Category: World

In 2010, Indian filmmaker Neeraj Ghaywan made a striking debut at Cannes with Masaan – a poignant tale of love, loss, and the oppressive grip of the caste system, set against the holy city of Varanasi.

The main lead in the film (Vicky Kaushal) performed a job assigned to one of the lowest castes in the rigid Hindu caste hierarchy – cremating dead bodies along the Ganges. Masaan played in the “Un Certain Regard” section at the festival, which looks at films with unusual styles and or that tells non-traditional stories. It won the FIPRESCI and the Avenir – also known as the Promising Future Prize – prizes.

Since then, Ghaywan was in search of a story about India’s marginalised communities. Five years ago in the middle of the pandemic, a friend, Somen Mishra – the head of creative development at Dharma Productions in Mumbai – recommended an opinion piece called Taking Amrit Home, published in The New York Times. It was written by the journalist Basharat Peer.

What drew Ghaywan to Peer’s article was that it tracked the journeys – sometimes of hundreds or even thousands of miles – taken by millions of Indians who travelled on foot to get home during the nation’s strict lockdown during the pandemic. But he was also drawn to the core of the story, which focused on the childhood friendship between two men – one Muslim and the other Dalit (formerly known as the untouchables).

Ghaywan’s new film Homebound, inspired by Peer’s article, premiered at Cannes Film Festival’s “Un Certain Regard” section this week, ending with a nine-minute long standing ovation.

Many in the audience were seen wiping away tears. Ghaywan gave the lead producer Karan Johar a tight hug, while he and his young lead actors – Ishan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa and Janhvi Kapoor – came together in a larger group hug later.

Since this was the biggest South Asian event at Cannes 2025, other film luminaries showed up to support the screening. India’s Mira Nair (who won the Camera d’Or in 1988 for Salaam Bombay) leaned across two rows of seats to reach out to Johar. Pakistan’s Siam Sadiq (who won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize in 2022 for Joyland) was seen making a reel of the mood inside the theatre that he later posted on Instagram.

The film also received backing from a rather unexpected quarter. Its main producer is Johar, the leading Indian commercial filmmaker (known for blockbuster films like Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham and the recent Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahani). But last month Martin Scorsese stepped in as the executive producer after he was introduced to the film by the French producer Mélita Toscan du Plantier.

This is the first time Scorsese has stepped in to support a contemporary Indian film. Until now he has only backed restored classic Indian films.

“I have seen Neeraj’s first film Masaan in 2015 and I loved it, so when Mélita Toscan du Plantier sent me the project of his second film, I was curious,” Scorsese said in a statement last month.

“I loved the story, the culture and was willing to help. Neeraj has made a beautifully crafted film that’s a significant contribution to Indian cinema.”

According to Ghaywan, Scorsese helped nurture the film by mentoring the team through a number of rounds of edits. But he also tried to understand the cultural context which helped the exchange of ideas.

The context was important to Ghaywan, since he had been trying to capture the right spirit of the subject he was tackling.

The film’s two lead characters – Mohammed Shoaib Ali (Khatter) and Chandan Kumar (Jethwa) have shared histories – the weight of centuries of discrimination at the hand of upper caste Hindus, but also similar goals to rise above the barriers imposed on them – in this case by joining their state’s police force.

Ghaywan has openly shared that he was born into a Dalit family – a reality that has cast a long shadow over his life, haunting him since childhood.

As an adult, he went on to study business administration and then worked in a corporate job in Gurgaon outside the capital, Delhi. He said he never faced discrimination but was acutely aware of his position in the caste hierarchy and still lives with the weight of where he was born.

“I am the only acknowledged person from the community who is there behind and in the front of camera in all of Hindi cinema history. That is the kind of gap we are living with,” he says.

A majority of India lives in its villages, but Hindi filmmakers rarely talk about bringing the villages to their stories, says Ghaywan. What also offends him is that marginalised communities are only talked about as statistics.

