from the database of Rospatent, the national patent office.

Maintaining the trademark means the names, logos and designs of a brand remain the company’s intellectual property and cannot be used or imitated by others.

If someone mentions McDonald’s, you probably think of the famous golden arches logo. With Mercedes, it would be the iconic three-pointed star. With Ikea, it’s the company name in blue letters within a yellow oval shape.

The companies that are keeping their trademarks registered include Ikea, McDonald’s and Mercedes-Benz, as well as the likes of Jaguar, Volvo and many others.

The other 34 companies of the 59 global brands — which include German consumer goods and adhesives manufacturer Henkel and Finnish energy supplier Fortum — have not applied for their trademarks to be used in Russia after February 2022. Some companies, such as consumer goods manufacturer Unilever and British American Tobacco, have transferred the trademark rights to some of their products to their former Russian subsidiaries. This means formally, they no longer have anything to do with them.

“The return of Western companies,” “Western companies follow Ariston and flock to Russia,” “The State Duma speaks out in favor of the return of Western companies” — the Russian press has been full of headlines like these in recent weeks. Media outlets refer to the Rospatent website which shows that companies like McDonald’s and KFC, which had announced their complete withdrawal from Russia, have applied for new trademarks or the extension of existing trademark rights.

Swedish furniture maker Ikea has come under particular scrutiny. In 2022, Ikea condemned Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2024, it finally left the Russian Federation and sold off its last warehouse in the Moscow region, where it had once started its Russian operations in 2003. Yet according to the Rospatent database, Ikea has filed at least four applications to extend the registration of its trademarks since February 2022, one of which is still under review.

Who has abandoned their brand?
The other companies listed by the Kyiv School of Economics have either not submitted or have withdrawn trademark applications, as German detergent and adhesive maker Henkel has done. It halted the procedure to extend its trademark rights in 2022, and the current registration expires at the end of this year.

A trademark registration is valid for a total of 10 years and many companies that submitted an application before February 2022 still have some time left.

German hardware store chain Obi already applied for trademark registration in 2021, but this was not approved until the end of 2022. The company’s intellectual property therefore remains protected for years to come, at least in theory.

In practice there may be exceptions. Under Russian law a competitor may legally challenge the right to use an “ownerless” trademark if it has not been used for three years. In March of this year, Russian air conditioning manufacturer Rusklimat succeeded in having the Swedish company Ericsson’s trademark registration declared invalid in court.

Why companies protect their trademarks
Russian economist and journalist Jan Melkumov says extending trademark rights is primarily a formal procedure. An application indicates that a company does not want to part with its brands in Russia. “Companies want to avoid someone else using their brand names. They don’t want to spend money on lawyers and go through a new registration process,” he told DW.

According to Melkumov, if companies agreed on a repurchase right when selling their Russian assets, they can also get their trademarks back. However, if these have already been sold by the buyer, repurchasing could take years.

At the same time, Melkumov emphasizes that, given the turbulent political situation and high risks, only few big companies would be likely to return to Russia. “For them, it’s a question of strategic planning. If the political situation changes in five or 10 years, it will be easier for them to reestablish their presence,” Melkumov told DW.

According to him, a return to the Russian market depends less on the willingness of companies and more on the political situation and regime in Russia. “Even under favorable conditions, a return will not be reminiscent of the 1990s,” Melkumov said. “There will not be as much enthusiasm and trust in Russia as there was then — people will be cautious.”

The Ukrainian organization B4Ukraine, which campaigns for Russia’s isolation, asked numerous companies about their plans for reentering the Russian market. McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, two US companies, issued cautious statements in this regard. They were published by B4Ukraine.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/why-eu-us-companies-are-keeping-trademark-rights-in-russia/a-72403093

Kyle Richards’ look-alike daughter Sophia Umansky stunned fans with graphic images of hair loss after taking a weight-loss medication.

“I am very lucky that I have so much hair, because at the rate that I’ve been losing hair, I’m gonna be bald in about a week,” the brunette beauty said during a TikTok shared Wednesday.

“I started Mounjaro about four months ago, and I would say like maybe for the past three weeks to a month, I’ve noticed a dramatic hair loss situation,” she explained.

Sophia is the third daughter of the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star, and the second daughter of three that Richards shares with her estranged husband, Mauricio Umansky.

Though she wore her long, shiny hair down around her shoulders for the clip, she had shocking imagery for her followers.

“I’m just going to show you a quick little video of what my hair loss looks like, and this is every day,” the “Buying Beverly Hills” personality, 25, said. “And you’re not even seeing the half of it.”

She proceeded to show clumps of hair around the drain and sticking to the walls of her shower, explaining that the reality is “a lot worse” than it looks since the video only shows the before and after of her showers.

She demonstrated that when she pulls her hand through her hair during the day, “piles” of hair come out.

Sophia explained that she doesn’t think the extreme hair loss is a “direct result of the medication.”

“I think it’s a direct result of rapid weight loss because of the medication, and not eating enough vitamins, protein, all that kind of stuff.”

She added that she’s been “putting an effort into” taking vitamins and eating protein in order to correct the problem.

Sophia told her fans that to combat hair loss she’s also using OMI hair growth peptides and has been taking collagen as well as Grüns vitamins.

Source: https://pagesix.com/2025/05/01/celebrity-news/kyle-richards-daughter-sophia-shows-off-hair-loss-from-weight-loss-drug/

A Ukrainian drone attack left at least seven people dead and a Russian strike on Odesa killed two people Thursday, officials said, just hours after Kyiv and Washington signed a long-anticipated agreement granting U.S. access to Ukraine’s mineral resources.

The attack in the partially occupied Kherson region of southern Ukraine, which struck a market in the town of Oleshky, killed seven and wounded more than 20 people, Moscow-appointed Gov. Vladimir Saldo said.

“At the time of the attack, there were many people in the market,” Saldo wrote on Telegram. After the first wave of strikes, he said, Ukraine sent further drones to “finish off” any survivors.

Meanwhile, a Russian drone strike on the Black Sea port city of Odesa early Thursday killed two people and injured 15 others, Ukrainian emergency services said.

Regional Gov. Oleh Kiper said the barrage struck apartment buildings, private homes, a supermarket and a school.

Videos shared by Kiper on Telegram showed a high-rise building with a severely damaged facade, a shattered storefront and firefighters battling flames.

A drone struck and ignited a fire at a petrol station in the center of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

Following the attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia had ignored a U.S. proposal for a full and unconditional ceasefire for more than 50 days now.

“There were also our proposals — at the very least, to refrain from striking civilian infrastructure and to establish lasting silence in the sky, at sea, and on land,” he said. “Russia has responded to all this with new shelling and new assaults.”

Agreement on mineral wealth
The U.S. and Ukraine on Wednesday signed an agreement granting American access to Ukraine’s vast mineral resources, finalizing a deal months in the making that could enable continued military aid to Kyiv amid concerns that President Donald Trump might scale back support in ongoing peace negotiations with Russia.

Zelenskyy originally proposed such a deal last year as a way of helping secure Ukraine’s future by tying it to U.S. interests. Ukrainian officials said previous versions of the accord would have reduced Kyiv to a junior partner and gave Washington unprecedented rights to the country’s resources but that the version signed Wednesday was far more beneficial to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said Thursday that the signing of the minerals deal was the “first result” of the meeting he had with Trump at the Vatican during the pope’s funeral and called the agreement “truly historic.”

During his nightly address, he said that, per the signed agreement, there were no debts to be paid from past U.S. aid to Kyiv. He said the agreement will be sent to the parliament to be ratified and that Ukraine was “interested in ensuring that there are no delays with the agreement.”

According to Zelenskyy, the agreement is “truly equal” and “creates an opportunity for investments in Ukraine.”

“This is working together with America and on fair terms, when both the Ukrainian state and the United States, which help us in defense, can earn in partnership,” he added.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-odesa-drones-trump-dac51e957514fa7d2304c8d455ebb4c9

Tourist Nash Core admits he felt some fear when he and his 11-year-old son waded into the ocean off the Australian coast to help rescue a 3-meter (10-foot) great white shark stranded in shallow water.

Three local men managed to return the distressed animal from a sand bank into deeper water after an almost hour-long rescue effort on Tuesday near the coastal town of Ardrossan in South Australia state.

“It was either sick or … just tired,” said Core, who was visiting with his family from Gold Coast in Queensland state. “We definitely got it into some deeper water, so hopefully it’s swimming still.”

Core came across the unusual human-shark interaction while traveling around Australia with his wife Ash Core and their sons Parker, 11, and Lennox, 7.

Nash Core used his drone to shoot video of the writhing shark before he and Parker decided to help the trio who were struggling to move the shark into deeper water.

‘My heart’s pounding’
“To be honest, I did have some thoughts about, oh, why am I going out here?” Core recalled on Thursday.

“As we were going out, my young son, Parker, turned to me and said … ‘My heart’s pounding.’ I said, ‘Yeah, mine’s beating pretty fast too,’” Core added.

The three men had used crab rakes — a garden rake-like tool for digging small crabs from sand — to move the shark into deeper water by the time the father and son arrived.

Core said he decided against pushing the shark himself.

“They … got it into deeper water where I thought it’s probably not a good idea to go any further. That’s its territory and I’ll stay back,” he said.

One of the rescuers, Tony Dew, said the shark was last seen moving slowly.

“We were in about waist-deep water so if it wasn’t going to survive, I didn’t want to stand there and watch it and if it did recover, I really wanted to be back on the beach,” Dew told Seven Network televison.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/australia-stranded-shark-rescue-323cc74c32380c3b71a2dae70dbbf387

Workers were installing benches at a park in the ancient Greek port city of Thessaloniki when their excavator pushed brown soil off a fragile white skull.

They turned off the motorized equipment and set to work with pickaxes and shovels. The crew found two skeletons, then more. By March, 33 sets of bones lay in a tight cluster of unmarked burial pits in the shadow of a Byzantine fortress.

“We found many bullets in the heads, the skulls,” supervising engineer Haris Charismiadis said, standing on earth overturned by four months of digging.

It’s common to find ancient remains or objects in Greece. But hulking Yedi Kule castle was a prison where Communist sympathizers were tortured and executed during Greece’s 1946–49 Civil War. Tens of thousands died in the early Cold War-era battles between Western-backed government forces and left-wing insurgents, a brutal conflict with assassination squads, child abductions and mass displacements.

Greece’s archaeological service cleared the site for development because the bones are less than 100 years old. But authorities in Neapolis-Sykies, a suburb of the coastal city of Thessaloniki, pressed on with excavation, saying the chance find has “great historical and national importance.”

Descendants have been coming to the site in recent weeks, leaving flowers and asking authorities to conduct DNA testing “so they can retrieve the remains of their grandfather, great-grandfather or uncle,” said Simos Daniilidis, who has served as Neapolis-Sykies’ mayor since 1994.

As many as 400 Yedi Kule prisoners were executed, according to historians and the Greek Communist Party. Items found with the bodies — a woman’s shoe, a handbag, a ring — offer glimpses into the lives cut short.

Wartime legacy

For the families of slain pro-Communist Greeks, the find in the Park of National Resistance is reviving a wartime legacy kept dormant to avoid reigniting old animosities. The small site has become Greece’s first Civil War mass grave to be exhumed.

Government forces executed 19-year-old Agapios Sachinis after he refused to sign a declaration renouncing his political beliefs.

“These are not simple matters,” his namesake nephew said during a recent visit to the site.

“It’s about carrying inside you not just courage, but values and dignity you won’t compromise — not even to save your own life,” said Agapios Sachinis, 78.

A retired Communist city council member, Sachinis was imprisoned in the 1960s for his political activity during the dictatorship. Today, Greece’s Communist Party belongs to the political mainstream, largely thanks to its role in the country’s WWII resistance.

If Sachinis’ uncle’s remains are identified, he said, he will cremate them and keep the ashes at his home.

“I want Agapios close to me, at least while I’m alive,” he said.

Cold War playbook

Greece’s Civil War began in the wake of World War II. Coming after continent-wide destruction, it quickly lost international attention but the conflict marked a turning point: U.S. President Harry Truman’s policy of anti-communist intervention — the Truman Doctrine — was presented to Congress in 1947 as a means to direct funds and military support to Greece.

Etched on the newly excavated bones in Thessaloniki, then, is a playbook that went on to produce decades of repression, societal divisions and more unmarked graves in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Governments later addressing the Cold War-era abuses and atrocities faced a painful choice: To unearth the past — as attempted with investigative commissions in Eastern Europe and many Latin American countries — or suppress it for fear of fresh division.

Greek emergency laws were gradually lifted and only fully abolished in 1989. Records of summary trials and executions were never made public. No political force pushed for the excavation of suspected burial sites.

Politicians still use highly cautious language when addressing the past and the Thessaloniki discovery was met with a subdued public reaction. The find has not been directly addressed by the country’s center-right government – a reminder that many Greeks still find it easier to walk past the country’s ghosts than confront them.

Decades ago, the neighborhood park in Thessaloniki — a densely populated port city of a million with ruins from the ancient Greek, Roman and Ottoman eras, with historically strong Balkan and Jewish influences — was a field on the outskirts of the city. Today, it’s frequented by retirees and ringed by apartment buildings filled with middle-class families. During construction, residents whispered that bones had been discovered when foundations were laid, but no inquiry was conducted.

‘Flowers of their generation’

Executions by army firing squads extended into the 1950s and were publicly announced, but graves were unmarked and secret. Author and historian Spyros Kouzinopoulos, a Thessaloniki native, spent decades researching the executions at Yedi Kule, including the indignities endured by prisoners in their final hours.

After a military tribunal issued a death sentence, the chief guard would take the condemned prisoner to solitary confinement in tiny cells barely big enough to stand. Many would use their last hours to write letters to their families. At dawn, the chief guard and two others would retrieve the prisoner and hand them over to the firing squad. Most were loaded onto trucks to avoid attracting public attention. Sometimes they were led to their death on foot.

Most of the victims were barely adults — youth Kouzinopoulos called “flowers of their generation.”

Two 17-year-old schoolgirls, Efpraxia Nikolaidou and Eva Kourouzidou, were executed while wearing their uniforms, he said.

“It shook me to the core,” Kouzinopoulos said.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/greece-civil-war-thessaloniki-mass-graves-18ea95bb4222f0939eb5ef1850b9a55d

Videos widely shared on social media captured Mark Carney dancing and rapping along with the band, clad in a DWW hoodie.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent election victory celebrations featured videos of his enthusiastic dance moves. Mark Carney and the Liberal Party secured a fourth consecutive term in Canada’s federal election, a victory largely attributed to a surge in nationalistic sentiment sparked by escalating tensions with the United States. Following the win, Mark Carney joined Canadian rap-rock band Down With Webster (DWW) for a celebratory jam session.

Videos widely shared on social media captured Mark Carney dancing and rapping along with the band, clad in a DWW hoodie. The Prime Minister has been a long-time fan of the band and DWW’s song “Time to Win” has even been featured at Mark Carney’s political rallies as well.

The viral moment sparked a flurry of reactions online, with many expressing surprise and amusement at the Prime Minister’s unexpected display of enthusiasm.

Mark Carney’s Victory Speech

Kuwait has released an additional 10 American detainees, bringing to nearly two dozen the total number freed by the country in the past two months, U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The pardons of 23 Americans, done as a goodwill gesture by a U.S. ally, have yielded a quick succession of prisoner releases in the early months of a Trump administration that has sought to make hostage and detainee issues a foreign policy priority.

The prisoners, both men and women, include military contractors and veterans held for years on drug charges and other offenses by the small, oil-rich nation. One of them was said by supporters to have been coerced into signing a false confession and endured physical violence and threats against his wife and daughter.

Ten others were released in March, weeks after a visit to Kuwait by Adam Boehler, who is serving as the Trump administration’s envoy for hostage affairs. Other countries, including Venezuela, have released large numbers of Americans over a period of years, but it’s unusual for so many U.S. citizens to be freed by a foreign nation in such a short period of time as Kuwait has done.

“We flew out, we sat down with the Kuwaitis, and they said, ‘Listen, no one’s ever asked before at this level” for the release of the Americans, Boehler told the AP.

The releases were not done as part of a swap and the U.S. was not asked to give up anything in return.

“They’ve been extremely responsive, and their view is the United States is a huge ally. They know it’s a priority for (President Donald Trump) to bring Americans home,” Boehler said. “I credit it to the Kuwaiti understanding that we’ve stood up for them historically and they know that these things are important for the president.”

Kuwait is considered a major non-NATO ally of the U.S. The U.S. and Kuwait have had a close military partnership since America launched the 1991 Gulf War to expel Iraqi troops after Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, with some 13,500 American troops stationed in Kuwait at Camp Arifjan and Ali al-Salem Air Base.

But the country also has detained many American military contractors on drug charges, in some cases for years. Their families have alleged that their loved ones faced abuse while imprisoned in a country that bans alcohol and has strict laws regarding drugs. Others have criticized Kuwaiti police for bringing trumped-up charges and manufacturing evidence used against them — allegations never acknowledged by the autocratic nation ruled by a hereditary emir.

A spokesperson for the Kuwaiti embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Americans freed Wednesday “maintain their innocence, and it’s important to note none of these cases had an identified victim, and all of them were built on supposed confessions taken in Arabic without translation,” according to a statement from Jonathan Franks, a private consultant working on cases involving American hostages and detainees who represented nine of the 10 people released. He spent weeks in the country trying to negotiate the releases.

He credited the Trump administration for looking “for reasons to bring Americans home” even when they are not designated by the U.S. government as having been wrongfully detained. He said “these Americans, mostly veterans, lost years with their families.”

Among those freed Wednesday was Tony Holden, an HVAC technician and career defense contractor. He was working in support of Camp Arifjan at the time of his November 2022 arrest, when his family and supporters allege he was “set up by corrupt Kuwaiti police looking to earn bonuses.”

His supporters say his wife and daughter were physically threatened, that he was coerced into signing a written confession in Arabic and that his drug possession charge and sentence came in spite of him testing negative in a drug test and abstaining for religious reasons from drug and alcohol use.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/kuwait-detainees-released-us-state-department-fc35eb4fb08f8e18e0d7b0c5991cd191

For the first time, a federally recognized Indigenous tribe in the U.S. has led research using DNA to show their ancestral history.

The Picuris Pueblo, a sovereign nation in New Mexico, has oral histories and cultural traditions that link the tribe to the region of Chaco Canyon, one of the ancient centers of Pueblo culture and society.

“We’ve been telling our stories as long as time immemorial,” said Picuris Lt. Gov. Craig Quanchello. But he said those traditions were often “overlooked and erased.”

As members of the Picuris Pueblo seek a greater voice in shaping decisions about the future of Chaco Canyon, where debates about oil and gas drilling loom, leaders including Quanchello decided that using DNA sequencing to complement or corroborate their oral histories could be a useful tool. The group began a collaboration with an international team of geneticists.

“The DNA could help us protect” our heritage, he said. “Now we can say, ‘This is ours, we need to protect it.’”

The findings, published Thursday in the journal Nature, show close links between the genomes of 13 current members of Picuris and ancient DNA recovered from 16 Picuris individuals who lived between 1300 A.D. and 1500 A.D. in or near Chaco Canyon.

“The results show a strong relationship between ancient and present-day Picuris,” said co-author Thomaz Pinotti, a geneticist at the University of Copenhagen.

The genetic analysis was led by the Picuris. The researchers said this model of collaboration contrasts with a long history of archaeologists and geneticists seizing and studying artifacts and remains without the consent of Indigenous groups.

“It wasn’t an easy decision” to begin the collaboration with scientists, said co-author and Picuris Gov. Wayne Yazza. “This is life-changing data.”

There are 19 Pueblo tribes in New Mexico. The new study does not refute the historic connections of other tribes to Chaco Canyon.

Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a UNESCO World Heritage site managed by the U.S. National Park Service. It is famous for sweeping desert vistas and for monumental sandstone structures — including multistory homes and ceremonial structures — built by ancestral Pueblos.

“It’s super important that we don’t talk about Chaco in the category of ‘lost civilizations,’ like the Egyptian pyramids or Stonehenge,” said Paul Reed, a preservation archaeologist at Archaeology Southwest, who was not involved in the study. That notion “is particularly damaging in this instance because it disenfranchises the Pueblo people who live all around the canyon to this day.”

Brian Vallo, a member of the Acoma Pueblo who leads the Chaco Heritage Tribal Association, said a current concern revolves around drilling and mining permits on federal land adjacent to the park, which also impact the environment within the canyon.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/picuris-pueblo-chaco-canyon-dna-a86588a281c70921e0c1920ff7b6b5d7

One of the world’s most endangered amphibians – the strange, perpetually smiling Mexican axolotl – has thrived after being released in artificial wetlands, scientists have discovered.

In a study that provides hope for the long-term future of a creature that was pushed to the brink of extinction, scientists released 18 captive-bred axolotls in restored and artificial wetland close to Mexico City.

The researchers fitted the animals with radio trackers and found that they “survived and foraged successfully at both sites” – even gaining weight.

Lead researcher Dr Alejandra Ramos from the Autonomous University of Baja California said this was an “amazing result”.

The findings are published in the journal PLoS One and they suggest, the researchers say, that the axoltol can be brought back to its native habitat.

The waters of Xochimilco – shaped by traditional farming practices and flushed with spring water from the mountains – used to teem with these amphibians.

But as Mexico City grew, urbanisation, pollution and other pressures pushed axolotls to the brink of extinction, with some estimates suggesting that there were as few as 50 left in the wild.

“If we lose this species, we lose part of our Mexican identity,” said co-lead researcher Dr Luis Zambrano from the National University of Mexico.

It is no exaggeration to call the axoltol an icon. Aztec legend has it that the creature is a god in salamander form – the Aztec god of fire and lightning, Xolotl, disguised as a salamander.

“If we can restore this [wetland] habitat and restore the axolotl’s population in a city of more than 20 million people,” Dr Zambrano continued, “I feel that we have hope for humanity.”

To lay the foundations for releasing the animals, the researchers worked with local farmers and a team of volunteers to create wetland “refuges” for the axolotls. They installed natural filtering systems to clean the water,

The scientists released their captive-bred animals at two sites – one in Xochimilco and one at a disused quarry that, over decades, has turned into what they called an “artificial wetland”.

Every animal was tagged with a radio tracking device.

“The amazing news is that they all survived,” Dr Ramos told BBC News. “And not only that, but the ones that we recaptured had gained weight – so they’re hunting.”

The monitoring also revealed intriguing insights into axolotl behaviour. “We found that some spend most of their time with one other individual – like they make these little friendships,” Dr Ramos explained.

Somewhat ironically, these charismatic salamanders are found in the world’s laboratories and pet aquariums in their hundreds of thousands. The species is biologically fascinating – it has the remarkable ability to regrow any part of its body that is damaged or lost. So there is research underway to understand whether that ability could be harnessed medically.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2xr2jzelyo

In the Hunter Valley, long, brown trains chug through lush pastures, carrying stacks of black rock – the lifeblood of the region, though not for much longer.

This has long been Australia’s coal country. But the area, a three-hour drive from Sydney, is now begrudgingly on the frontline of the country’s transition to clean energy.

“This town was built around a coal mine,” says Hugh Collins from Muswellbrook, “so it’ll be a big shift. I don’t know what will happen.”

Nowhere captures this dilemma quite like the soon-to-be demolished smokestacks of Liddell power station, which tower over the rolling hillside nearby. Liddell, one of Australia’s oldest coal plants, was closed two years ago. Across the highway is sister-power station Bayswater, scheduled for retirement by 2033.

Liddell’s owners want to redevelop both stations into a renewable energy hub – in line with the Labor government’s plans for a grid powered almost completely by solar and wind energy.

The opposition Liberal-National coalition, though, has proposed converting Liddell into one of seven nuclear power plants across the country.

Currently banned, nuclear is the controversial centrepiece of the Coalition’s clean energy plan.

Nuclear has historically been deeply unpopular among Australians scared of having radioactive plants in their metaphorical backyards. But with the Coalition plugging it as a cheap and reliable option to complement renewables, interest is growing.

Ahead of the election on 3 May, each party has insisted that their visions are the best way to both fulfil Australia’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 and tame rising power bills.

But there are fears this renewed debate over Australia’s energy future takes the country back to the past.

Brutal arguments over climate change had plagued Australian politics for years – but the incoming Labor government last election declared that era was over.

Now experts worry the so-called “climate wars” are back, and this could potentially delay the urgent emissions reduction the globe has been begging the country to take for years.

“I don’t think peace will be declared no matter what happens with the election,” says Tony Wood from the Grattan Institute think tank.

At the New York Public Library’s annual Library Lunch, former New Yorker editor Tina Brown said there’s an obvious best seller waiting to be bestowed on one lucky biographer: the book on Queen Elizabeth.

Brown — who also once led Vanity Fair — spoke on the panel at the event about her work covering the royals, saying that there is a “huge question mark about who will get the official biography of Queen Elizabeth II,” we hear.

The queen kept a diary every day of her life, Brown noted.

The Princess Diana biographer also said that while current Queen Camilla would likely never pen a book of her own, she “has seen it all” and “has a great sense of humor” that would lend itself to an “absolutely cracking book,” sources told Page Six.

As for Brown’s next subjects? Possibly Anne Boleyn or Elizabeth I, leading her to call out for any agents in the room to green-light the projects. Brown is also behind the Substack newsletter, “Fresh Hell.”

Also appearing on the panel, held under the Celeste Bartos Forum’s historic glass dome, were current New Yorker editor David Remnick, National Book Award winner Imani Perry and Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff.

Schiff recalled that her best seller “Cleopatra: A Life” was researched entirely at the library, while Perry quipped that she will “probably not write a biography of a living person. Most of the people I’m most interested in are dead,” sources told us.

Off-stage, guests buzzed that one literary lion was notably absent from the gala: library president and CEO Anthony Marx, though his name was on the invitation.

But a source close to the former president of Amherst College told us: “It’s a brief health leave, but he’s actually doing really well, and has been in touch” with Iris Weinshall, NYPL’s COO and treasurer.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/04/30/society/tina-brown-wonders-wholl-land-queen-elizabeth-book/

China has created a list of US-made products that would be exempted from its 125 per cent tariffs and is quietly notifying companies about the policy, two people familiar with the matter said, as Beijing seeks to ease the impact of its trade war with Washington.

China has already granted tariff exemptions on select products, including select pharmaceuticals, microchips and aircraft engines and was asking firms to identify critical goods they need levy-free, Reuters reported on Friday (Apr 25). However, the existence of a so-called ‘whitelist’ had not been previously reported.

The quiet approach allows Beijing, which has repeatedly said it is willing to fight till the end unless the US lifts its 145 per cent tariffs, to maintain its public messaging while privately taking practical steps to provide concessions.

It was not immediately clear how many and which products have been included on the list, which authorities have not shared publicly, the two sources said, declining to be named as the information was not public.

Companies instead are being privately contacted by authorities and notified of the existence of a list of product classifications that would be exempted from the tariffs, according to one of the sources who works at a drug company selling US-made medicines in China.

The company was contacted by the Shanghai Pudong government on Monday about the list, the source said, adding the firm had previously lobbied for tariff exemptions as it relies on US technologies for some of its products.

“We still have many technologies we need from the US,” the person said.

Another source said some companies have been asked to privately contact authorities to inquire if their own imported products qualify for the exemption.

The list of exempted products also appears to be growing: China has waived tariffs on ethane imports from the US, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

Major ethane processors had already sought tariff waivers from Beijing because the US is the only supplier.

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he thought a trade deal with China was on the horizon. “But it’s going to be a fair deal,” he said.

China’s commerce and customs ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

GAUGING IMPACT

Two other sources said China is also surveying companies to gauge the impact of the tariff war.

In a recent meeting, authorities in Eastern China asked a foreign business lobby group to “communicate all critical situations caused by tariff tensions to evaluate specific cases”, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The person declined to name the city where the authorities held the meeting, as the gathering was not public.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/china-creates-list-us-made-goods-exempt-125-tariffs-donald-trump-5099156

A Palestinian student who was detained by immigration officials after leading protests against the war in Gaza has been released. Meanwhile, President Trump blamed Joe Biden for a drop in economic growth.

Kamala Harris says ‘chaos’ of Trump administration is by design

Former US Vice President Kamala Harris has hit out at Donald Trump and his backers in her first major speech since losing the November election.

Speaking on Wednesday in San Francisco, Harris said that the Trump administration was working on the “wholesale abandonment” of America’s highest ideals.

In her 15-minute speech, she spoke of the anxiety felt by many of her supporters since Trump took office in January.

But she warned against despair.

“They are counting on the notion that if they can make some people afraid, it will have a chilling effect on others,” she said, adding that “fear is not the only thing that’s contagious.”

“Courage is contagious.”

Chaos by design

Harris also cautioned Americans against viewing Trump’s administration as merely chaotic.

Instead she cast it as a “high-velocity event” that is the culmination of extensive work on the right to remake the government.

“A vessel is being used for the swift implementation of an agenda that has been decades in the making,” she said.

“An agenda to slash public education. An agenda to shrink government and then privatize its services. All while giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us.”

Harris’s speech came a day after Trump celebrated 100 days in office.

The former Democratic vice president has largely stayed out of the limelight since leaving office in January.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/us-updates-court-orders-palestinian-students-release/live-72402646

At least three people have died in Spain in an incident linked to a massive power cut that shut the country down on Monday, the Civil Guard has told the BBC.

They died in the north-west municipality of Taboadela and were from the same family, according to Spanish media.

Police are reportedly investigating whether carbon monoxide from a faulty electricity generator played a role in their deaths, but the Civil Guard could not provide more details.

Officials are still working to confirm what caused the power cut that triggered chaos across Spain and Portugal on Monday.

The trio who died in Taboadela were a married couple and their adult son, according to the Madrid-based newspaper El Pais.

Their bodies were discovered in their beds by a care worker on Tuesday, El Pais reported.

Other deaths are under investigation, including a woman in Madrid who died in a fire that may have been caused by a candle being used during the blackout, local media reported.

The woman, in her fifties, was found dead on Monday night after a fire broke out in a building in the city’s Carabanchel district.

Thirteen people were treated for smoke inhalation, including five who were taken to hospital, according to the city’s emergency information office.

Elsewhere, a woman in her forties is reported to have died in Valencia, though there is no clear consensus in Spanish media on the cause of her death.

Local police have suggested the woman, who suffered from a lung condition, died after the ventilator she was using lost power during the outage, according to media reports.

However, El Pais cited regional health sources who said the woman suffered from a number of health conditions and that she died of natural causes.

The blackout caused huge disruption across Spain and Portugal. Andorra and parts of France were also affected.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp31rqevdr5o

A BOMBSHELL bundle of documents detailing Hitler’s death has been released by Russia’s intelligence service 80 years later to the day.

The stash includes Hitler’s rotted teeth, showing evidence of his cyanide suicide, and the last known photograph of him.

Also declassified were originals of statements and interrogation notes of the Führer’s valet, Heinz Linge, and personal assistant, Otto Günsche.

Linge revealed a “deluded” Hitler killed himself partly because he was “afraid” of being “caught while trying to escape from Berlin”.

Both Hitler aides fell into Soviet hands after the war, and their testimony was crucial to Stalin understanding Hitler final days as his Nazi regime collapsed.

Linge was reportedly the first to enter the room after Hitler’s suicide, and helped carry and burn the corpse with Günsche and others.

While the broad testimony of the pair has been long known, this is the first time the original sources – long hidden in Soviet KGB archives – have been published, and there are new details.

A Russian archivist appeared on video going over Linge’s account, which even details the clothes Hitler and Eva Braun wore when they killed themselves.

He said: “Testimony about Hitler’s reasons for taking his own life – he believed it was utterly pointless to continue the fight.

“He was afraid of being caught while trying to escape from Berlin.

“There was also his severe physical condition, which was beyond doubt, as well as his delusions of grandeur, which would not allow him to bow to the victor or enter into negotiations with him.”

Morbid footage also showed Hitler’s teeth which were used to identify him.

Russian defence ministry channel Zvezda TV reported: “Here they are, particles of universal evil.

“Fragments of Adolf Hitler’s jaw, a man whose very name makes even water molecules take on hideous forms.

“The remains of the one responsible for the deaths of over 26 million of our fellow citizens.

“Today [30 April] marks exactly 80 years since the death of the main culprit of the bloodiest war in human history. A strange feeling.”

Linge wrote in his 1945 testimony: “At the moment of suicide, Hitler was dressed in a white shirt with a white turn-down collar and a black vest, a grey double-breasted uniform jacket made of fine gabardine, long black trousers of fine gabardine, thin black paper socks, and black leather half-boots.

“His wife was dressed in a fine silk dress, very thin silk stockings, and shoes with wedge heels (possibly of Italian make).

“Three canisters of petrol, prepared by Reichsleiter Martin Bormann for the cremation of the bodies of Hitler and his wife, were standing on the last landing leading from the bomb shelter into the garden of the Reich Chancellery.

“All the contents of the canisters were poured over the bodies of Hitler and his wife. Bormann pointed out the canisters to us and went down himself to get his own.

“This was around 4 p.m., and it was still light. A total of 60 litres of petrol was poured.

“Before spreading the blanket on the floor, I placed Hitler’s pistols (calibres 7.65 and 6.35) on the writing desk. Who took them from there, I do not know.

“Possibly it was Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, or the soldiers who carried out Eva Braun’s body, or Hitler’s valet Helm Krüger, or the orderly Willy Stiewitz.

“When saying goodbye to Hitler on 30 April 1945, I asked: ‘Führer, whom should we try to break through to in the West?’

“And I received the answer: ‘For the sake of the one who is still to come’.”

Linge answered a Soviet leadership after they stormed Berlin – whether it was a double who had died in the bunker, and the real Hitler had escaped.

A note translated into Russian says: “A double of Hitler could not have committed suicide because: 1) Hitler did not have a double. 2) It was impossible to leave the premises without being seen, as there was only one exit from the room. 30.12.45. Linge Heinz.”

Over many months, Linge slightly altered his version of events, telling the Russians: “I must admit that my earlier testimony was incorrect.

“I did not hear any gunshot sounds but only noticed the smell of gunpowder and, based on that, informed Bormann that the suicide had occurred.

“I previously stated incorrectly that Eva Braun’s body was wrapped in a blanket. I now recall that it was not.”

The historic documents have been locked in a vault by the FSB, successor to the KGB, in the Ivanovo region.

After the war, Günsche was flown to Moscow with other Hitler associates.

Intriguing new details, including how the Soviets pressured Günsche into opening up about Hitler’s death.

The documents show that a German POW and war criminal Colonel Remlinger was put in a cell with him and instructed by the Soviet authorities to convince him to cooperate.

It was a cunning way of using Hitler’s suicide to turn the Nazi’s fanatical loyalty into cooperation by reinterpreting his “oath”.

Remlinger wrote a report that “we convinced him that the events in Germany—especially Hitler’s suicide—freed him from his oath to the Führer.

“Now, with the complete collapse of Germany and the Nazi system, there was no longer any reason to hide the events that unfolded in the Führer’s headquarters from the Russians—it was now only of historical interest.

“It became easier to persuade him when it emerged that some of Hitler’s close associates (Göring, Himmler) had abandoned him and turned to the Western powers.”

More documents reveal the examination of Hitler’s teeth to verify hit corpse.

The FSB account reads: “On 5 May 1945, in the garden of the Reich Chancellery, SMERSH officers from the 79th Rifle Corps of the 3rd Shock Army, 1st Belorussian Front, discovered the heavily charred corpses of a man and a woman in a bomb crater.”

“The bodies lay about 3 metres from the entrance to the bunker and were covered with soil.

“By 8 May 1945, a forensic report on the man’s corpse—presumably Hitler—was completed.”

This showed “the presence in the mouth cavity of crushed glass ampoule fragments […] a distinct bitter almond smell […] and results from chemical testing of internal organs showing cyanide compounds”.

This allowed the commission “to conclude that death resulted from cyanide poisoning”.

“On 10 May 1945, Kӓthe Heusermann, assistant to Hitler’s personal dentist Professor Hugo Blaschke, was questioned in the Reich Chancellery’s dental office.

“On 11 May, dental technician Fritz Echtmann, who had made Hitler’s dentures, gave testimony.

“Both witnesses gave detailed descriptions of Hitler’s dental work from memory.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14138063/hitler-final-moments-documents-uncovered/

Khawaja Asif said that he “hopes India sees sense” and said many countries are trying to avert a war between the neighbours.

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif believes that the chances of conflict with India were increasing with the passage of time despite efforts made by other countries to defuse the tensions between the neighbouring countries.

Asif was talking to the media outside the parliament when he was asked about the latest security situation to which he replied: “Chances (of conflict) are increasing with the passage of time; they are not decreasing. Though many countries have been trying to avert the situation”.

He also claimed that Pakistan would be able to give a suitable response in case they face an attack. “If there is a violation by India, we will respond and the nature of our response will be determined by the Indian action. There should be no doubt about our response,” he said.

Asif also said that may God help to avert the situation of conflict and hoped that “India sees sense”. “I do not want to speculate about the response by Pakistan but it will be bigger than Indian action,” he said.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/chances-of-conflict-with-india-increasing-may-god-help-avert-a-war-says-pakistan-defence-minister-ws-kl-9319088.html

Ford Motor (F.N), has killed a program to develop next-generation electrical architecture – the brain of modern cars – that its executives have called pivotal to competing with electric-vehicle pioneers such as Tesla, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Ford had invested heavily in the system, known internally as FNV4 (for fully-networked vehicle), to streamline vehicle-software functions. The goal was to cut costs, improve quality and add profitable features in both electric and gasoline-powered vehicles.

The project was abandoned because of ballooning costs and delays, the sources said.
A Ford spokesperson said the company will absorb what it learned from developing FNV4 into its current software system, and it remains focused on delivering an advanced electrical architecture with its so-called skunkworks team.
The team, based in California, is tasked with developing advanced software and affordable electric vehicles.
“We are committed to delivering fully connected vehicle experiences across our entire lineup, regardless of powertrain, while many others in the industry are bringing the most advanced tech only to electric vehicles,” the spokesperson said.

Ford CEO Jim Farley tasked Doug Field, a former Apple and Tesla executive who joined Ford in 2021, with completing FNV4. Field is one of the top earners at the company, and made $15.5 million last year.
Ford started informing a select group of employees of the decision last week through a company video, according to two people familiar with the matter. A third source said the company executives made the decision weeks ago.
Ford is refocusing its efforts on its current electrical architecture and continuing to bet on the skunkworks team, the video said.
While EV startups like Tesla and Rivian have built their own software from the ground up, legacy automakers have struggled to transform their more complicated and costly software systems, which integrate computer code from dozens of suppliers.
For example, a supplier that makes a power-operated seat for Ford typically provides and controls the code associated with its function. Multiply that by all the systems and electronics across a car, and you have a tangled mess of code that makes it difficult for the automaker to quickly deliver software updates.

Farley talked about the conundrum on the “Fully Charged” podcast in June 2023.
“We have about 150 of these modules with semiconductors all through the car,” the CEO said. “The problem is the software is all written by 150 different companies, and they don’t talk to each other. So even though it says Ford on the front, I actually have to go to (supplier) Bosch to get permission to change their seat-control software.”
This added complexity also can create quality problems, which Farley has been vocal about reducing at Ford, as it has posted industry-topping recall numbers since 2021, the year after Farley was appointed CEO.
Tesla pioneered the use of so-called over-the-air software updates to add functions or fix bugs, an increasingly common practice among competitors including a slew of surging Chinese EV makers led by BYD.

NEED FOR SPEED

The failed project marks a significant setback for Ford as it races alongside Detroit rivals General Motors and Jeep-maker Stellantis to develop more sophisticated electronics and software. Nailing these systems is among any automaker’s primary goals, industry experts say, because they provide a framework for car makers to deliver better vehicles more quickly.
“The only strategic advantage any company can have is speed,” said Terry Woychowski, president at engineering company Caresoft Global, while showing off the complicated guts of these electrical systems at the company’s warehouse.
Farley said as much in a September interview with Reuters.
“We’re completely committed to building that software-enabled vehicles, not just for our EVs, but even more exciting, in a way, for our next generation of ICE [internal combustion engine] and hybrid vehicles,” he noted.
Ford’s next generation software was meant to be a “zonal” system, in which bundles of smaller software brains control the functions in specific parts of the vehicle and communicate with a larger central brain. Such a system shortens the length of the expensive vehicle wiring harnesses and allows for speedier over-the-air updates.
These advanced systems also provide opportunities to entice drivers to buy software-enabled features, such as assisted-driving systems, sometimes through subscriptions. Ford’s Vice Chair and former CEO John Lawler said in 2023 that FNV4 had the potential to accelerate and increase the number of services on each vehicle sold.