“What if we pick one person out of that statistic and see what happened in their lives?” he says. “How did they get to this point? I felt it was worth narrating a story.”

When he sat down to write the script, he tried to fictionalise the backstories of the two protagonists until the point that they took the journey during Covid – which is the beginning of Peer’s article.

As a child in Hyderabad, Ghaywan had a close Muslim friend, Asghar, so he felt deeply connected to Ali and Kumar’s lived experiences in the film.

“What appealed to me more was the humanity behind it, the interpersonal, the interiority of the relationship,” he says, that took him back to his childhood in Hyderabad.

In Ghaywan’s hands, Homebound has the wonderful glow and warmth of the winter sun. It is gorgeously shot in India’s rural North, capturing simple joys and the daily struggles of its Muslim and Dalit protagonists. The two men, the woman one of them loves (Kapoor and Jethwa both portray Dalit characters), and their interactions offer much to reflect on and understand.

For the most part, Ghaywan’s script keeps viewers on the edge. Back in 2019, none of us truly grasped the scale of the coming pandemic – but the film subtly foreshadows a shift, reminding us that a crisis can cut across class, caste, and ethnicity, touching everyone.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czelypr8jdlo

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that his administration’s cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development and its aid programs worldwide have been “devastating.”
Speaking beside South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during a White House visit, Trump was asked about his cutting most foreign aid by a reporter who said the decision had significant impacts in Africa.

“It’s devastating, and hopefully a lot of people are going to start spending a lot of money,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

“I’ve talked to other nations. We want them to chip in and spend money too, and we’ve spent a lot. And it’s a big – it’s a tremendous problem going on in many countries. A lot of problems going on. The United States always gets the request for money. Nobody else helps.”

The State Department, which manages USAID, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The administration has repeatedly defended the cuts, saying they were focused on wasted funds. The gutting of the agency, largely overseen by South Africa-born businessman Elon Musk, is the subject of several federal lawsuits.
The United States is the world’s largest humanitarian aid donor, amounting to at least 38% of all contributions recorded by the United Nations. It disbursed $61 billion in foreign assistance last year, just over half of it via USAID, according to government data

The U.S. spent half a billion dollars on South African aid in 2023, mostly on healthcare, the most recent data shows. Most of that funding has been withdrawn, though it is unclear exactly how much.
The cuts have had an effect on the country’s response to the HIV epidemic. South Africa has the world’s highest burden of HIV, with about 8 million people – one in five adults – living with the virus.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-calls-his-own-foreign-aid-cuts-usaid-devastating-2025-05-21/

U.S. President Donald Trump picked a design for his Golden Dome missile defense system and named a leader of the ambitious $175 billion defense program. Here are details on Golden Dome, where the idea comes from and how it will work.

HOW WILL IT WORK?

The aim is for Golden Dome to leverage a network of hundreds of satellites circling the globe with sophisticated sensors and interceptors to knock out incoming enemy missiles after they lift off from countries like China, Iran, North Korea or Russia.

“I promised the American people that I would build a cutting edge missile defense shield to protect our homeland from the threat of foreign missile attack,” Trump said when he made the announcement on Tuesday.
In April the Pentagon asked defense contractors how they would design and build a network to knock out intercontinental ballistic missiles during the “boost phase” just after lift-off – the slow and predictable climb of an enemy missile through the Earth’s atmosphere. Existing defenses target enemy missiles while they travel through space.
Once the missile has been detected, Golden Dome will either shoot it down before it enters space with an interceptor or a laser, or further along its path of travel in space with an existing missile defense system that uses land-based interceptors stationed in California and Alaska.

Beneath the space intercept layer, the system will have another defensive layer based in or around the U.S. This is something the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency looked into during the first Trump administration.

IS GOLDEN DOME LIKE ISRAEL’S IRON DOME?