BIG INVESTMENTS, LOSSES

While these electrical systems are dependent on lines of virtual code that developers type and refine over years, they also require expensive hardware that can fundamentally change an automaker’s manufacturing process.
FNV4 development contributed to Ford’s losses on software and EVs, which totaled $4.7 billion in 2023 and $5 billion in 2024.
“The electrical architecture system in a vehicle is one of the most challenging areas from an assembly perspective,” said Woychowski, describing their sprawling wiring harnesses as “copper anacondas.”
When Reuters asked Farley about the program in September, he said the company had its first prototype vehicle running completely on Ford software. Farley said at the time that Ford was on track to deliver the next-generation architecture and that a prototype had impressed him.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ford-kills-project-develop-tesla-like-electronic-brain-2025-04-30/

China pointed its finger at the United States for originating COVID-19 on Wednesday, claiming America was attempting to “shift the blame” after President Trump declared the deadly disease was leaked from a Wuhan lab.

The communist regime argued that “substantial evidence” suggested that COVID might have come from the US earlier than the outbreak in China while insisting the lab leak theory was “extremely unlikely” in a white paper.

“The US government, instead of facing squarely its failure in response to Covid-19 and reflecting on its shortcomings, has tried to shift the blame and divert people’s attention by shamelessly politicizing SARS-CoV-2 origins tracing,” Chinese officials complained.

The report also claimed COVID-19 was circulating around the US earlier than it was officially determined.

The Chinese accusations come after the White House revamped its COVID-19 information earlier this month to push out the assertion that COVID-19 leaked out of a lab in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“A lab-related incident involving gain-of-function research is the most likely the origin of COVID-19,” according to a section on the new White House webpage.

“Current government mechanisms for overseeing this dangerous gain-of-function research are incomplete, severely convoluted, and lack global applicability.”

The CIA in January said the pandemic was more likely started in a lab instead of nature after it previously couldn’t reach a determination.

But the agency cautioned it had “low confidence” and made clear the lab origin and natural origin both remain plausible.

A House panel, as well as other federal agencies like the FBI, reached similar conclusions about the lab leak theory.

But China stressed in the white paper that according to a past joint study conducted with the World Health Organization, it found COVID-19 was probably transmitted from bats to humans through another animal.

The Chinese report, which also delved into prevention and control of the disease, additionally bashed the US for not doing more to combat COVID-19.

“It has severely undermined joint international efforts in the fight against the pandemic and become a weak link in global public health governance,” China said — though the country has also faced accusations it covered up the severity of the virus in the early months.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/04/30/world-news/china-blames-us-for-originating-covid-19-weeks-after-white-house-declared-lab-leak-as-true-origins/

Kim Kardashian seemingly got hacked by her 9-year-old son, Saint West, on Wednesday as her Instagram account shared a strange call to action for her 357 million followers.

The post featured a close up image, showing what appeared to be a YouTube channel under the handle @S4intsking.

“Sub to Saint’s channel,” read the message written atop the image.

Fans were quick to speculate in the comments that Kardashian’s eldest son had taken hold of her social media account.

“SAINT LEAVE YO MAMA PHONE,” one follower commented. Another said, “He’s really going for it 😂😂😂.”

“Saint done hacked the IG for the promo lolol.. smart man,” a third person wrote.

It seems Saint may have started up a new YouTube channel after having his previous account taken down last October following an incident in which an anti-Kamala Harris meme was shared on his profile.

His original page was launched in September 2024 under the username @TheGoatSaint.

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

The 9-year-old isn’t the only one in his family to get into trouble with a streaming platform.

His father, Kanye West, recently found himself banned from Twitch Livestream after making yet another shocking confession, telling his fans that he “should’ve had babies” with Paris Hilton instead of his ex-wife Kim Kardashian.

West, 47, shares three other children with Kardashian, 44: North, 11, Chicago, 7, and Psalm, 5.

Most recently, the “Vultures” rapper shared another message regarding his and the Skim’s founder’s custody agreement over their shared kids, vowing that he would “go get” his children.

“[DJ] Akademiks put that battery in my back, bro. ‘Cause I was in the airport by myself … I’mma go get these kids, man!” said West, who now goes by Ye.

“F–k all these f–t n–s. I’mma go get these kids, bro. I’m talking to the lawyers — it gets to the point where I don’t lose my f–kin’ mind where I got to get used to not seeing my kids,” the Yeezy designer shouted.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/04/30/celebrity-news/kim-kardashians-9-year-old-son-seemingly-hacks-moms-instagram-account-with-357m-followers-posts-strange-message/

The US economy unexpectedly contracted in the first three months of the year on an import surge triggered by Donald Trump’s tariff plans, although the president pinned the blame squarely on his predecessor.

The sharp increase in imports was a reflection of businesses and consumers stockpiling foreign goods to get ahead of Trump’s sweeping trade levies, which went into effect earlier this month.

All three major Wall Street indices fell on the economic news, with the Nasdaq sliding more than two per cent before paring some losses in morning trading, while oil prices extended their losses.

At a cabinet meeting in Washington, Trump insisted the growth downturn was the legacy of former President Joe Biden’s policies.

“That’s Biden, that’s not Trump,” he said.

Striking a more positive tone, he highlighted the “whopping” 22 per cent rise in gross domestic investment during the first quarter.

Annual economic growth stayed above two per cent in every year of Biden’s presidency, reaching 2.8 per cent in 2024.

The gross domestic product (GDP) of the world’s largest economy decreased at an annual rate of 0.3 per cent in the first quarter, after growing 2.4 per cent in the final months of 2024, according to Wednesday’s first estimate from the US Commerce Department.

This was sharply below the market consensus estimate of 0.4 per cent growth, according to Briefing.com, and marked the first quarterly contraction since 2022.

The Commerce Department said in a statement that the contraction was in large part down to an “upturn in imports,” aided by a decline in consumer and government spending.

“A BLARING WARNING”

In a statement published later Wednesday, the White House called GDP a “backward-looking indicator.”

“It’s no surprise the leftovers of Biden’s economic disaster have been a drag on economic growth,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

“But the underlying numbers tell the real story of the strong momentum President Trump is delivering.”

The GDP figures were published on the 101st day since Trump returned to the White House on Jan 20, along with fresh data showing a slowdown in the US Federal Reserve’s favoured inflation gauge last month.

Since returning to Washington, the president has announced several rounds of tariffs, laying out plans in March to impose sweeping levies on top trading partners from early April in a bid to reshape US trade relations.

The introduction of tariffs sparked a selloff in financial markets, sending volatility surging to levels not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Today’s GDP number shows Donald Trump is running America the same way he ran his business – straight into the ground,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said in a statement.

“This decline in GDP is a blaring warning to everyone that Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans’ failed MAGA experiment is killing our economy,” he added.

“GREATER RISK OF RECESSION”

Following the dramatic market movements in early April, the Trump administration announced a 90-day pause to the higher tariffs for dozens of countries to allow for trade talks, while maintaining a baseline 10 per cent rate for most countries.

It also announced sector-specific measures on steel, aluminium and automobiles and parts not made in the United States, and new sweeping tariffs totalling 145 per cent on China.

Speaking at the cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Trump said China was getting “hammered” by the tariffs, and said he still hoped to make a deal with Beijing.

“We’re talking to China, but their factories are closing all over China because we’re not taking their product,” he said. “We don’t want their product unless they’re going to be fair with us.”

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/us-economy-unexpectedly-shrinks-first-quarter-trump-blames-biden-5100821

VOLODYMYR Zelensky is said to have urged Donald Trump to take a tougher stance against Russia when the leaders met during Pope Francis’ funeral.

Top US officials revealed that the Ukrainian leader was able to influence Trump, who appeared to be cosying up with Vladimir Putin since returning to the White House.

The whole world’s eyes were on Zelensky and Trump at the Vatican City, where both leaders pulled chairs to the side to have a tête-à-tête.

It was the first time they were pictured meeting together since their historic – and disastrous – White House row, which saw a shouting match between them.

However, both presidents agreed to hold a quick, 15-minute one-on-one meeting on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral.

The chat took place inside the holy St Peter’s Basilica with both leaders discussing the dragging Russia-Ukraine war, and America’s efforts to put an end to it.

Two senior sources familiar with the contents of the meeting told Axios that Zelensky had urged President Trump to take a tougher stance on Putin,

The Ukrainian leader is also said to have retreated his demands for an unconditional ceasefire, which was proposed by the US weeks ago but rejected by the Kremlin.

It is understood that Zelensky told Trump he was ready to make concessions in a bid to bring peace to his war-torn nation, but demanded strong security guarantees in return.

Zelensky said it was a “good” 15-minute meeting.

He added: “We discussed a lot one-on-one. Hoping for results on everything we covered. Protecting the lives of our people.

“Full and unconditional ceasefire. Reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out.”

Sources told Axios that Trump seemed to agree to what Zelensky was asking. The White House didn’t confirm or deny it.

He is said to have replied by saying he might have changed his approach to dealing with Putin, which was visible shortly after their chat.

Just hours after the meeting, Trump slammed Putin for “tapping him along” during his efforts for peace.

He said: “There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns over the last few days.

“It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘Banking’ or ‘Secondary Sanctions?’ Too many people are dying!!!”

Trump also ordered Putin to “sit down and sign a deal”, as he said Ukraine’s battlefields are covered in body parts.

The US and Ukrainian leaders have vowed to hold further talks in the coming days.

Trump said on Sunday he was both “surprised and disappointed, very disappointed” that mad Vlad continued to bomb Ukraine, despite the dictator engaging in crunch talks with US peace envoy Steve Witkoff.

It came after Putin’s barbaric missile strikes on Kyiv earlier this week that left at least 12 dead.

Russia announced a token ceasefire to coincide with VE Day after President Trump accused Putin of stringing him along on peace talks.

The Kremlin said troops will stop fighting for 96 hours midnight on 7 May.

The pause will coincide with events to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of WW2 in Europe.

But Moscow dashed hopes of a peace deal by repeating demands that Ukraine must surrender and disarm.

Trump is said to be growing “increasingly frustrated” with both Putin and Zelensky in his attempts to bring the Ukraine war to a close.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump has “made it clear” he wants a permanent ceasefire, rather than the temporary pause offered by the scheming Russian tyrant.

But experts say this was Putin’s plan all along, and he’s played Trump like a fiddle.

ART OF THE DEAL

One of the topics that Trump brought up during the 15-minute chat is understood to be the re-negotiated US-Ukraine minerals deal, which fell apart after the historic Oval Office spat.

Trump is said to have pressed Zelensky to agree to the deal as soon as possible, the sources told Axios.

Ukraine and the US officials said today they were ready to sign a minerals deal imminently after months of sometimes fraught negotiations.

However, an eleventh-hour snag injected uncertainty into the timing.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters at the White House: “Our side is ready to sign. The Ukrainians decided last night to make some last-minute changes.

“We’re sure that they will reconsider that, and we are ready, if they are.”

A recent investigation by media organisations has shed light on the tragic death of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who was captured by Russian forces in 2023 while reporting on the illegal detention and torture of Ukrainians in the occupied region of Zaporizhzhia.

A recent investigation by media organisations has shed light on the tragic death of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who was captured by Russian forces in 2023 while reporting on the illegal detention and torture of Ukrainians in the occupied region of Zaporizhzhia.

According to a forensic examination of her body, Roshchyna, 27, suffered extensive torture and ill-treatment, including “abrasions and hemorrhages on various parts of the body, a broken rib, neck injuries, and possible electric shock marks on her feet,” as described by Yuriy Belousov, head of the War Crimes Unit at the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office.

Belousov also noted that Roshchyna’s body showed signs of an autopsy having been performed before it was returned to Ukraine, and that some of her organs were missing. The missing organs could signal that Russia attempted to hide the cause of death, possibly to conceal that it had committed a war crime, Belousov said.

Roshchyna’s colleagues at Ukrainska Pravda said, citimg members of the investigating team, that her brain, eyeballs, trachea were missing.

Roshchyna’s death has sparked widespread condemnation, with Sevgil Musaieva, her editor at Ukrainska Pravda, describing her as a dedicated journalist who saw reporting from Russian-occupied territories as a mission.

“Viktoriia was the only reporter who covered the occupied territories. For her, it was a mission,” Musaieva said. The Committee to Protect Journalists also condemned Roshchyna’s death, stating that Russia was responsible. Ukrainian officials have raised concerns about the thousands of citizens being held in Russian custody without charges or access to legal counsel. “The issue of civilian hostages abducted and held by Russia requires increased international attention and immediate and strong response,” Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Georgiy Tykhy said.

One of her colleagues at Hromadske, a Ukrainian media outlet said that, “For her, there was nothing more important than journalism. Vika was always where the most important events for the country took place. And she would have continued to do this for many years, but the Russians killed her,” said in a statement published on Hromadske’s website.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/ukrainian-journalist-tortured-had-organs-removed-in-russian-custody-report-8298154

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday, amid escalating tensions between the two countries following the Pahalgam terror attack that claimed 26 lives. Rubio asked the leaders of both countries to work to de-escalate tensions between them.

During his conversation with Jaishankar, Rubio expressed deep sorrow over the loss of lives and extended condolences to the victims and their families in the Pahalgam attack, according to US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce. He reaffirmed the US’s commitment to working with India in the global fight against terrorism.

In a tweet on Thursday morning, Jaishankar said he discussed the Pahalgam attack with Rubio.

“Discussed the Pahalgam terrorist attack with US @SecRubio yesterday. Its perpetrators, backers and planners must be brought to justice,” he said.

Additionally, Rubio encouraged both India and Pakistan to engage in dialogue aimed at de-escalating regional tensions and promoting peace and stability in South Asia, Bruce said in a statement.

Rubio also discussed the situation with Sharif, who, according to a press release from the Pakistan Prime Minister’s Office, briefed him on Pakistan’s perspective regarding recent developments in South Asia.

During the conversation, Sharif accused India of engaging in “escalatory and provocative behaviour”, amid growing concerns over a potential escalation between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. “India’s provocations would only serve to distract Pakistan from its ongoing efforts to defeat terrorism, particularly from terror groups,” news agency AFP quoted Sharif as saying.

Sharif also rejected India’s attempts to link Pakistan to the Pahalgam attack and reiterated Islamabad’s demand for an impartial investigation into the terror attack. He urged the US to encourage India to avoid making “inflammatory statements” that could further heighten tensions.

The development came shortly after Bruce said at a Tuesday press briefing that Washington was engaging with both India and Pakistan regarding the situation in Jammu and Kashmir and urged both sides to avoid escalation.

INDIA SHUTS AIRSPACE FOR PAK FLIGHTS

Former Vice President Kamala Harris plans to use a high-profile speech Wednesday to sharply criticize President Donald Trump amid speculation about whether she will mount another presidential campaign or opt to run for California governor.

Harris will address the 20th anniversary gala for Emerge America, an organization that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office that grew in part from Harris’ run for San Francisco district attorney in the early 2000s.

Her speech comes the day after Trump reached 100 days in office. It is expected to be her most extensive public remarks since leaving office in January following her defeat to Trump, with planned critiques of the Republican president’s handling of the economy, U.S. institutions and foreign policy.

Harris has barely mentioned Trump by name since she conceded defeat to him in November, but she recently addressed the anxiety and confusion that have gripped many of her supporters since Trump took office.

“Fear has a way of being contagious, and we are witnessing that, no doubt,” she said at the Leading Women Defined Summit in early April, a forum for Black women leaders.

“But courage is also contagious,” she added, urging her audience to speak out against Trump. The current moment highlights “the power of kindness, the power of sisterhood, the power of self care.”

Trump went after Harris in a campaign-style rally Tuesday marking his 100th day in office. He sarcastically called her a “great border czar” and a “great candidate,” and repeated some of the applause lines he routinely delivered during the campaign.

Until Harris replaced Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket last summer, Trump said, “I knew nothing about her.”

Harris is ramping up her public presence as Democrats nationally search for a path forward after November’s election, in which Republicans also won control of Congress. While a slate of high-profile Democrats — from governors to businessmen — seek leadership roles within the party, the former vice president retains unique influence and would reshape any future race she chooses to enter.

Harris, a former state attorney general and U.S. senator from California, has not discouraged speculation that she might enter the race to replace term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom, himself a potential contender for president. And she has not ruled out another run for the White House.

She continues to fundraise, using a joint committee that includes Harris for President, the Democratic National Committee and state Democratic parties. The committee, the Harris Victory Fund, reported having about $4.5 million on hand at the end of March, according to federal records.

In recent fundraising emails, Harris has been blunt about the need for Democrats to unify ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/kamala-harris-speech-california-trump-democrats-governor-7f3fe64bfb93fcd39a5d06c39b2935f7

DONALD Trump has joked “I’d like to be pope” and revealed his top pick to lead the Vatican.

When asked on Tuesday who should succeed Pope Francis, the US president gave a characteristically bold answer – himself.

Famous for popularizing the red MAGA cap, Trump could trade it for the holy white skullcap.

Trump said: “I’d like to be pope. That would be my number one choice.

“No, I don’t know, I have no preference.

“I must say, we have a cardinal that happens to be out of a place called New York, who’s very good.

“So we’ll see what happens.”

While Trump clarified he doesn’t have a firm preference on who should take the position, his favorite “from New York” is widely believed to be Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

The Archbishop of New York is the only American considered a serious candidate.

A staunch conservative, Dolan has vocally opposed contraception and condemned the removal of controversial statues during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

He took his vows in 1976 and was made a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.

While Trump’s remark was made in jest, it’s a technical impossibility.

The spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics must be elected from the College of Cardinals, and Trump is not – and never has been – a cardinal.

Currently, around 135 cardinals under the age of 80 are eligible to take part in the secretive election in the papal conclave, a centuries-old process steeped in tradition.

They’ll travel from around the world to the Sistine Chapel in Rome, where the next leader of the Catholic Church will be chosen in a series of ballots.

While the process of choosing Francis’ successor is highly secretive, several cardinals have been identified as possible top contenders.

They include Italy’s Pietro Parolin, the Philippines’ Luis Antonio Tagle, Hungary’s Peter Erdo and Ghana’s Peter Turkson.

Pope Francis, the leader of the Roman Catholic church, died last Monday aged 88 after fighting for his life in a “complex” health battle.

The pontiff had been hospitalised for weeks at the Gemelli hospital in Rome earlier this year after suffering a bout of bronchitis and double pneumonia.

He was discharged on March 23 after the 38-day stay, and was able to bless crowds of worshippers yesterday on Easter Sunday.

But just hours later, Vatican officials announced the leader of the Catholic Church had passed away.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14131718/watch-moment-trump-pope-reveals-favorite/

It has been 100 days since Donald Trump returned to the White House. Since then, he issued a flurry of executive orders from the Oval Office, upending the United States and its relations with the world. DW has more.

A shootout at a Swedish hair salon on Tuesday (Apr 29) left at least three people dead, police and media said, amid heightened nerves over gun violence in the Scandinavian nation.

The shooting erupted in the centre of Uppsala a day before a spring festival which draws more than 100,000 people to the city, some 60km north of Stockholm.

Police, who confirmed three dead, said the attack was staged by a masked gunman. Media reports said he escaped on an electric scooter after the early evening shootout.

Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer called the killings “extremely serious” but police would not say if it was the latest episode in a long-running war between gangs. Sweden is also still recovering from its worst mass shooting in February.

“We have three people confirmed dead, but we have not confirmed their identities yet,” police spokesman Magnus Jansson Klarin told AFP.

“We received reports of a masked person on an electric scooter. We are looking into those reports,” he said, adding that door-to-door inquiries were being carried out around the scene of the shooting.

Swedish media said witnesses heard several shots at a hair salon in the centre of the city.

The SVT public broadcaster said one of the victims had been a suspect in an investigation into a planned attack against a relative of a gang leader, Ismail Abdo.

“It’s normally a quiet neighbourhood, I do my shopping here every day,” Elias Sundgren, a student at the local university, told AFP.

GANG VIOLENCE

The shooting came a day before Uppsala holds the Valborg festival to mark the start of spring. While police sealed off the streets around the hair salon – and a drone flew overhead – they sought to reassure the huge number of visitors expected.

“People should not be afraid to come tomorrow,” Klarin said.

“There are 100,000 to 150,000 people expected in Uppsala for Valborg tomorrow, and there are already a whole lot here today.”

On Feb 4, the country was rocked by its worst mass shooting when 35-year-old Rickard Andersson entered the Campus Risbergska adult education centre in the city of Orebro and shot dead 10 people before turning the gun on himself.

But the Nordic country has struggled in recent years to rein in shootings and bombings linked to score-settling between rival gangs. Earlier this month, two people were killed in suspected gang violence in Gothenburg. A renowned rapper was shot dead in a gang battle in Gothenburg last year.

Perpetrators are often young teens who are hired as contract killers because they are under 15, the age of criminal responsibility in Sweden. The number of reported gang deaths fell in 2024 however.

In the country of 10.6 million people, 92 cases of deadly violence were recorded in 2024, 29 fewer than 2023, and the lowest level since 2014, according to official data.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/sweden-gun-attack-leaves-three-dead-5098001

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Tuesday (Apr 29) for a “fair” end to the war with Russia without “rewards” for Vladimir Putin, pushing back against demands for Kyiv to make territorial concessions.

“We all want this war to end in a fair way – with no rewards for Putin, especially no land,” Zelenskyy said via videoconference at a summit organised by Poland.

The comment comes amid reports the United States suggested to freeze the front lines and accept the Russian control of the Crimean peninsula that it seized in 2014, something Zelenskyy has refused.

But US President Donald Trump said Sunday that he believed Zelenskyy might concede the Black Sea peninsula as part of a settlement.

Russia has also repeatedly demanded to keep the territory in southern and eastern Ukraine that it occupies and for Kyiv to cede even more land.

Moscow holds about 20 per cent of Ukraine’s territory after launching its grinding assault that has killed thousands of people.

Washington has said that this week will be “critical” for peace efforts.

UNCONDITIONAL CEASEFIRE

Zelenskyy later on Tuesday once again called for a full and unconditional ceasefire, which must be the first step before any negotiations.

“They must take clear steps to end the war, and we insist that an unconditional and complete ceasefire must be the first step,” he said in an evening address.

Putin on Monday ordered a surprise three-day ceasefire on May 8-10, which coincides with Moscow’s World War II commemorations, drawing ire from Kyiv, which demanded Moscow pause hostilities immediately.

“Right now, they are worried that their parade is in jeopardy, and rightly so,” Zelenskyy said in his evening address, “but they should be worried that this war is still going on,” he added.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/human-rights-attacks-accelerated-trump-second-term-amnesty-international-5097946

As life in Spain and Portugal stutters back to normal, the big questions are not just what went wrong but how to prevent such a full-scale power failure from happening again.

It was not until 11:15 (09:15 GMT) on Tuesday, almost 23 hours after the system collapsed that Spain’s electricity grid declared it was back to normal.

The trains have started running again although some lines are suspended and most homes have got their power back.

So how did it get back up and running and why did it take so long?

For most of Monday, Spain was in chaos.

The issue appears to relate to two separate connection problems in the south west within moments of each other and then a disconnection from the French network for almost an hour.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez highlighted the sudden loss of 15 gigawatts of electricity at 12:33 on Monday, when about 60% of Spain’s power generation suddenly vanished.

Eduardo Prieto, the director of operations for the grid Red Eléctrica, said the systems had been stable, until a loss of power generation in southwestern Spain.

Only the Canary Islands, the Balearics and Ceuta and Melilla on the North African coast were unaffected.

An increasing number of public figures are blaming a saturation of solar power and an over-reliance on renewable energy.

Minutes before the outage, Spain was running on 60.64% solar photovoltaic generation, with 12% wind and 11.6% nuclear.

However diversified and advanced Spain’s energy mix is, the national power collapse at 12:35 on Monday required an enormous effort to get Spain back up and running.

The initial focus was to get the northern and southern power generating regions working again, which grid operator Red Eléctrica said was key to “gradually re-energising the transmission grid as the generating units are connected”.

The risk lay in overloading the system by turning everything on at the same time and triggering another massive outage.

So everything had to be carefully phased for what experts call a “black start” working out as a success.

The initial focus was on hydro-electric plants, in particular pumped-storage plants with reservoirs full at this time of year and able to produce electricity fast from a standing start.

Combined-cycle gas plants also played a significant part in repowering the grid, but four nuclear power reactors at Almaraz, Ascó and and Vandellós were automatically shut down by the outage, and three others were already offline anyway.

Spain’s neighbours France and Morocco also came to its aid.

Morocco said 900MW of power had been transferred through two high-voltage lines that cross the Strait of Gibraltrar from Fardioua to Tarifa in southern Spain.

French operator RTE said it had been “gradually transferring more electricity to the Spanish border” via its power lines supplying Catalonia in north-east Spain and the Basque country in the north-west.

RTE said the Iberian network had been disconnected from 12:38 to 13:30 on Monday, when the 400kV line to Catalonia was restored. Within minutes, France had supplied 700MW and RTE said it was later able to increase that by up to 2,000 MW.

Power was then eventually restored to Spain’s electricity substations in the north, south and west of the peninsula.

By 19:20 on Monday, the grid operator said more than a fifth of demand had been restored by way of Spain’s own electricity generation and from France.

Electricity provider Endesa said it had restored almost 3.5 million customers by 19:15 and had prioritised hospitals and other strategic infrastructure.

Just over an hour later the head of Red Eléctrica boss Eduardo Prieto said about 9,200 MW of demand – about 35.1% – had been restored.

That figure rose steadily to 61.35% by midnight on Monday and more than 99% by 07:00 on Tuesday.

Spain is only now beginning to count the cost. The CEOE bosses’ organisation has estimated a €1.6bn hit on the economy.

And the political blame game has already begun.

The conservative head of the Madrid community, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, said the government’s response had been slow and ineffective, while the leader of her People’s Party Alberto Núñez Feijóo complained of a “lamentable” image of Spain being sent around the world.

Despite all the problems, Spaniards were praised by the government for rising to the occasion and showing solidarity.

Hospitals had back-up diesel-operated generators so they were able to keep critical care going.

Spain’s Guardia Civil police force said it had rescued 13,000 passengers trapped on trains.

Residents in the southern town of Villanueva de Córdoba came to the aid of passengers stranded on a Ouigo train.

Local police in Barcelona returned to the old ways, regulating traffic in the Plaça España because the lights were out.

Passengers on the Barcelona metro had to walk to safety using the torches on their mobile phones when their trains became stuck in tunnels.

A conference centre in Girona was converted into a 180-bed shelter for people stranded by rail disruptions.

Although flights across the country were affected, airports operator Aena kept going throughout the disruption with the aid of generators.

Phone batteries ran down, TVs were on the blink and for many Spaniards their only lifeline to the outside world was from a car or battery-operated radio, as radio stations soldiered on through the blackout.

In Madrid there has been an urgent call for blood donations ahead of the big public holiday weekend.

Pedro Sánchez is determined that lessons will be learned and such a crisis will not happen again.

But energy expert Carlos Cagigal told Spanish TV there was a risk that it might, because Spain’s infrastructure was simply not in a position to cope with all the renewable energy being produced.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c175ykvjxyeo

On a searing afternoon in Vietnam, Tung Linh declared she “basically knows nothing” about the bloody, decades-long war that pitted her country’s Communist-run North against the United States-backed South.

“My grandparents fought in the war and because of that today we can look at the sky and see an airplane and we don’t feel scared, like they did,” says the 20-year-old college student.

Stuck to her right cheek was a little yellow star on a red rectangle – the Vietnamese flag. Like her, Ho Chi Minh City, where she lived, was gearing up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, when the Communists triumphed.

Today’s Vietnam is a remarkably different country than the one American troops withdrew from in defeat – it’s enterprising, it’s growing fast and it’s getting richer.

Its authoritarian Communist leadership has embraced capitalism. They aspire to follow in China’s footsteps, and have ploughed money and effort into becoming a reliable manufacturing hub, even an alternative to China.

But that is a risky ambition during US President Donald Trump’s trade war – it’s partly why he is threatening a 46% levy against the South East Asian nation. That could shatter the country’s economic potential.

Vietnam was a French colony, a Chinese vassal and for 20 years, the proxy battlefield in America’s bloody struggle to stop China spreading communism across South East Asia.

But it cannot escape its geography. Nestled beneath China’s wide rump, it is once again on the frontline in a new American battle –which hopes to stem Beijing’s rise as an economic superpower.

Vietnam is a young country in a hurry. The median age is 33, considerably younger than Thailand or China (40), and far younger than Japan (50).

“I want to do a job that will bring more success to Vietnam,” said Linh in fluent English. She is studying economics and marketing. “And yes, success for me too,” she admits, with a smile, when prodded.

It’s a dream that suits her bustling city – now a sprawling metropolis of 10 million people, Ho Chi Minh City has the same choking traffic, glass-clad skyscrapers, five-star hotels, restaurants and seedy massage parlours as any Asian mega city.

You would be hard put to find traces of the socialist ideology that led to the city’s capture in 1975, when it was the capital of South Vietnam. The victors renamed it city Ho Chi Minh, after the revolutionary father of North Vietnam. But to locals, it is still Saigon.

And when it fell on this day 50 years ago, South Vietnam ceased to exist as North Vietnamese tanks smashed through the tall iron gates of the presidential compound and raised the red flag with a yellow star over the presidential palace.

America’s ally, the southern regime, was vanquished. Its last president had fled the previous day. More than two decades of bitter conflict was over.

The victory had come at an enormous cost. An estimated three million dead and millions more injured. Between 1968 and 1975, a greater tonnage of bombs was dropped on this slender piece of land than in all theatres in World War Two.

But few here want to talk about the war even as they celebrate the anniversary of their “reunification”.

Linh and her friends screamed in delight as a truck carrying soldiers drove past. The shy idols waved back – they were on their way to the barracks after rehearsals for the anniversary parade.

“I am excited because this is the day when we reunited, when we became one country again,” Linh said.

Her answer sounded a little rehearsed, not least because of the government-appointed minder who accompanied the BBC throughout. But her enthusiasm for her future – and her country’s – is not uncommon.

A little further down the road, 18-year-old Minh, who did not want to share her last name, told us she was studying to be a lawyer so she could “become successful”. With a laugh, she added: “And rich!”

When we asked about how young people feel about Americans, the minder winced visibly and tried to stop her answering.

“We’re not angry,” she says. “We don’t hate them. That was the past. Now we want to trade with America. You know globalisation? We want to learn from America.”

Vietnam’s new leaders appear to have the same ambition. In January the country’s new Communist party chief, To Lam, embarked on a program to slash bureaucracy that could impress Elon Musk, who has been overseeing the Trump administration’s controversial cost-cutting team.

The country’s 63 provinces and municipalities are being reduced to 34, and government ministries and agencies cut from 30 to 17. This year, 100,000 government employees are being laid off, according to official estimates.

The ambition is huge. So far only one country in South East Asia, Singapore, has managed to escape the “middle-income trap”, where economic growth slows before countries become rich. Vietnam, whose economy is growing at a steady 5%, intends to be the second. It has flung its doors wide open to investment – and is welcoming back those it once drove from its shores.

After the 1975 victory around two million southern Vietnamese fled the country. Many were ethnic Chinese. They packed on to flimsy boats and set out across the South China Sea. They became known as “the boat people”. Today their descendants make up a diaspora of nearly six million stretching from the United States and Canada to France, Germany, Japan and Taiwan.

“Since 2017, I have promoted many Taiwanese companies to invest in Vietnam, and I myself am an advisor to several large electronics companies that I brought here,” said Lisa Wu, who was born in Saigon but spent three decades in Taiwan. Now she is back.

“The most attractive thing is that the Vietnamese government is very supportive. The electronics industry is expanding out of China and a lot will choose Vietnam.”

It’s no coincidence this shift began around 2018, when Trump declared his first trade war against China.

Two young businesswomen from southern China, who did not want to share their names, tell us they have spent the last two years setting up a shoe factory here: “Now it’s ready to go.”

They plan to export to the US. They are concerned about the possibility of higher tariffs for Vietnam – it currently faces a 10% levy, like most of the world – but “it’s a lot better here than China”, they say with a laugh. Chinese imports to the US face a range of tariffs that go up to 245% for some goods.

Still, Vietnam is feeling the impact, Ms Wu said. “I had several factories preparing to begin operations here this May. But because of the policy change, all have stopped and everyone is waiting.”

Vietnam is again being asked to choose – America or China. But it’s not a choice it can or will make because it needs both.

Less than two weeks ago, they rolled out the red carpet to welcome Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the capital Hanoi. Warm words were spoken of fraternal friendship and support. But relations with their big neighbour are trickier than they may appear. For years, Vietnam has walked a tightrope between Washington and Beijing – the latter’s expansive ambitions can be a threat to neighbours, especially growing economies that are keen to woo US businesses.

As Vietnam insists on “looking forward”, it appears to have almost forgotten the men and women who fought in the jungles and through the hell of American bombs.

But even they say there must be no return to the past. “I used to have a scar here,” says Le Thanh Gian, pointing to his right hand, where a bullet had once lodged.

“There are still some pieces of shrapnel in my body that couldn’t be removed. There were battles where it seemed like we would all be killed. But some of us survived while others fell.”

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjewggl0yqeo

Nestled in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan sits the picturesque village of Sergele.

For generations villagers have made a living growing pomegranates, almonds and peaches and foraging in the surrounding forests for wild fruits and spices.

But Sergele, located 16km (10 miles) from the border with Turkey, has become increasingly surrounded by Turkish military bases, which are dotted across the slopes.

One, perched halfway up the western ridge, looms over the village, while another in the east is under construction.

At least seven have been built here over the past two years, including one by a small dam that regulates Sergele’s water supply, rendering it off limits to villagers.

“This is 100% a form of occupation of Kurdish [Iraqi Kurdistan] lands,” says farmer Sherwan Sherwan Sergeli, 50, who has lost access to some of his land.

“The Turks ruined it.”

Sergele is now in danger of being dragged into what’s known locally as the “Forbidden Zone” – a large strip of land in northern Iraq affected by Turkey’s war with the Kurdish militant group the PKK, which launched an insurgency in southern Turkey in 1984.

The Forbidden Zone spans almost the entire length of the Iraqi border with Turkey and is up to 40km (25 miles) deep in places.

Community Peacemaker Teams, a human rights group based in Iraqi Kurdistan, says that hundreds of civilians have been killed by drone and air strikes in and around the Forbidden Zone. According to a 2020 Kurdistan parliamentary report, thousands have been forced off their land and whole villages have been emptied out by the conflict.

Sergele is now effectively on the front line of Turkey’s war with the PKK.

When the BBC World Service Eye Investigations team visited the area, Turkish aircraft pummelled the mountains surrounding the village to root out PKK militants, who have long operated from caves and tunnels in northern Iraq.

Much of the land around Sergele had been burned by shelling.

“The more bases they put up, the worse it gets for us,” says Sherwan.

Turkey has been rapidly growing its military presence in the Forbidden Zone in recent years, but until now the scale of this expansion was not publicly known.

Using satellite imagery assessed by experts and corroborated with on-the-ground reporting and open-source content, the BBC found that as of December 2024, the Turkish military had built at least 136 fixed military installations across northern Iraq.

Through its vast network of military bases, Turkey now holds de-facto control of more than 2,000 sq km (772 square miles) of Iraqi land, the BBC’s analysis found.

Satellite images further reveal that the Turkish military has built at least 660km (410 miles) of roads connecting its facilities. These supply routes have resulted in deforestation and left a lasting imprint on the region’s mountains.

While a few of the bases date back to the 1990s, 89% have been constructed since 2018, after which Turkey began significantly expanding its military presence in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The Turkish government didn’t respond to the BBC’s requests for interviews, but has maintained that its military bases are necessary to push back the PKK, which is designated a terrorist organisation by Ankara and a number of Western nations, including the UK.

The sub-district capital of Kani Masi, which is only 4km (2.5 miles) from the Iraqi-Turkish border and parts of which are within the Forbidden Zone, may offer a glimpse into Sergele’s future.

Once famous for its apple production, few residents remain here now.

Farmer Salam Saeed, whose land is in the shadow of a large Turkish base, hasn’t been able to cultivate his vineyard for the past three years.

“The moment you get here, you will have a drone hover over you,” he tells the BBC.

“They will shoot you if you stay.”

The Turkish military first set up here in the 1990s and has been consolidating its presence since.

Its main military base, featuring concrete blast walls, watch and communication towers and space for armoured personnel carriers to move inside, is much more developed than the smaller outposts around Sergele.

Salam, like some other locals, believes Turkey ultimately wants to claim the territory as its own.

“All they want is for us to leave these areas,” he adds.

Members of the LGBTQ+ community on Tuesday modeled creations inspired by Lady Gaga’s iconic style at a fashion show in Brazil featuring outfits made either by the models themselves or by the sustainable fashion house “Escola de Divines.”

The fashion show took place at Rio de Janeiro’s Central train station and aimed to publicize the special train schedule for Lady Gaga’s Saturday concert on Copacabana Beach.

It also served as an awareness campaign guiding the LGBTQ+ population on how to stay safe and what to do in cases of violence, as well as tips to preserve sexual health.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/lady-gaga-fashion-brazil-rio-lgbtq-46650d93535d8a03b62db56574bbbb0e

President Donald Trump announced a new fighter jet mission for an Air National Guard base in Michigan on Tuesday, allaying fears that the base could close and delivering a win for a longtime antagonist, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The two even shared a hug.

Whitmer has softened her stance toward Trump in hopes of finding common ground, with securing a new mission for Selfridge Air National Guard Base a top priority. Their embrace as the Republican president arrived in Michigan was a remarkable development given how unpopular the president remains with Democrats and the rancor of last year’s hard-fought campaign.

Whitmer, when asked about their hug, described the encounter differently, telling The Associated Press: “I was the first one he greeted. We shook hands and he leaned in to tell me, you know, congratulations and that I was a big reason that we were making an announcement today. And I was grateful for that.”

For decades, Trump said at the air base, Selfridge has “stood as a crucial pillar of North American air defense.”

“In recent years, many in Michigan have feared for the future of the base. They’ve been calling everybody, but the only one that mattered is Trump,” he said. “Today I have come in person to lay to rest any doubt about Selfridge’s future.”

State officials had been pushing for years to replace the base’s aging fleet of A-10 aircraft, which are set to be retired, to help ensure Selfridge remains in operation. Trump said Tuesday that the retiring A-10s will be replaced by 21 F-15EX Eagle II fighters jets that were “fresh off the line.”

During his remarks, Trump said the governor — who shared a brief motorcade ride with him to the base as he arrived in Michigan to mark his 100th day in office — has been “very effective” in advocating for Selfridge. But her own impromptu remarks, Whitmer notably did not name Trump.

“I am really damn happy we’re here to celebrate this recapitalization at Selfridge,” she said. “It’s crucial for the Michigan economy, it’s crucial for the men and women here, for our homeland security and our future. So thank you. I’m so, so grateful that this announcement was made today and I appreciate all the work.”

Located 30 miles north of Detroit, the base generates an estimated $850 million in statewide economic impact and supports about 5,000 military and civilian personnel, according to the office of Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich.

For years, Whitmer has pressed multiple administrations — including Trump’s in his first term and former Democratic President Joe Biden’s — to secure a new mission for the base, calling it “a key defense hub and economic anchor.” The Air Force announced in 2017 that Selfridge had lost out on a bid for F-35A Lightning fighter jest.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth traveled separately from the president to Selfridge for the announcement. But military implications aside, Trump’s announcement handed Whitmer a victory — though it remains to be seen what political price she may have paid to secure it.

The governor has been frequently mentioned as a potential presidential candidate. As she works to raise her profile nationally, Whitmer has vowed to find commonality with Trump where she can. But some Democrats view the president and his administration as so harmful that they’d rather see the party oppose Trump and his team whenever possible.

Earlier this month, Whitmer traveled to Washington to meet with Trump to discuss Selfridge and other issues affecting Michigan, including the steep tariffs Trump has imposed on Canada and other U.S. trading partners. The governor said she was unexpectedly ushered into the Oval Office, where she stood awkwardly as the Republican president signed executive orders and assailed his political opponents during a photo opportunity.

During that appearance, a photo captured Whitmer trying to hide her face from the cameras by holding up a folder.

Trump had told Whitmer during her visit that he hoped to keep the base “open, strong, thriving.”

“It’s a great piece of property. It’s a great location, and it’s a great state,” Trump said. “So I think we’re going to come back with a very good answer.”

Source : https://apnews.com/article/trump-gretchen-whitmer-selfridge-new-air-mission-e701e6067f538849ca40fd61468b0b3c

Iran has proposed meeting the European parties to a 2015 nuclear deal possibly in Rome this Friday if talks resume with the United States, four diplomats said on Monday, cautioning that there has yet to be a response from the Europeans to the idea.
Iran is looking to build on the momentum of nuclear negotiations with the United States that resumed in Oman on Saturday and after talks with Russia and China last week.

Omani officials have said a new round of U.S.-Iran talks could be held on May 3 in Europe. No formal decision has been taken.
Iran’s reach out to Britain, France and Germany, known as the E3, suggests Tehran is keeping its options open, but also wants to assess where the Europeans stand on the possible re-imposition of U.N. sanctions before October, when a resolution ratifying the 2015 accord expires.
Two E3 diplomats and a Western diplomat said Iran had communicated after last Saturday’s talks with the United States a proposal to meet possibly in Rome on Friday.
Should that not be possible, the Iranians also suggested discussions in Tehran before that date, the diplomats said.

The second round of negotiations between Washington and Tehran took place in Rome with Iran saying serious differences remained.
An Iranian official confirmed the proposal, but said the E3 had not responded so far.
The European and Western diplomats said the E3 were assessing whether it was in their interest to meet Iran now or wait to see how talks with Washington developed, but ruled out a meeting in Tehran.
“It is important to remain on the same page with all parties to the 2015 deal. Therefore, meeting the E3 countries this week ahead of the next round of talks with Americans would be useful,” said the Iranian official.

UN SANCTIONS DEADLINE

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Thursday he was ready to travel to Europe for talks, although he suggested that the ball was in Europe’s court after ties had soured between the two sides.

Since September, Tehran and the three European powers have met several times to discuss their ties and the nuclear issue.
The most recent meeting in March was held at the technical level, looking at the parameters of a future deal to secure a rollback of Iran’s nuclear programme in return for the lifting of sanctions.
Trump, who abandoned the 2015 pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
The West suspects Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, which it denies. The threat of renewed sanctions is intended to pressure Tehran into concessions, making detailed discussions on strategy between the Americans and Europeans vital, diplomats say.
Because the United States quit the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, it cannot initiate its mechanism for reimposing sanctions, called snapback, at the United Nations Security Council.

That makes the E3 the only participants in the deal who are capable of and interested in pursuing snapback.
When asked whether the proposal to meet Europeans was about snapback, the Iranian official indicated that was partly the aim.
“Talks with the U.S., particularly on the nuclear steps, are not moving fast and obviously we need more time and Tehran is not much in favour of an interim deal, because of lack of trust to American side,” the official said.
“What if under an interim deal, we fulfil our step and the other party does not. We need Europeans to understand that we want a new deal and we are ready to take steps to limit our enrichment but we need time.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-proposes-meeting-with-europeans-before-next-talks-with-us-diplomats-say-2025-04-28/

Now predominantly Muslim, North Africa was once a Christian heartland, producing Catholic popes who left their mark on the Church to this day.

Their papacies were in the era of the Roman Empire, which stretched across modern-day Tunisia, the north-east of Algeria and the coast of western Libya.

“North Africa was the Bible Belt of ancient Christianity,” says Prof Christopher Bellitto, a historian at Kean University in the US.

Many Catholics in Africa are hoping that that the papacy will return to the continent for the first time in more than 1,500 years, as a successor to Pope Francis is chosen.

Here, we look at the three previous African popes – and how they got Christians to celebrate Easter Sunday and St Valentine’s Day.

All three have been recognised in the Church as saints.

President Trump wasn’t ready to shake it off Monday.

The commander in chief took a jab at pop superstar Taylor Swift while honoring the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles at the White House.

Trump, 78, became the first sitting president to attend the big game when he, Swift and 65,717 others watched the Eagles blow out the Kansas City Chiefs, 40-22, ending the Chiefs’ dream of becoming the first back-to-back-to-back Super Bowl champions.

“It was incredible. A little surprising,” the president said of the blowout win.

“I was there along with Taylor Swift,” Trump added before asking rhetorically: “How did that one work out?”

The “You Belong With Me” singer, who is in a high-profile relationship with star Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, was loudly booed — to her apparent surprise — when she was shown on the big screen during the game.

Moments earlier, Trump was greeted with applause and cheers when he was shown during the pregame performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The blowout loss capped off a rough few months for objects of Swift’s affection. The “Bad Blood” crooner endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris against Trump in the 2024 election, having backed Joe Biden four years earlier.

The president took a poke at Swift on social media right after the game, writing on Truth Social: “The only one that had a tougher night than the Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift. She got BOOED out of the Stadium.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/04/28/us-news/trump-needles-taylor-swift-while-celebrating-eagles-super-bowl-win/

A US Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet fighter jet slipped off an aircraft carrier and sank into the Red Sea as the ship was making a hard turn, possibly to avoid fire from Houthi forces, according to reports.

The $56 million warplane was lost, but the pilot made it out alive.

The jet was being towed out of a hangar on Monday on the USS Harry S. Truman when the carrier suddenly shifted, and the tractor pulling it lost control, sending both the jet and the vehicle overboard.

Initial reports from the scene indicated that the Truman made a sudden turn to evade an attack from Houthi rebels, an official told CNN.

The Houthi rebel group claimed on Monday to have launched a drone and missile attack on the aircraft carrier, according to the outlet.

The pilot and the Navy sailor driving the tractor managed to jump free, with only one sustaining a minor injury.

“Sailors towing the aircraft took immediate action to move clear of the aircraft before it fell overboard. An investigation is underway,” the Navy said.

The USS Truman aircraft carrier group has been subjected to constant threats from the Iran-backed terror group in Yemen. It is stationed in the Red Sea to protect commercial shipping in the area, which has been regularly attacked by the Houthis.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/04/28/world-news/uss-truman-aircraft-carrier-loses-56-million-fighter-jet-after-it-rolls-off-ship-into-red-sea/

President Donald Trump’s trade war policies are expected to bring about a 35% decline in cargo arriving at the Port of Los Angeles by next week as “essentially all shipments out of China for major retailers and manufacturers have ceased,” according to Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka.

Seroka’s warning came during the port’s board of harbor commissioners meeting on April 24, with the executive director saying that retailers and manufacturers typically put in orders to factories in Asia around three to four months in advance of shipments and that Trump’s 90-day pause on the broad “reciprocal” tariffs resulted in no “real difference” for businesses.

The Los Angeles Port head added on Thursday that U.S. exporters are also getting “hit hard” by retaliatory tariffs amid Trump’s trade war. Seroka said the sectors include agriculture, heavy-duty manufacturing and information technology services.

“U.S. ag exporters are having an especially challenging time, so much so that in March, China bought more soybeans from Brazil in one month than ever in their history,” Seroka said.

Meanwhile, major retailers have told Seroka that they have about a six- to eight-week supply of inventory but that “will quickly dry up.” The Los Angeles Port is the major point of entry for cargo ships from China and Southeast Asia into the U.S.

“United States consumers and manufacturers alike will find difficult decisions in the weeks and months to come if policies don’t change,” Seroka said.

The warnings from Seroka come amid continued back and forth over tariffs and possible deals between the U.S. and China. The uncertainty has led to a decrease in shipping volumes from China to North America, with cancellations currently at 50%, according to global logistics firm Flexport.

Trump Trade War: Recession By The Summer?

Meanwhile, asset management firm Apollo Global Management’s (APO) Chief Economist Torsten Slok on Sunday released a report outlining the timeline for Trump’s tariffs to result in empty shelves, layoffs in the trucking and retail sector and a recession this summer.

Trump announced his “liberation day” tariffs on April 2. It takes about 20 to 40 days for container ships to sail to the U.S. from China, according to Apollo. Slok estimates that container ships coming to U.S. ports could come to a stop by mid-May.

It then takes about 1-to-10 days of transit time for trucking/rail to bring goods from the ports to cities. Apollo Global Management predicts that by late May domestic freight demand will “come to a halt” and that there will be “empty shelves,” forcing retailers and others to deal with lower sales.

By early June, Slok forecasts there will be layoffs in the domestic freight and retail industries with a recession hitting the U.S. this summer.

The National Retail Federation, whose members include Walmart (WMT), Target (TGT) and others, forecast earlier this month that U.S. import cargo volume will fall at least 20% year over year in the second half of 2025 as U.S. companies pause orders from China.

Shipping Stocks And Retailers

Big retailers that rely on China-made goods — like Amazon (AMZN), Walmart and Target — are set to feel an impact from Trump’s trade war, as well as the slowdown in shipping.

Amazon reports first-quarter earnings on Thursday with Walmart’s Q1 financials coming on May 15. Target follows with first-quarter earnings and revenue on May 21. Amazon stock is down around 1.4% in April while Target stock has dropped 7.7%. Walmart shares have advanced more than 8%.

Container liners and logistics companies ZIM Integrated Shipping (ZIM) and XPO Logistics (XPO) are down 0.9% and 9.4%, respectively during April’s stock market action.

The 37 stocks in the IBD-tracked Transportation-Ship industry group have collectively declined 17% during 2025. That puts the sector at a weak No. 177 out of 197 ranked industries, with 1 being the best performer and 197 the worst.

Domestic freight company Old Dominion Freight Line (ODFL) is down 10% in April while peer ArcBest (ARCB) has declined 16.3% during stock market action in April.

Source : https://www.investors.com/news/trump-trade-war-difficult-decisions-as-china-shipments-cease/

PRESIDENT Donald Trump has praised Jalen Hurts as a “terrific guy and player” despite the Philadelphia Eagles’ star quarterback skipping the White House ceremony due to scheduling conflicts.

Hurts’ absence comes after he refused to confirm his attendance when asked by a Time Magazine reporter at Thursday evening’s Time 100 Gala in New York City.

When asked if he would visit the White House on Monday, Hurts stood silently and refused to give a clear answer, saying, “Ummm.”

The Super Bowl-winning Eagles’ were showered with praise by Trump as he congratulated them on accomplishing “football immortality” with their victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in February.

“We’re thrilled to welcome everyone to the White House – special place – and to celebrate Super Bowl 59 champions the Philadelphia Eagles,” Trump said.

“The Eagles have turned out to be an incredible team and incredible group with a fantastic coach and coaches.

“Two years ago the Eagles came incredibly close to football immortality and Super Bowl 57, you remember that game.

“But after a hard fought game you suffered a heartbreaking loss to the Kansas City Chiefs by just three points, it looked like you had the game.”

Trump continued, “This past year, the Eagles were determined to get it back and get it back they did.”

Despite Hurts missing from the South Lawn during the ceremony, Trump acknowledged the quarterback’s stellar season.

“He had a great season and a great game, finished with 32 touchdowns on the year. Turning one stellar performance after the other,” Trump said of Hurts.

“He’s a terrific guy and a terrific player.”

Trump was gifted with a signed Eagles helmet and a jersey with his name engraved in the back with the number 47 embedded.

Hurts’ absence was reported by NBC News hours before the event was scheduled to begin.

SAQUON FLIES ON AIR FORCE ONE

Meanwhile, the Eagles’ star running back Saquon Barkley hung out with Trump on Sunday, a day before the team’s White House visit.

Barkley and Trump were pictured disembarking Marine One on Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey.

The pair then flew back to Washington DC on board Air Force One.

Barkley clapped back at the online backlash he received following his outing with the president.

“Lol some people are really upset cause I played golf and flew to the White House with the PRESIDENT,” Barkley wrote on X on Monday.

“Maybe I just respect the office, not a hard concept to understand.

“Just golfed with Obama not too long ago… and look forward to finishing my round with Trump!

“Now ya get out my mentions with all this politics and have [an] amazing day.”

During Monday’s ceremony, Trump praised Barkley as a “handsome guy.”

“The season started off slow, but you soon caught fire with your great coach inspiring you and you got the ball to your superstar running back, who I met yesterday,” Trump said.

FORMER President Barack Obama has been spotted out to dinner without Michelle as speculation about their marriage continues.

Barack, 63, was seen embarking on a night out with his daughters, Sasha and Malia, at a chic restaurant in Los Angeles on Saturday.

The Democrat wore his wedding ring and looked glum as he met up with his daughters at the ritzy Japanese eatery Hamasuku in Santa Monica.

The family has been spotted at the restaurant multiple times since 2022, as Malia, 26, and Sasha, 23, both live in Los Angeles.

However, the family was missing their matriarch this weekend as Michelle, 61, was nowhere to be found.

It comes a week after Barack and Michelle were spotted together at an Italian restaurant in Washington DC.

The couple’s date night marked the first time the pair, who have been married for 32 years, have been photographed together since December.

Rumors about possible marriage troubles for the former White House couple began to swirl when Michelle was notably absent from Barack’s side at former President Jimmy Carter’s state funeral in January.

All living former presidents were at the funeral with their wives except for Michelle.

It was later revealed that she had been on vacation in Hawaii during the event.

Weeks after the funeral, Michelle then skipped President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, as cameras captured Barack entering the US Capitol Rotunda alone.

In February, Michelle and her older brother, Craig Robinson, were also pictured in Los Angeles going out for dinner without Barack.

Michelle and Robinson have a podcast together called IMO, where she has also spoken about her pet peeves with Barack at the start of their marriage, including his lateness.

Despite the growing speculation, Michelle recently shot down divorce rumors in an episode of actress Sophia Bush’s podcast, Work in Progress.

She revealed that she didn’t attend the political events, including Carter’s funeral and Trump’s inauguration, because she is exercising her independence.

“That’s the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with disappointing people,” Michelle said.

PRESIDENT Donald Trump has revealed the truth about a potential run for a third term, promising a 2028 election bid would be a “big shattering.”

Trump has previously said he is “not joking” about another possible term in the White House.

The president boasted about both his power at home and influence abroad in a new interview with The Atlantic.

“The first time, I had two things to do — run the country and survive,” Trump said, adding, “I had all these crooked guys.”

“And the second time, I run the country and the world,” the president said.

In March, Trump made shockwaves when he suggested that he was serious about a third term as president.

He told NBC News at the time that “a lot of people want me to do it.”

“But, I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration,” he added.

And just last week, Trump’s real estate company, the Trump Organization, dropped a new version of Trump’s classic “Make America Great Again” hat.

This time, the red hat simply says, “Trump 2028,” which is the next presidential election year.

The $50 hat was modeled by Eric Trump, the president’s second-oldest child, on the company’s official online store.

Kimberly Benza, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization, told the New York Post that the new merchandise was put online “because it’s amazing.”

Trump said in his interview published Monday that it “would be a big shattering” if he ran for reelection.

He added: “Well, maybe I’m just trying to shatter.”

But he then admitted: “It’s not something that I’m looking to do.

“And I think it would be a very hard thing to do.”

The 22nd Amendment of the Constitution states that “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”

It was created in 1951 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected for four consecutive terms.

In the depths of a Chilean rainforest stands the ‘Gran Abuelo,’ an approximately 5,400-year-old tree fighting for survival. A highway project now threatens its existence — and the ecosystem around it.

Empires have risen and fallen, languages have been born and forgotten — but this tree stood the test of time: The 5,400-year-old Gran Abuelo, or great grandfather in Spanish.

Jonathan Barichivich, a renowned Chilean scientist working in France, grew up in the temperate rainforest now protected in Alerce Costero National Park. His grandfather, Anibal, discovered the Gran Abuelo tree in 1972 while working as a park ranger. That moment, he says, changed the course of his family’s history — and the tree’s.

“I took my first steps in this forest with my grandfather. He taught me the names of the plants before I could even read,” Barichivich recalled. “The memories of my childhood are fuel for my scientific passion.”

Now, Barichivich and his mother, along with a team of researchers, are unlocking the secrets stored in the Gran Abuelo and other trees — information that could shape how we understand and fight climate change.

Not just old, but record-keeper of climate patterns

The alerce trees in this forest , also known as Patagonian cypress, or Fitzroya cupressoides, don’t just grow older than many other trees. The species is also one of the most climate-sensitive trees in the world. Each ring inside its trunk is a yearly weather record. Studying their rings allows researchers to reconstruct climate patterns stretching back thousands of years — data unmatched by any other species in the region.

“They are like encyclopedias,” said Rocio Urrutia, a Chilean scientist who has studied these trees for decades. Her research has helped reconstruct temperature records going back 5,680 years.

To determine a tree’s age, scientists frequently use a tool called an increment borer to extract a part of the trunk and count the number of rings that have formed over the years. However, many old trees have long lost the core of their trunk, so scientists have to rely on both the rings they can see, as well as statistical models that project the total number of rings, to come up with a range for the tree’s age.

The scientists also measure how much carbon the forest absorbs and emits. The more the tree grows, the thicker the space will be between each tree ring. And more growth means more carbon capture. These measurements are essential in understanding how forests respond to global warming.

“Forests absorb about one-third of our carbon emissions,” Barichivich explained.

But will that also be the case as the planet continues to grow hotter?

Understanding how trees grow under different weather patterns tells us how much carbon they absorb — which is essential for predicting whether forests can continue to slow global warming in a hotter future.

A new road is threatening the rainforest

But the centuries-old trees have come under threat, as the Chilean government has proposed reopening an old logging road to build a new highway — cutting through a protected national park.

Officials argued the road would connect cities and boost tourism in the region. However, some say this is just smoke and mirrors.

“Connectivity is not the real reason,” Barichivich told DW, adding that there is another existing road nearby. But this proposed new road would link “directly to the port of Corral — used by one of Latin America’s largest pulp exporters.”

The real goal seems to be opening access to timber, many locals say.

Alerce trees are highly valuable due to their durable high-quality, straight-growing wood.

Researchers like Urrutia warn that the road will increase the risk of wildfires. She said that over 90% of fires in the region start near roads.

This is a global phenomenon. In the Amazon, nearly 75% of fires start within five kilometers (about 3 miles) of a road, and in the US, 96% start within 800 meters.

“The Alerce is an endangered species,” Urrutia said. “Every individual tree counts. A major fire could wipe out the last populations.”

Pushing back to save trees, ecosystems

The scientists turned to Science magazine, one of the world’s top academic journals, warning of the danger.

Their findings — clear, urgent, and backed by years of data — were distilled into a single report, published as a letter.

But “it wasn’t just a letter,” Urrutia said. “It was years of research, fieldwork, and community engagement.”

It struck a chord across the global scientific community, prompting researchers around the world to speak out. Combined with pressure from local residents, it was enough to make the government back off — for now.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/in-chile-scientists-set-out-to-protect-ancient-forests-ecosystem-biodiversity/a-72336992

Republican Donald Trump has been US president for 100 days. Which of his promises has he kept? And what do Americans think about their country in transition?

The inauguration on January 20, 2025, marked the start of Donald Trump’s second presidency. Since he took office, so much has changed in US politics that it’s hard to believe it’s only been 100 days, during which numerous 180-degree turns have occurred. Whether it’s fundamental shifts in US foreign policy or putting tariffs on the world’s imports, there has hardly been a single day when the White House hasn’t been a source of urgent “breaking news.”

“No matter what side of the aisle you’re sitting on, I think most people would agree that it’s been relatively busy,” said Patrick Malone, a professor in the department of public administration and policy at American University in Washington, DC. “He definitely came in guns a-blazing.”

There’s a strategy behind all the action, experts say.

Time Magazine calls it “a blitz of power grabs, strategic shifts, and direct attacks” that leaves opponents at home and abroad stunned. American citizens who disagree with Trump’s new direction are unsure of where to begin when it comes to mounting any kind of protest. Should they demonstrate against Trump’s complete disregard for climate change and his plans to increase drilling for oil? Or protest his undermining of the separation of powers, as the administration deports immigrants in violation of court orders made by federal judges?

Or maybe it’s the restrictions being placed on a free press in the US, as certain outlets Trump considers undesirable are banned from White House press conferences, that require protest first? Or maybe it’s the clampdown on freedom of expression as universities and researchers are cut off from federal funding?

This second Trump administration is dividing the country as never before. Yet even as that is happening, many are asking: How many of the promises that Trump made to his followers before the election last November has the US president actually kept?

Ending the war in Ukraine

In May 2023, at an event in New Hampshire, Trump said that if elected, he would end the war in Ukraine immediately.

“They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done — I’ll have that done in 24 hours,” he said.

But the war is still going, and Trump has had to acknowledge that he wasn’t able to end the conflict. The Trump administration is working unilaterally on some sort of solution, but without the support of the US’s traditional allies, and with compromises that seem to favor the Russians over the Ukrainians. Even during this first phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump seemed to make far-reaching concessions to Russian arguments, even though it was Russia that invaded Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy received a drubbing from Trump and Vice President JD Vance when he visited the White House for being “ungrateful.” As a result of the fracas, military aid to Ukraine was put on hold, although it has since been started up again.

Recently, President Trump criticized Ukraine for insisting that Crimea be considered part of Ukrainian territory, instead of simply surrendering the peninsula to their enemy, to facilitate a quick peace. In Ukraine, locals impacted by the ongoing war have been shocked at the abrupt about-face of their most important supporter.

It’s not just Ukraine either. America’s Western partners are also concerned about where Trump’s allegiances lie. He has questioned American participation in the NATO military alliance. He has even said that he might not defend NATO countries who he thinks don’t spend enough on their own defense, should Russia attack them. He did take that back eventually, but it has become abundantly clear to European nations that they can no longer rely on the US the way they used to.

Trump: ‘Kick out bloodthirsty criminals’

Immigration policy was one of Trump’s favorite campaign issues. At an event in New York in October 2024, he promised that if elected, he would launch the largest deportation program in US history. Trump said he would “put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail, then kick them the hell out of our country as fast as possible.”

In fact, so far at least, Trump’s deportation program has not been particularly quick. In February, Trump’s first full month in office, the US government deported around 11,000 migrants. In February 2021, the first month of Joe Biden’s administration, that number was around 12,000. However, NBC News has reported that fewer people are crossing the southern border with Mexico into the US under Trump.

Trump has definitely made immigration more difficult, says Malone. “Some would consider that a success, some would consider that not consistent with American values.”

Economy: ‘America is back’

Trump campaigned on the promise that the US economy would boom under his leadership. One of his slogans was “make America affordable again” — prices would fall on the first day of his presidency, he promised — much like he said he would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of coming into office.

This has happened for some products, such as gasoline. Prices for flights and hotel stays also decreased, as did overall inflation. Meanwhile, the average prices for goods excluding the highly volatile costs of gasoline and food were 2.8% higher in March than a year earlier, the lowest increase in almost four years, according to the AP news agency.

“President Trump’s policies are working at keeping inflation at bay, keeping inflation down,” Stephen Miran, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, the White House’s economic advisory team, said in an interview with CNBC. “Between that and what’s going on with trade — America is back.”

However, for many Americans, shopping at the supermarket remains as expensive as it was at the beginning of Trump’s term. Weekly shopping for a two-person household can cost more than $150 (€130), even in less expensive areas outside of major cities.

Trump’s tariffs: Promise kept, cause for concern?

After his election, Trump announced that he would end the policy of “ridiculously open borders” and the US trade deficit. In April, the Trump administration introduced a series of protective tariffs on almost all goods imported to the US. So: promise kept.

However, this makes some products more expensive for US consumers and jeopardizes established trade relations. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, Americans now view their country’s economic situation and future more critically than they did in February, shortly after Trump took office, and before he announced his tariffs.

At that time, 40% of respondents said they expected the US economy to be in better shape next February, while 37% believed conditions would deteriorate. In April, only 36% thought economic conditions in the US would be better in a year’s time. In contrast, 45% believed the US economic situation would deteriorate.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/100-days-of-donald-trump-us-in-a-whirlwind/a-72369565

The foreign ministers of Brazil, China, Russia and other BRICS members began two days of talks in Rio de Janeiro Monday (Apr 28) aimed at forging a united front to US President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade policies.

The meeting comes at a critical moment for the world economy after the International Monetary Fund slashed growth forecasts over the impact of the US leader’s sweeping new tariffs.

Top diplomats from the 11-member bloc – which includes Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates – met to hone their agenda ahead of a July leaders summit.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira stressed the importance of dialogue at a time of “humanitarian crises, armed conflicts, political instability and the erosion of multilateralism.”

BRICS’s “role as a group is more important than ever,” he said.

Trump, since returning to the White House in January, has hit dozens of countries with a blanket 10 per cent tariff, but China faces levies of up to 145 per cent on many products.

Beijing has responded with duties of 125 per cent on US goods.

Senior Chinese economic planner Zhao Chenxin said in Beijing Monday the country was on the “right side of history” in the face of what he called Washington’s “unilateralism and bullying.”

BRICS has expanded significantly since its 2009 inception as a group of four powers – Brazil, Russia, India and China – seeking an alternative platform to Western-led international organisations such as the G7.

It now makes up nearly half of the global population, 39 per cent of global GDP and weighs in on issues from Ukraine to Gaza to global trade.

Vieira opened the talks with a call for a “complete withdrawal” of Israeli forces from Gaza, terming Israel’s more than 50-day aid blockade of the territory “unacceptable”.

The group has had generally less to say about the war in Ukraine, issuing general calls for peace while steering clear of condemning Russia’s invasion.

And Vieira on Monday called for a “diplomatic solution” which respects the “principles and objectives” of the UN charter.

RUSSIAN CEASEFIRE

The meeting comes at the start of what the United States has called a “critical week” for talks on ending the Ukraine war.

Trump appeared to turn against Putin at the weekend after a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at Pope Francis’s funeral, saying he felt the Russian leader was “just tapping me along”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin responded by announcing a three-day ceasefire from May 8-10.

The White House, however, suggested the pause was not sufficient, saying Trump had “made it clear he wants to see a permanent ceasefire first.”

At the same time the US president has been piling pressure on Kyiv to give up hopes of reclaiming Russian-annexed Crimea.

A BRICS challenge to the hegemony of the dollar is expected to feature high on the agenda.

At a summit last year, BRICS members discussed boosting non-dollar transactions, eliciting a swift rebuke from Trump who threatened them with 100 per cent tariffs if they undercut the US currency.

Speaking to Brazil’s O Globo newspaper ahead of the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said BRICS nations planned to “increase the share of national currencies in transactions” between member states but said talk of transitioning towards a unified BRICS currency was “premature”.

Vieira, whose country has so far been spared the worst of Trump’s trade ire – Brazilian imports to the US are subject to 10 per cent tariffs, a fraction of those imposed on China – also denied any plans to create a new currency.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/trump-trade-war-dominates-brics-meeting-brazil-5095481

Prince Di has a nice ring to it.

Princess Diana once went undercover in male drag to sneak into a gay bar in London with late Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, according to a forthcoming biography.

In “Dianaworld: An Obsession,” out Tuesday, author Edward White recalls the legendary night, writing in an excerpt obtained by People that “furtive nocturnal activity plays an important role as moments when she secretly revealed hidden aspects of her true self.”

Per White, the “best-­known example” of this is “when Diana took a trip to one of London’s most famous gay bars.”

White cites comedy actress Cleo Rocos, who befriended Diana in the late ’80s and was present for the night in question, as was late radio personality Kenny Everett, the first DJ to play “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

“At some point in the evening, Rocos claims, Diana persuaded them to take her to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, a place that Everett warned was ‘not for you  … full of hairy gay men,’” White pens.

“Diana was insistent, however, so Everett helped her disguise herself in male drag: ‘a camouflage army jacket, hair tucked up into a leather cap and dark aviator sunglasses. Scrutinizing her in the half-­light, we decided that the most famous icon of the modern world might just …JUST, pass for a rather eccentrically dressed gay male model.’”

He claims the plan “seemed to work,” as he quotes Rocos in saying, “It was fabulously outrageous and so bizarrely exciting …no one, absolutely no one, recognized Diana.”

According to White, the group “stayed for one drink and left. Diana returned to Kensington Palace and sent back Everett’s clothes the following day.”

Though he acknowledges that the “story sounds far-fetched,” White notes that “there are other, slightly less fantastical tales about Diana disguising herself on nights out, such as when she accompanied Hasnat Khan to Ronnie Scott’s jazz bar in Soho, the princess obscuring her true self beneath a wig and glasses.”

The biographer points out that “the story of Diana in drag at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern has been taken up as an illustration of her connection with the gay community and a metaphor for her own search for a family in which she felt truly accepted.”

In an interview published earlier this month, Rocos — who was particularly close with Everett — detailed what led to that night at Royal Vauxhall Tavern.

“We’d had a jolly lunch at the Bombay Brasserie in London. Diana always wanted to know what was going on in the world of showbiz, and we always wanted to know what was going on at her house. We all used to shriek with laughter,” Rocos, 62, told the Mirror UK.

“Usually, Diana would go home after lunch. But on this day, she came back to Kenny’s house. I went into the kitchen to make some more cocktails. Diana had kicked her shoes off, and she and Kenny were dancing to the Gypsy Kings. Kenny called Freddie Mercury and said, ‘Di’s here. Come over! We are watching ‘The Golden Girls.’”

Per Rocos, Diana soon inquired about what the group had planned for later that night — and what they were going to wear.

“My brother was a war photographer in El Salvador at the time. He had given me his camouflage jacket, and Kenny was going to borrow that. But Diana put on the jacket, and it looked great on her,” she remembered, adding that Everett “got out a leather cap” before Mercury “gave her some aviator sunglasses.”

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/04/28/royal-family/princess-diana-wore-male-drag-to-sneak-into-gay-bar-with-freddie-mercury/

Ivanka Trump and her daughter, Arabella Rose, twinned in blue as President Donald Trump celebrated the Philadelphia Eagles’ 2025 Super Bowl win at the White House.

The socialite was photographed walking on the South Lawn with her 13-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son, Joseph Frederick, in Washington, DC, Monday.

Ivanka looked chic in a double-breasted blazer, a midi skirt and white pumps.

She styled her blond locks straight for the special occasion.

For Arabella’s part, she wore a sleeveless minidress with a flared skirt and white ballet flats.

She appeared to be wearing star-shaped earrings and also wore her brunette hair down.

Joseph, meanwhile, was dressed in an off-white suit.

The three appeared in good spirits as President Trump, 78, welcomed the Super Bowl winners.

The commander-in-chief was seen posing with Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni and offensive tackle Lane Johnson while holding a signed helmet.

Ivanka’s 8-year-old son, Theodore James, did not appear to be present.

The businesswoman shares her three kids with her husband, Jared Kushner, who also was not in attendance.

The family recently returned from a tropical getaway to Costa Rica.

Earlier this month, Ivanka was photographed surfing the waves in a black bikini while Kushner watched from the shore.

On another day, she sported an orange two-piece while surfing solo, as her sister-in-law Karlie Kloss remained on the sand with Kloss’ husband, Joshua Kushner, who is Jared’s younger brother.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/04/28/style/ivanka-and-arabella-trump-match-in-blue-for-eagles-white-house-visit/

Canadian prosecutors have charged a 30-year-old Vancouver resident with murder for killing at least 11 people aged between 5 and 65 and injuring dozens after he rammed an SUV through a crowd at a Filipino community festival in the western Canadian city, police said on Sunday.
The man, Kai-Ji Adam Lo, was charged with eight counts of second-degree murder by prosecutors in British Columbia and “further charges are anticipated,” according to a post on X by the Vancouver Police.

Lo appeared in court on Sunday, hours after police arrested him at the scene of the incident on Saturday evening. Court documents seen by Reuters did not show a plea.
Authorities described Lo as having had a “significant history” of interactions with authorities involving mental health. They said there was no evidence of terrorism.
“This is the darkest day in our city’s history,” Vancouver Interim Chief Constable Steve Rai told reporters at a Sunday press conference.
Police said two dozen people were injured, some critically, and warned that the death toll could rise in coming days and weeks. As of Sunday afternoon, Rai said he did not believe there were any ongoing threats to the community.

More than 100 police officers joined the investigation, as local officials worked with provincial and federal authorities to provide support services. Messages of condolence and support came from across the globe.
“The community will feel this for a long time,” RJ Aquino, chair of the community advocacy group Filipino BC, told reporters. “We want to tell everybody that we’re grieving. We want to tell everybody that we see and hear the support from around the world at this point.”
The attack on Saturday evening took place two days before Canada’s federal election on Monday.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney interrupted his campaigning and traveled to Vancouver on Sunday, where he knelt in front of candles and flowers laid at the scene of the car ramming to pay his respects to the victims. He also attended a church where he lit a candle and observed a moment of silence.

Carney earlier released a statement in which he expressed his condolences to the country’s Filipino community.
“Last night, families lost a sister, a brother, a mother, a father, a son or a daughter. Those families are living every family’s nightmare,” he told reporters in Hamilton, Ontario.
“I join all Canadians in mourning with you. I know that Canadians are united with you,” he said.
British Columbia Premier David Eby said at a press conference near the site of the attack on Sunday afternoon that it was hard not to feel rage towards the man who “murdered innocent people” for reasons that were not yet known.
“I want to turn the rage that I feel into ensuring that we stand with the Filipino community, that we deliver what they need, that we stand with those families who have lost loved ones,” he told reporters.
“I know it’s hard to believe it in this moment, but I know we will come back stronger.”
More than 12 hours after the incident, police still did not have a motive for the attack at the festival, which took place without a dedicated police presence or heavy vehicle barriers.

“There were no known threats to the event or to the Filipino community,” Rai said.
The suspect was initially chased down and held by festival-goers until police arrived, witnesses said. The injured were taken to multiple hospitals, police said.
The incident happened shortly after 8 p.m. (0300 GMT) in Vancouver’s Sunset neighborhood, an area known for its large Asian population, where the Lapu-Lapu Day Block Party, celebrating a Philippine national hero, was taking place.
One witness told CTV News he saw a black vehicle driving erratically in the area of the festival just before the crowd was struck. A photo of the aftermath posted online showed a dark Audi SUV with both front fenders crumpled and the hood pushed up toward the vehicle’s windshield.
While mass casualty attacks are far less common in Canada than in the United States, such incidents have occurred with some regularity north of the border.
At least two of those attacks involved motor vehicles. In 2021, a man killed four members of a Muslim family by running them over with a pickup truck. In 2018, a man drove a rented van into a lunch-hour crowd in Toronto, killing 10 people and injuring 15 along a sidewalk thronged with pedestrians.

‘HORRIFIC’

Online images from the scene in Vancouver showed the bodies of victims on the pavement alongside a row of colorful food trucks as others attended to them on a roadway littered with debris including what appeared to be a motorized scooter.
A witness who did not wish to be identified said he had seen about 15 people lying on the ground after the SUV plowed into the crowd. The witness said the driver tried to run but was chased down and held against a fence for about 10 minutes until police arrived.
“I didn’t get to see the driver, all I heard was an engine rev,” Yoseb Vardeh, co-owner of food truck Bao Buns, said in an interview with Postmedia.
“I got outside my food truck, I looked down the road and there’s just bodies everywhere,” said Vardeh, his voice breaking with emotion. “He went through the whole block, he went straight down the middle.”
The attack came at the end of the festival, following a concert headlined by Filipino-American rapper Apl.de.ap of the Black Eyed Peas, according to Mable Elmore, a member of the British Columbia Legislative Assembly, who attended the event.
“Everybody was happy and getting ready to go. And that’s when, that’s when the incident happened,” Elmore told reporters through tears.
“We are in incredible pain,” she said. “We will come together out of this catastrophe through the support and the love from the broad community.”
The festival, celebrated especially in the central Philippines, honors Datu Lapu-Lapu, a Filipino chieftain who defeated Spanish forces led by Ferdinand Magellan in the Battle of Mactan in 1521.
The government of British Columbia officially recognized April 27 as Lapu-Lapu Day in 2023, acknowledging the cultural contributions of the Filipino-Canadian community, one of the largest immigrant groups in the province.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/multiple-dead-after-vehicle-drives-into-crowd-vancouver-street-festival-police-2025-04-27/

The death toll from a powerful explosion at Iran’s biggest port of Bandar Abbas has risen to at least 40, with more than 1,200 people injured, state media reported on Sunday, as firefighters worked to fully extinguish the fire.
Saturday’s blast took place in the Shahid Rajaee section of the port, Iran’s biggest container hub, shattering windows for several kilometres around, tearing metal strips off shipping containers and badly damaging goods inside, state media said.

The incident occurred as Iran held a third round of nuclear talks with the United States in Oman.
Fires kept breaking out in different parts of the affected area as of Sunday night, according to state media, with helicopters and fire fighters continuing efforts to extinguish them.
Chemicals at the port were suspected to have fuelled the explosion, but the exact cause was not clear and Iran’s Defence Ministry denied international media reports that the blast may be linked to the mishandling of solid fuel used for missiles.
A spokesperson for the ministry told state TV the reports were “aligned with enemy psyops”, saying that the blast-hit area did not contain any military cargo.

The Associated Press cited British security firm Ambrey as saying the port in March had received sodium perchlorate, which is used to propel ballistic missiles and whose mishandling could have led to the explosion.
The Financial Times newspaper reported in January the shipment of two Iranian vessels from China containing enough of the ingredient to propel as many as 260 mid-range missiles, helping Tehran to replenish its stocks following its direct missile attacks on its arch-foe Israel in 2024.

DEADLY INCIDENTS

Plumes of black smoke rose above the site on Sunday and pieces of twisted metal and debris lay scattered across the blast site.
By early afternoon, the head of Iran’s Red Crescent Society told state media the fire was 90% extinguished and officials said port activities had resumed in unaffected parts of Shahid Rajaee.

A spokesperson for the country’s crisis management organisation appeared on Saturday to blame the explosion on poor storage of chemicals in containers at Shahid Rajaee, adding that earlier warnings had highlighted potential safety risks.
Government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani cautioned against “premature speculation”, saying final assessments would be shared after investigations.
Negligence has often been blamed in a series of deadly incidents that have hit Iranian energy and industrial infrastructure in recent years.
“Did we really have to hold the container here for 3-4 months… until we had 120-140 thousand containers stored in this place?”, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said after arriving in Bandar Abbas on Sunday.
Incidents in the country have included refinery fires, a gas explosion at a coal mine, and an emergency repair incident at Bandar Abbas that killed one worker in 2023.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/death-toll-blast-irans-bandar-abbas-port-rises-25-2025-04-27/

The Chinese coastguard has seized a tiny sandbank in the South China Sea, state media has reported, in an escalation of a regional dispute with the Philippines.

State broadcaster CCTV released images of four officers, wearing all black and holding the Chinese flag, standing on the disputed reef of Sandy Cay in the Spratly Islands.

CCTV said China had “implemented maritime control and exercised sovereign jurisdiction” on the reef earlier in April.

Both China and the Philippines have staked claims on various islands. The Philippines said later on Sunday that it had landed on three sandbanks, releasing an image of officers holding up their national flag in a pose that mimicked the Chinese photo.

It is unclear whether one of the sandbanks the Philippines security forces landed on was also Sandy Cay.

In a statement, the National Task Force West Philippine Sea (NTF-WPS) said it witnessed “the illegal presence” of a Chinese Coastguard vessel 1,000 yards (914 metres) from one of the sandbanks, as well as seven Chinese militia vessels.

“This operation reflects the unwavering dedication and commitment of the Philippine Government to uphold the country’s sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction in the West Philippine Sea,” the statement said.

The dispute between the two nations has been escalating, with frequent confrontations including vessels colliding and scuffles.

Sandy Cay is near a Philippine military outpost on Thitu Island, also known as Pag-asa, which Manila reportedly uses to track Chinese movements in the area.

There is no sign that China is permanently occupying the 200 sq metre island and the coastguard is reported to have left.

The White House said reports of China seizing the reef were “deeply concerning if true”.

In comments reported by the Financial Times, James Hewitt, US National Security Council spokesperson, warned that “actions like these threaten regional stability and violate international law”, adding that the White House was “consulting closely with our own partners”.

The Chinese move comes as US and Philippine forces are carrying out their annual war scenario drills – called the Balikatan exercises. China has criticised the drills as provocative.

As many as 17,000 personnel are taking part in the coming days. Missiles from the US Marine Air Defense Integrated System were fired off the coast of the northern Philippines on Sunday, the system’s second live fire test and its first deployment to the Philippines. The drills are also set to feature the US anti-ship missile system NMESIS.

The Philippines military says the drills are a rehearsal for national defence but insists they are not directed at any particular country.

“This type of training is absolutely invaluable to us,” said Third Marine Littoral Regiment Officer John Lehane.

The exercise has helped allay fears among some US allies that Donald Trump may upend the years-long military support it has provided in the region.

On a visit to Manila last month, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Washington was “doubling down” on its alliance with the country and was determined to “re-establish deterrence” against China.

There have been wrangles over territory in the South China Sea for centuries, but tension has grown in recent years.

China claims by far the largest portion of territory in an area demarcated by its so-called “nine-dash line”. The line comprises nine dashes which extends hundreds of miles south and east from its most southerly province of Hainan. Beijing has backed its expansive claims with island-building and naval patrols.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/creqp4lxnl4o

The Army Blackhawk pilot involved in the Washington, DC, plane crash failed to heed her flight instructor’s warning just 15 seconds before the deadly crash that killed 67 people, according to a new report.

Moments before the deadly Jan. 29 crash near Reagan International Airport, Capt. Rebecca Lobach missed an order from co-pilot Andrew Eaves, who was overseeing her training mission, to change course and avoid the descending American Airlines jet, the New York Times reported.

Along with the error, officials found that the pilots “stepped on” some of the air traffic controller’s instructions, meaning they accidentally cut him off when pressing the button to talk over the radio and likely missed important information.

A key moment occurred around 8:46 p.m., when Eaves requested and received approval for the helicopter’s pilots to use their own visuals instead of air-traffic control to avoid other air traffic. The move is common practice to speed things up, but of course comes with the risk of more human error.

During that moment, investigators believe Eaves and Lobach failed to hear that the American Airlines plane was “circling” because one of them was pressing the microphone key to speak to air traffic control when the word came through.

Just 20 seconds before the crash occurred, the air-traffic controller asked the helicopter if it spotted American Airlines Flt. 5342, which was coming up on Runway 33 where the chopper was approaching.

“PAT two-five, do you have the CRJ in sight?” he asked, using the abbreviation for the model of Flt. 5342’s aircraft.

That was the last communication between the plane and the air-traffic controller.

Technology on the Black Hawk that would have allowed air traffic control to better track the helicopter was also found to be turned off that day, common protocol if the training mission had been for real.

But it was a practice mission involving an annual flying assessment for Robach, who was training as if top congressional officials needed to be flown from a Capitol under siege.

Brig. Gen. Matthew Braman, the Army’s director of aviation, said it was clear that multiple factors contributed to the deadly crash.

“I think what we’ll find in the end is there were multiple things that, had any one of them changed, it could have well changed the outcome of that evening,” he said.

Aviation experts have long bemoaned the practice of allowing pilots to navigate on their own, as human error can often lead to tragedy, especially in the exceedingly busy conditions around Reagan airport.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has since openly criticized the long-standing practice and vowed to get rid of it as he likened it to “threading a needle.”

There was also an apparent discrepancy between two of the three Army pilots aboard the doomed chopper about what altitude they were flying at, according to investigators — and they were well above the 200-foot limit for that location.

At one point before the collision, the helicopter’s pilot announced that they were at 300 feet, but the instructor pilot was also heard saying the helicopter was at 400 feet, according to recordings.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/04/27/us-news/army-blackhawk-pilot-in-dc-crash-failed-to-heed-flight-instructors-command-15-seconds-before-deadly-collision-report/

President Donald Trump is mulling ways to combat America’s ongoing birth and fertility crisis. One possibility: cold, hard cash.

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Trump told The Post last week when asked about the potential $5,000 “baby bonus” to get more Americans to have kids.

As a mother of six, I can’t help but wonder — will that be retroactive?

The idea calls to mind the meme of a drowning man, hand barely above water, reaching out for help — only to get a high-five before slipping under.

That’s exactly what this proposal feels like: a symbolic gesture in the face of a sinking reality.

A one-time payout of $5,000 — an amount that wouldn’t even cover the cost of one of my births — isn’t a life raft, but a pat on the head as families struggle to stay afloat amid rising costs, child-care shortages and a culture that undervalues parenthood.

American families don’t need a flashy push present. We need durable policy change.

We need tax reform rooted in research, reflecting the real needs of modern mothers and fathers, and support that empowers families to dream bigger, not just survive.

Several Republicans on Capitol Hill are thinking deeply about how to ease that burden.

Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), a father of four, this year introduced the Family First Act to update the IRS’s Child Tax Credit.

His proposal would boost the CTC from $2,000 to $4,200 for each young child, $3,000 for kids aged 6 to 17, and add a new $2,800 credit for pregnant moms.

That’s a policy with potential, recognizing that raising children isn’t a one-time cost, but a long-term commitment.

Nations around the globe are sounding alarms about the birth dearth. Countries like Hungary, South Korea and Iran have launched programs to reverse their demographic decline — with little success.

Meanwhile, according to recently released Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, America’s fertility rate has slipped to 1.62 births per woman, far below the 2.1 needed to sustain our population.

And here’s the deeper issue: the problem isn’t just a drop in babies, it’s a drop in marriages.

Since 1970, the US marriage rate has fallen by 60%. While married couples (especially religious ones) still do have children — and statistically have more sex than singletons do — there are simply far fewer of them today.

So maybe instead of a $5,000 baby bonus, Trump should consider a one-time tax break for newlyweds.

Marriage is still the most reliable path to a thriving family, and federal policies should reflect that.

Of course, money alone can’t solve this crisis. We also need a culture shift, a reawakening to the beauty and adventure of family life.

Across our culture, from social media to movies to TV to print, marriage is portrayed as bondage (and not the fun kind, either), and kids as exhausting, soul-sucking thieves of joy.

And while Elon Musk is a loud voice in favor of bringing more progeny into the world, his personal “harem model” isn’t exactly the blueprint for a flourishing society.

The better answer? Pro-family policy and pro-family storytelling.

Moore’s Family First Act, for example, won’t solve the whole problem, but it sends the right message: families matter.

As Moore told me, “Moving toward a pro-family culture will require considering both immediate incentives and lasting policy change.”

Policy isn’t just economics, it’s narrative. It’s messaging.

And right now, American families need more than a one-time payment. They need a plan, and they need to feel seen.

Which brings me to a moment last week, halfway around the world, that somehow felt very close to home: Vice President JD Vance‘s X post of a perfectly imperfect photo of himself, his wife Usha and their squirming, squinting children on their official trip to India.

The caption? “With three little kids staring into the sun, this was actually the best photo we got at the Taj Mahal today” — followed by a laughing emoji.

That’s the kind of positive, pro-family image Americans need to see more of: messy, real and beautiful.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/04/27/opinion/trumps-5k-bonus-wont-bring-more-babies-heres-what-will/

A new carnivorous caterpillar that wears the remains of its prey has been dubbed the “bone collector.”

The odd insect is only found on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. It creeps along spiderwebs, feeding on trapped insects and decorating its silk case with their body parts.

There are other meat-eating caterpillars that “do lots of crazy things, but this takes the cake,” said study author Dan Rubinoff with the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Scientists think the case might act as camouflage, allowing the caterpillar to feast on the spider’s ensnared meals without getting caught.

A host of caterpillars native to Hawaii use silk glands to spin protective cases studded with lichen, sand and other materials. This one is the first to use ant heads and fly wings.

“It really is an astonishing type of case,” said Steven Montgomery, an entomology consultant in Hawaii who was not involved with the new study.

Findings were published Thursday in the journal Science. Scientists found just 62 of the carnivorous caterpillars in over 20 years of observing.

Predatory caterpillars are extremely rare and the bone collectors found in Hawaii will even eat each other, researchers said.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/carnivorous-caterpillar-hawaii-bone-collector-624af97c9a1c65fc3a2eac85cf19b4f6

Elon Musk spent years building cachet as a business titan and tech visionary, brushing aside critics and skeptics to become the richest person on the planet.

But as Musk gained power in Washington in recent months, his popularity has waned, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Just 33% of U.S. adults have a favorable view of Musk, the chain-saw-wielding, late-night-posting, campaign-hat-wearing public face of President Donald Trump’s efforts to downsize and overhaul the federal government. That share is down from 41% in December.

“It was a shame that he crashed and burned his reputation,” said Ernest Pereira, 27, a Democrat who works as a lab technician in North Carolina. “He bought into his own hype.”

The poll found that about two-thirds of adults believe Musk has held too much influence over the federal government during the past few months — although that influence may be coming to an end. The billionaire entrepreneur is expected to leave his administration job in the coming weeks.

Musk is noticeably less popular than the overall effort to pare back the government workforce, which Trump has described as bloated and corrupt. About half of U.S. adults believe the Republican president has gone too far on reducing the size of the federal workforce, while roughly 3 in 10 think he is on target and 14% want him to go even further.

Retiree Susan Wolf, 75, of Pennsylvania, believes the federal government is too big but Musk has “made a mess of everything.”

“I don’t trust him,” she said. “I don’t think he knows what he’s doing.”

Wolf, who is not registered with a political party, said Musk’s private sector success does not translate to Washington.

“He thinks you run a government like you run a business. And you don’t do that,” she said. “One is for the benefit of the people, and the other is for the benefit of the corporation.”

Much of the downsizing has been done through so-called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which was Musk’s brainchild during last year’s campaign. Thousands of federal employees have been fired or pushed to quit, contracts have been canceled and entire agencies have been brought to a standstill.

Musk has succeeded in providing a dose of shock therapy to the federal government, but he has fallen short of other goals. After talking about cutting spending by $1 trillion, he has set a much lower target of $150 billion. Even reaching that amount could prove challenging, and DOGE has regularly overstated its progress.

He is expected to start dedicating more time to Tesla, his electric automaker that has suffered plummeting revenue while he was working for Trump. Musk told investors on a recent conference call that “now that the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency is done,” he expects to spend just “a day or two per week on government matters.”

Musk, in his work for the administration, has continued a political evolution toward the right. Although the South African-born entrepreneur was never easy to categorize ideologically, he championed the fight against climate change and often supported Democratic candidates.

Now he criticizes “the woke mind virus” and warns of the collapse of Western civilization from the threats of illegal migration and excess government spending.

Musk’s increasingly conservative politics are reflected in the polling. Only about 2 in 10 independents and about 1 in 10 Democrats view Musk favorably, compared with about 7 in 10 Republicans.

In addition, while about 7 in 10 independents and about 9 in 10 Democrats believe Musk has too much influence, only about 4 in 10 Republicans feel that way.

Mark Collins, 67, a warehouse manager from Michigan who has leaned Republican in recent years, said Musk “runs a nice, tight ship” at his companies, “and the government definitely needs tightening up.”

Source : https://apnews.com/article/musk-trump-doge-tesla-d1206a96983b30b9cef7b18eaa8c48a7

More than 100 immigrants suspected of being in the United States illegally were taken into custody early Sunday following a federal raid at an illegal after-hours nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, authorities said.

Video posted online by the Drug Enforcement Administration showed agents announcing their presence outside the building and ordering patrons to leave with their hands up. Other videos showed dozens of people fleeing the building through its entrance after federal agents smashed a window. Later, dozens of suspects were shown in handcuffs standing on a sidewalk waiting to be transported.

During his second stint as U.S. president, Donald Trump ’s unprecedented campaign of immigration enforcement has pushed the limits of executive power, and he has clashed with federal judges trying to restrain him. The crackdown has included detaining more than 1,000 international college students, some of whom have seen their legal status restored, at least temporarily. The policies have slowed immigration at the southern border to a relative trickle.

On Sunday in Colorado, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took the club-going immigrants into custody, said Jonathan Pullen, special agent in charge of the DEA’s Rocky Mountain Division.

“Colorado Springs is waking up to a safer community today,” he said. The city, Colorado’s second largest, lies about 70 miles (113 kilometers) south of Denver.

More than 300 law enforcement officers and officials from multiple agencies responded to the nightclub, which had been under investigation for several months for alleged activities including drug trafficking, prostitution and “crimes of violence,” Pullen said at a news conference. Cocaine was among the drugs found, he said.

“When the cops showed up at the door, most of the drugs hit the floor,” Pullen said.

An undisclosed number of guns were seized, he said.

Trump posted a link to the DEA video of the raid on his social media site, Truth Social. “A big Raid last night on some of the worst people illegally in our Country — Drug Dealers, Murderers, and other Violent Criminals, of all shapes and sizes,” the president wrote.

Pullen estimated more than 200 people were inside the nightclub. Also among those detained were a dozen active-duty military members who either were patrons or working as armed security. Some patrons were arrested on undisclosed outstanding warrants, Pullen said.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/colorado-nightclub-raid-immigration-c0e46855c2a8b18d532560f12158e394

What if your work self didn’t know about your personal life, and your home self had no idea what you did for a living? In Apple TV’s Severance, that’s exactly the deal: a surgical procedure splits the memories of employees into “innies” (who only exist at work) and “outies” (who never recall what they do from nine to five).

On the surface, it sounds like an ideal solution to a growing cybersecurity problem of insider threats, such as leaks or sabotage by employees. After all, if an employee can’t remember what they accessed at work, how can they leak it, sabotage it, or sell it?

As someone who has researched insider threats for the last decade I can’t help but see Severance as a cautionary tale of what happens when we try to eliminate threats without understanding people.

The threat from within

Insider threats really hit prominence in the wake of high-profile incidents like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, who both leaked top secret government information. These threats are one of the most persistent challenges in security because unlike “traditional” hackers, insiders already have access to sensitive systems and information.

They might act maliciously, stealing trade secrets or exposing data, or accidentally, through phishing links or lost devices. Either way, the consequences can be more serious because of the unprecedented levels of access someone has while working within an organization.

While we often think of the high-profile cases in the first instance, the reality of most insider incidents is far less dramatic. Think of the disgruntled employee who downloads a client database before leaving, or the well-meaning staff member who shares a sensitive file via the wrong link.

In fact, one of the most iconic examples of an insider threat in fiction is Jurassic Park. The entire catastrophe begins, not with a dinosaur, but with a software engineer, Dennis Nedry, who disables the park’s security in an attempt to steal trade secrets. It’s a reminder that even the most sophisticated systems can be undone by a single rogue employee.

Organizations try to manage this through access controls, behavior monitoring and training. But people are unpredictable. Insider threats sit at the messy intersection of human behavior, organizational culture and digital systems.

This is where Severance strikes a chord. What if you could eliminate the human risk altogether, by turning employees into separate, tightly compartmentalized selves? In the show, workers at the shadowy Lumon Corporation have no memory of their job outside the office and vice versa.

In a sense, it’s the ultimate form of “need to know.” An “innie” can’t tell anyone what they do because they don’t know anything beyond their desk. It’s a very elegant, although ethically problematic, solution for someone working in security. However, as the series unfolds, it becomes clear that the levels of control on offer through the process of severance come with a terrible cost.

The problem with control

The innies in Severance are trapped in an endless workday, unable to understand the meaning or value of their tasks. They form bonds, question authority and ultimately rebel. Ironically, it is the severed employees, the ones who are most closely controlled in the company, who become the greatest insider threat to Lumon.

This mirrors something we know from real organizations: excessive surveillance, control and secrecy often backfires. For instance, Amazon has faced repeated criticism over its use of tracking technologies to monitor warehouse workers’ movements and productivity, with reports suggesting this has contributed to high stress, burnout and even rule-breaking as workers try to “game” the system.

A 2022 study published in Harvard Business Review found that employees who feel overly monitored are significantly more likely to break rules or engage in counterproductive behavior – undermining the very goals of workplace surveillance. If people feel undervalued or mistreated, they’re more likely to become disengaged or actively hostile. Security systems that ignore culture and trust are therefore often brittle.

What Severance gets right is that insider threats are emotional and ethical problems as much as technical ones. They stem from how people feel about their role, their autonomy and their identity within a system. This is something that we can’t simply patch within a piece of software.

Lessons from fiction

Thankfully, no company in the real world is proposing surgical memory separation, at least not yet. But in an age of algorithmic management, increasing surveillance, and growing concerns about privacy, Severance resonates. It forces us to ask just how far should we go in the name of security?

The answer isn’t to separate people from their work, but to build systems that are secure and respectful of the people within them; something increasingly backed by research.

That means better design, clearer boundaries and a workplace culture that values openness, not just compliance. For example, implementing clear expectations around work hours and communication norms can help prevent burnout and promote wellbeing.

Encouraging open communication channels, such as anonymous feedback systems, empowers employees to voice concerns without fear, fostering a culture of trust. Additionally, designing physical workspaces that promote collaboration, like open-plan areas and communal lounges, can enhance team cohesion and reflect organizational values.

If we follow the example set by Lumon and try to remove all risk then we lose something far more essential – the humanity at the center of our systems and organizations. Ultimately, removing that human focus could be the most significant vulnerability of all.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/severance-show-cybersecurity-human-risk/

VIRGINIA Giuffre made a tragic admission just weeks before her death aged 41.

The mum-of-three, who was sex trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein as a teenager, died by suicide at her home in Western Australia on Friday night.

She had spent years speaking out of her abuse at the hands of convicted sex offenders Epstein and his ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.

Cops confirmed her death was being investigated but was considered “not suspicious”.

Virginia told how she was “ready to go” just weeks before her death when she posted a bruised snap from her hospital bed, claiming she had just “four days to live”.

Her caption read: “I’m ready to go, just not until I see my babies one last time. My heart is shattered and every day that passes my sadness only deepens.”

The bus accident story took a twist when cops described the crash as minor and said no major injuries were reported.

Parents of children on the bus also spoke out – reportedly disputing the severity of the incident.

The late mum and activist was reportedly fearful that her enemies were attempting to ruin her reputation in the months before she died.

A friend told Mail Online: “Being discredited was one of the many things distressing her in recent months.”

Virginia was apparently “deeply upset” about being mocked over the bruised image she posted of herself in a hospital bed.

Announcing Virginia’s tragic death on Saturday, her family said the toll of her abuse was “so heavy” it became “unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight”.

They said in a statement: “It is with utterly broken hearts that we announce that Virginia passed away last night at her farm in Western Australia.

“She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking.”

They added: “Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors.

“In the end, the toll of abuse is so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight.”

Virginia alleged Epstein and Maxwell trafficked her to the Duke of York when she was 17 – a claim Andrew has denied.

Police confirmed emergency services were called to reports of an unresponsive woman at a property in the Perth suburb of Neergabby on Friday night.

Virginia’s brother Danny Wilson paid tribute to his sister on Facebook with a photo of the pair and another man.

And her long-time publicist Dini von Mueffling said her client was “one of the most extraordinary human beings I have ever had the honour to know”.

“Deeply loving, wise, and funny, she was a beacon to other survivors and victims,” she added.

“It was the privilege of a lifetime to represent her.”

Sigrid McCawley, a lawyer for Virginia, said: “Her courage pushed me to fight harder, and her strength was awe-inspiring.

“The world has lost an amazing human being today. Rest in peace, my sweet angel.”

It comes just weeks after Virginia, who was believed to have been separated from her husband, was treated in an Australian hospital following a bus crash.

She was charged with breaching a family violence restraining order in Ocean Reef, near Perth, on February 2, Western Australia Courts said.

Virginia’s case was first heard in Joondalup Magistrates’ Court in northern Perth on March 14, where she did not enter a plea.

The matter was adjourned to June 11 for a plea hearing, according to Western Australia Courts.

American-born Virginia lived in Australia for years, becoming an advocate for sex trafficking survivors after emerging as a central figure in the prolonged downfall of disgraced paedophile financier Epstein.

The mum, who leaves behind three children, sued Prince Andrew in 2021, claiming she was trafficked and forced to have sex with the Duke on three occasions when she was a teen.

It was the first time she had brought action against him after going public with the allegations in 2011.

Though a special tribunal has been created to prosecute Russia’s crimes in Ukraine, there are various hindrances to its functioning. It could take months, if not years, before officials are tried.

Will Russia one day be brought to justice for its crimes in Ukraine? Plans for a special tribunal are in place, but nothing has yet been decided at a political level. Details of the tribunal, to be held under the auspices of the Council of Europe, are still secret. What is certain is that Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot be prosecuted as long as he is in office, since acting heads of state have immunity. Despite this, the body is being unofficially described as the “Putin tribunal” because international law holds heads of state responsible for any aggression against another country.

The special tribunal can already investigate Russia’s leadership and possibly also that of Belarus, says Jörg Polakiewicz, head of the Directorate of Legal Advice and Public International Law (DLAPIL) of the Council of Europe. However, the Council of Europe does not have the same powers as the United Nations Security Council, which can waive the immunity of high-ranking officials of a country, and in Russia’s case this could include the president, prime minister, and foreign minister.

“The special tribunal will not try Vladimir Putin in absentia as long as he is president of Russia,” confirmed a representative of the European Union in Brussels. The same applies to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“This is of course absurd,” criticized Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Ukrainian human rights organization the Center for Civil Liberties. She and her colleagues have been collecting evidence for more than 11 years and expect those responsible for atrocities to be held accountable.

Immunity for high-ranking officials

A source familiar with how the special tribunal has been set up said that a case against Putin, Mishustin and Lavrov was being built on investigations that have been carried out already. But they said that no arrest warrant could be issued, or charges brought, unless the suspects’ immunity was lifted.

The same source, who wanted to remain anonymous, said that investigations were underway into about two dozen Russian officials on a list drawn up by Ukraine. They said that the tribunal would focus on high-ranking political and military officials responsible for planning, preparing and implementing Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine.

Matviichuk pointed out that it wasn’t just top Nazi leaders who were prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials after World War Two. “It was clear that not just three people were responsible for the crimes,” she said.

The circle of decision-makers in Russia has yet to be defined, but Gleb Bogush of the Institute for International Peace and Security Law at Cologne University said that there was talk of around 20 people. “The court should clarify that,” he said, insisting that there should be a fair trial in which everyone would be heard by an independent court.

Bogush said that the creators of the tribunal had effectively recognized Putin’s privileges by confirming that he was untouchable. He said it would have been better to leave the question of immunity to the judges, and he criticized the Council of Europe for failing to declare Putin an illegitimate president. The decision to grant the president immunity, he argued, was a dangerous signal that could be interpreted as an invitation to ignore the orders of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has issued an arrest warrant for Putin.

However, the Council of Europe told DW that it believes that “the formula found for the special tribunal on this issue will be sufficient to ensure accountability and counter impunity,” before adding that personal immunity was by no means “a carte blanche for impunity.”

War began in February 2014

The question remains as to which period the tribunal will take into consideration. “The war did not begin in February 2022, but in February 2014,” said Matviichuk, referring to the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in eastern Ukraine before Russia’s full-scale invasion. She said if these were not taken into account, it “would have long-term legal consequences for those who suffered in the eight years before 2022, as well as for the restoration of international law and the return of occupied territories to Ukraine.”

A group of legal experts started drawing up the plan for a special tribunal in 2023 and presented it in March 2025. This plan includes a treaty between Ukraine and the Council of Europe, a statute and an agreement on the management of the tribunal.

DW’s anonymous source said the decision had been made to base the tribunal in The Hague with the consent of the Netherlands and that Kyiv would hand over the results of its investigations. Evidence collected by the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (ICPA) will also be taken into account. The ICPA, which comprises prosecutors from different countries, was set up in The Hague with the support of the European Commission.

The special tribunal was set up at the Council of Europe because the United Nations was not an option, as Russia would have vetoed any project in the Security Council. The International Criminal Court was also ruled out because its jurisdiction only extends to states that are party to the Rome Statute, which Russia is not.

But this arrangement brings its own complications, as Russia was excluded from the organization because of its invasion of Ukraine. “But the fact that the victim and aggressor were members of the organization at the beginning of the aggression is of great importance for its legitimacy,” said Polakiewicz.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-hurdles-to-special-tribunal-prosecuting-russias-war-of-aggression/a-72363945

Top officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration on Sunday (Apr 27) pressed Russia and Ukraine to make headway on a peace deal following a one-on-one meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Vatican a day earlier.

“It needs to happen soon,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’ “We cannot continue to dedicate time and resources to this effort if it’s not going to come to fruition.”

Rubio said the US would consider in the coming week whether to continue mediating talks “or if it’s time to sort of focus on some other issues.”

Trump and Zelenskyy, in Rome for the funeral of Pope Francis, met in a Vatican basilica on Saturday to try to revive faltering efforts to end Russia’s war with Ukraine. The meeting was the first between the two leaders since an angry encounter in the Oval Office in Washington in February and comes at a critical time in negotiations aimed at bringing an end to the conflict.

In a Truth Social post later on Saturday, Trump rebuked Russian President Vladimir Putin over recent attacks on Ukraine, saying “there was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days.”

In a pre-taped interview that aired on CBS News’ ‘Face the Nation’ on Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia would continue to target sites used by Ukraine’s military.

When asked about a Russian strike on Kyiv last week that killed civilians, Lavrov said “the target attacked was not something absolutely civilian” and that Russia only targets “sites which are used by the military.”

Zelenskyy wrote on the messaging app Telegram that his top military commander had reported that Russia had already conducted nearly 70 attacks on Sunday.

“The situation at the front and the real activity of the Russian army prove that there is currently insufficient pressure on Russia from the world to end this war,” he said.

DIFFERING PROPOSALS

Ukrainian and European officials pushed back last week against some US proposals on how to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, making counterproposals on issues from territory to sanctions, Reuters reported on Friday.

The primary areas of difference in the two proposals were over the sequencing for resolving questions over territory, the lifting of sanctions on Russia, security guarantees and the size of Ukraine’s military.

American proposals called for US recognition of Russia’s control over Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula Moscow seized and annexed in 2014, as well as de facto recognition of Russia’s hold on other parts of Ukraine.

In contrast, the European and Ukrainian proposal defers detailed discussion about territory until after a ceasefire is concluded.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Sunday that Ukraine should not agree to the US proposal, saying it went too far in ceding swathes of territory in return for a ceasefire.

Despite the divergent views, Trump’s national security adviser on Sunday said the meeting with Zelenskyy showed his determination to reach a deal.

“That meeting is going to go down in the history books for President Trump, to be a president of peace,” National Security Adviser Mike Waltz told Fox News’ ‘Sunday Morning Futures.’

Waltz said Trump has “expressed his frustration” at the leaders of both nations but remained determined to help negotiate an agreement. He also said the US and Ukraine would eventually reach an agreement over rare earth minerals and that talks continued over the weekend.

Democrats in the US Congress have criticized Trump’s approach to the conflict and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Sunday that he was concerned Trump would “cave in to Putin.”

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/trump-officials-push-russia-ukraine-peace-deal-after-vatican-meeting-5093316

The US wants to explore “creative solutions” for some critical exports from Singapore, including pharmaceuticals, as both sides discuss concessions on the global tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong said on Sunday (Apr 27).

Mr Gan, who is also Minister for Trade and Industry, told reporters that he spoke to his US counterpart, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, on Friday when they identified key areas to address.

“Secretary Lutnick has emphasised several times that he’s prepared to start this discussion with us, because we are a friend, an important trading partner, and because the US trusts Singapore,” he told reporters at One Punggol.

Mr Gan chairs the Singapore Economic Resilience Taskforce, looking into the impact of the tariffs on the country.

He is also the anchor minister for the People’s Action Party (PAP) team contesting Punggol GRC in this General Election.

He said he decided to take some time off the campaign trail to take the call, as it was “an important discussion” to have and one which turned out to be “very good”.

Mr Trump on Apr 2 announced sweeping tariffs on all imports, with a baseline rate of 10 per cent on countries that include Singapore. Dozens of other trading partners, including China, were slapped with higher tariffs.

While there is now a 90-day pause on most of the hefty “reciprocal tariffs”, the baseline 10 per cent duty kicked in on Apr 5.

Mr Gan said Mr Lutnick explained during their call that the 10 per cent baseline tariff is an umbrella one which is “not likely to be subject to negotiation”.

“However, he also pointed out that Singapore being an important trading partner and a friend, he would like to explore creative solutions to see how we can strengthen the bilateral trade between Singapore and the US, particularly with regard to critical exports from Singapore to US, exports that are important to us,” he said.

This could include products such as pharmaceuticals, which is something “very important” to Singapore, contributing over 10 per cent of the country’s exports to the US, said Mr Gan.

Another area discussed is artificial intelligence chips.

Meghan Markle gave a rare glimpse of her children’s bright red hair as they spent quality time together in the garden.

The Duchess of Sussex took to Instagram Sunday to share photos of son Prince Archie, 5, and daughter Princess Lilibet, 3, picking flowers.

Markle was all smiles as she grabbed a pink rose for her daughter, who was dressed in a similar color.

Archie, meanwhile, was seen picking a white rose. In another shot, he was pictured holding the flower up to the camera in front of his face.

He sported a blue long-sleeved shirt and black pants for the outing.

“Sunday kind of love….with my little loves,” Markle, 43, captioned the photo carousel.

The “Suits” alum has been sharing more of her life with husband Prince Harry and their kids since she started posting on her new Instagram account earlier this year.

For Valentine’s Day, she shared a sweet clip of Lilibet assisting her in the kitchen by cutting strawberries into hearts and putting them on bagels.

Markle also shared a video of Lilibet and her “auntie” Serena Williams playing Candy Land together.

“When the aunties come to play and celebrate! Love you @serenawilliams,” she captioned the clip.

The “With Love, Meghan” star has also shown her children indulging in a cake that “papa” Harry, 40, brought back from a trip to Ukraine.

Most recently, Lilibet reviewed her mom’s strawberry jam.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/04/27/parents/meghan-markle-gives-rare-glimpse-of-little-loves-prince-archie-and-princess-lilibet/

In view of the cross-border linkages to the Pahalgam attack, India announced a raft of punitive measures, including the suspension of the 65-year-old Indus Waters Treaty, closing of the Attari land-border crossing and the expulsion of Pakistani military attaches.

Pakistan minister Hanif Abbasi is the new entrant in the ‘war threat’ club after Defence Minister Khawaja Asif and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. Days after India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty over cross-border links to the Pahalgam terror attack, that left 26 civilians dead, Abbasi said that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are not for display and have been kept “only for India.”
Reacting to India’s decision to suspend the Indus Waters Treaty – a watersharing agreement between Delhi and Islamabad, Abbasi warned of nuclear retaliation. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including Ghori, Shaheen and Ghaznavi missiles along with 130 nuclear warheads, has been hidden across the country, Abbasi said.
“If they stop the water supply to us, then they should be ready for a war,” Abbasi was quoted as saying by Pak media outlets. “The missiles we have, they’re not for display. Nobody knows where we have placed our nuclear weapons across the country. I say it again, these ballistic missiles, all of them are targeted at you,” he said.

Earlier, Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif had claimed that the cash-strapped “would make India pay if Pakistani citizens were harmed.” “If India conducts acts of terrorism in our cities, it will be a tit for tat and we will make them pay,”

PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari also joined the club over the suspension of Indus Waters Treaty. “The Indus is ours and will remain ours. Either our water will flow through it, or their blood will,” Bhutto was quoted as saying at a public rally on Friday.

26 civilians, mostly tourists, were killed after terrorists from The Resistance Front (TRF) – an offshoot of Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba opened fire at Baisaran meadow in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam.
In view of the cross-border linkages to the Pahalgam attack, India on Wednesday announced a raft of punitive measures, including the suspension of the 65-year-old Indus Waters Treaty, closing of the Attari land-border crossing and the expulsion of Pakistani military attaches.

Source : https://www.timesnownews.com/india/pakistan-minister-hanif-abbasi-warning-130-nukes-aimed-at-india-indus-waters-treaty-article-151507961

During a phone call with his Pakistani counterpart Ishaq Dar, Chinese foreign minister said China is closely following developments after the Pahalgam attack.

China on Sunday backed its close ally Pakistan in safeguarding its sovereignty and security interests, with foreign minister Wang Yi calling on New Delhi and Islamabad to exercise restrain in the aftermath of the terror attack in Pahalgam.

During a phone call with his Pakistani counterpart Ishaq Dar, Wang said China is closely following developments after the terror attack and backs an “impartial investigation” into the incident, according to a readout from China’s foreign ministry.

Wang’s comments came against the backdrop of heightened tensions between India and Pakistan following the terrorist attack on tourists near Pahalgam on April 22 that killed 26 people. The attack was claimed by The Resistance Front, a proxy for Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.

India announced a slew of punitive measures against Pakistan, including the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty and closure of the only operational land border crossing at Attari. Pakistan said any stopping of river waters will be seen as an “act of war” and unveiled counter-measures such as the closure of its airspace to Indian airliners and suspension of all trade.

“China has always supported Pakistan in its resolute anti-terrorism actions. As a staunch friend and all-weather strategic partner, China fully understands Pakistan’s reasonable security concerns and supports Pakistan in safeguarding its sovereignty and security interests,” Wang was quoted as saying in the Chinese readout.

China is closely following the “development of the current situation” and “supports an impartial investigation as soon as possible”, Wang said.

Conflict is not in the fundamental interests of India and Pakistan, or conducive to regional peace and stability, and both countries should “exercise restraint, meet each other halfway and promote the cooling of the situation”, he said.

Dar, who is also Pakistan’s deputy prime minister, briefed Wang on the tensions between Pakistan and India over the terror attack and said Islamabad has always been resolute in combating terrorism and “opposed taking actions that may lead to an escalation of the situation”, the Chinese readout said.

Dar said Pakistan is committed to managing the situation in a mature manner and will maintain communication with China and the world community.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Dar rejected India’s “unilateral and illegal actions” and “its baseless propaganda against Pakistan”.

Dar also expressed “appreciation for China’s consistent and unwavering support” and reaffirmed Pakistan’s strong commitment to the shared vision of an all-weather strategic cooperative partnership,” the statement said.

“Both sides reiterated their firm resolve to uphold regional peace and stability, promote mutual respect and understanding, and jointly oppose unilateralism and hegemonic policies,” it said.

There was no immediate response from Indian officials to the comments by the Chinese and Pakistani foreign ministers.

In a separate development, external affairs minister S Jaishankar spoke to his British counterpart David Lammy on Sunday and “discussed the cross-border terrorist attack at Pahalgam”. Jaishankar said in a social media post that he had “underlined the importance of zero tolerance for terrorism”.

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/china-vows-support-to-pakistan-calls-for-restraint-after-pahalgam-terror-attack-101745768247847.html

According to the Immigration and Foreigners Act 2025, overstaying, violating visa conditions, or trespassing in restricted areas could lead to three years in jail.

Any Pakistani, who fails to leave India as per the deadlines set by the government will be arrested, prosecuted and may face a jail term of up to three years or a fine of a maximum Rs 3 lakh or both.

The ’Leave India’ notice to the Pakistani nationals was issued by the government after 26 people, mostly tourists, were killed by Pakistan-linked terrorists at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22.

The deadline for exiting India for those holding SAARC visas was April 26. For those carrying medical visas, the deadline is April 29. The 12 categories of visas whose holders have to leave India by Sunday are — visa on arrival, business, film, journalist, transit, conference, mountaineering, student, visitor, group tourist, pilgrim and group pilgrim.

According to the Immigration and Foreigners Act 2025, which came into effect on April 4, overstaying, violating visa conditions, or trespassing in restricted areas could lead to three years in jail and a fine of up to Rs 3 lakh.

“Whoever,—(a) being a foreigner, remains in any area in India for a period exceeding the period for which the visa was issued to him or stays in India without a valid passport or other valid travel document in contravention of provisions of Section 3 or does any act in violation of the conditions of the valid visa issued to him for his entry and stay in India or any part thereunder; “(b) contravenes any other provisions of this Act, other than sections 17 and 19, or of any rule or order made thereunder or any direction or instruction given in pursuance of this Act or such order or direction or instruction for which, no specific punishment is provided under this Act, shall be punishable with an imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years or with a fine which may extend to three lakh rupees or with both,” the Act says.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday called up the chief ministers of all states and asked them to ensure that no Pakistani stays in India beyond the deadline set for leaving the country.

After Shah’s telephonic conversations with the chief ministers, Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan held a video conference with the chief secretaries and asked them to ensure that all Pakistani nationals whose visas were revoked must leave India by the fixed deadline.

Source : https://www.news18.com/india/pakistanis-failing-to-exit-india-by-deadline-could-face-3-years-in-jail-or-rs-3-lakh-fine-9315441.html

Tens of thousands of people streamed past the tomb of Pope Francis on Sunday (Apr 27), packing the Roman basilica where he had chosen to be buried in a break from tradition.

No pope had been laid to rest outside the Vatican in more than a century, but Francis opted instead for burial in Santa Maria Maggiore (Saint Mary Major), located in the Italian capital’s most multicultural neighbourhood.

His coffin was taken there on Saturday after his funeral Mass in St Peter’s square, with around 150,000 people lining the route through the heart of the city to say their farewells.

The casket was placed in a simple marble tomb in a side aisle of the basilica. Only his name in Latin, “Franciscus”, is inscribed on top, while a reproduction of the plain cross that he used to wear around his neck hangs above the niche.

“I feel like it’s exactly in the way of the Pope. He was simple, and so is his place now,” said Polish pilgrim Maria Brzezinska after paying her respects.

Visitors began queuing well before the Basilica opened at 7am (1pm, Singapore time) and the church rapidly filled with well-wishers after the doors opened. Authorities urged people to leave as soon as they had seen the tomb, saying thousands more were waiting to get in.

Six hours later, 30,000 people had visited St Mary Major, according to the Vatican.

Tourists leaving the basilica at lunch time said they had been queuing for more than two hours and had only a few minutes inside.

In the afternoon, hundreds of cardinals gathered in the church for prayers.

The church was founded in 432 and is the only basilica in Rome that preserves the early Christian structure, although there have been many later additions.

Francis, who died on Apr 21 at the age of 88, was especially attached to it because of his devotion to Mary, Mother of God. He prayed there before and after every overseas trip.

A venerated Byzantine icon of Mary is housed in the Pauline chapel near the tomb. A vase of golden roses, donated by Francis in 2023, sits among candlesticks under the icon. He last visited the chapel carrying a bunch of white roses on Apr 12.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/more-30000-people-pack-rome-church-visit-pope-francis-tomb-5093381

WHATSAPP’S obsession with useless changes continues – and this time it’s really got people’s backs up.

“Abomination,” is one word I saw to describe things on Reddit and I couldn’t agree more.

This isn’t my first rant about WhatsApp.

Last year, I complained about a feature that exposes how many people are currently online in a group – which seems to have been quietly dropped.

Now we’re being subjected to something far more sinister… AI.

Over the last few weeks owner Meta has been rolling out the Meta AI button and feature.

A blue-pink-green hued circle that sits permanently at the bottom right corner of the WhatsApp screen.

WhatsApp told the BBC the feature is “entirely optional” this week – but it’s not like you can remove it.

Tapping the button summons WhatsApp’s pointless AI chatbot that will answer just about anything, except how to get rid of it.

When will Meta stop pushing all this extra guff and let WhatsApp be a chat app?

It’s gradually morphing into its bigger sibling, Facebook, with status updates and communities, already perfectly served elsewhere.

Or, at least give people real choice with an option to hide them.

WhatsApp is powerful because virtually everyone has it, with billions of users across the globe.

It’s the one place where all my family updates are usefully kept – in between useless chatter about the neighbour’s latest disruption or moans about the council not cleaning the street.

We make important arrangements there, share holiday snaps and live location when meeting up, and for that I’m thankful for WhatsApp’s vital role.

But with this latest change, I’m ready to delete WhatsApp unless bosses change course pronto.

A WhatsApp rep told the BBC: “We think giving people these options is a good thing and we’re always listening to feedback from our users.”

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/14115561/whatsapp-delete-new-button-meta-ai/