“We helped Israel with theirs, and [it] was very successful, and now we have technology that’s even far advanced from that,” Trump said referring to Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.
The short-range Iron Dome air defense system was built to intercept the kinds of rockets fired by the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza.
Developed by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems with U.S. backing, it became operational in 2011. Each truck-towed unit fires radar-guided missiles to blow up short-range threats like rockets, mortars and drones in mid-air.
The system determines whether a rocket is on course to hit a populated area; if not, the rocket is ignored and allowed to land harmlessly.

Iron Dome was originally billed as providing city-sized coverage against rockets with ranges of between 4 and 70 km (2.5 to 43 miles), but experts say this has since been expanded.

HOW IS IT SIMILAR TO THEN-PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN’S STAR WARS INITIATIVE?

“We will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland,” Trump said on Tuesday.
The idea of strapping rocket launchers, or lasers, to satellites so they can shoot down enemy intercontinental ballistic missiles is not new. It was part of the Star Wars initiative devised during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. But it represents a huge and expensive technological leap from current capabilities.
Reagan’s “Strategic Defense Initiative,” as it was called, was announced in 1983 as groundbreaking research into a national defense system that could make nuclear weapons obsolete.

The heart of the SDI program was a plan to develop a space-based missile defense program that could protect the U.S. from a large-scale nuclear attack. The proposal involved many layers of technology that would enable the United States to identify and destroy automatically a large number of incoming ballistic missiles as they were launched, as they flew, and as they approached their targets. SDI failed because it was too expensive, too ambitious from a technology perspective, could not be easily tested and appeared to violate an existing anti-ballistic missile treaty.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/what-is-golden-dome-missile-defense-shield-2025-05-21/

Intensified Israeli ground operations and new evacuation orders are stretching Gaza’s health system beyond breaking point, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the Indonesian, Kamal Adwan and al-Awda hospitals in the northern towns of Beit Lahia and Jabalia were inside an evacuation zone announced on Tuesday. Another two hospitals are within 1km (0.6 miles) of it.

Kamal Adwan was out of service due to hostilities nearby and the Indonesian hospital was inaccessible because of the presence of Israeli forces around it, he added.

Al-Awda hospital is still functioning, but its director told the BBC on Wednesday that it was “totally under siege”.

“Nobody can move out and we can’t receive any cases from outside the hospital,” Dr Mohammed Salha said.

He added that there was a quadcopter drone “shooting in the surroundings of the hospital and the outdoor area of the hospital”.

“We also hear shooting from the tanks… maybe 400 or 500 metres [away].”

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told the BBC that it was “operating in the area against terror targets”, but that it was “not aware of any siege on the hospital itself”.

Dr Tedros said: “Even if health facilities are not attacked or forced to evacuate, hostilities and military presence obstruct patients and staff from accessing care, and WHO from resupplying hospitals, which can quickly make them non-functional.”

“We’ve seen this too many times – it must not be allowed to happen again.”

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) also said that at least 20 medical facilities across Gaza had been damaged, or forced partially or completely out of service, in the past week by Israeli ground operations, air strikes and evacuation orders.

The charity demanded that Israeli authorities stop what it called the “deliberate asphyxiation of Gaza and the annihilation of its healthcare system”.

Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza on 2 March and resumed its military offensive against Hamas two weeks later, ending a two-month ceasefire. It said it wanted to put pressure on Hamas to release its remaining 58 hostages, up to 23 of whom are believed to be alive.

After several days of intense bombardment, the IDF launched an expanded offensive on Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said would see ground forces “take control of all areas” of Gaza. The plan reportedly includes completely clearing the north of civilians and forcibly displacing them to the south.

More than 600 people have been killed and 2,000 injured across Gaza over the past week, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. The UN says tens of thousands of people have been newly displaced.

Netanyahu also said Israel would allow a “basic” amount of food into Gaza to prevent a famine. But the UN has so far been unable to collect the dozens of lorry loads of supplies allowed in since Monday.

MSF said the volume of aid allowed in so far was not nearly enough, describing it as “a smokescreen to pretend the siege is over”.

On Tuesday, the WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories said he had recently returned from Gaza and witnessed how the health system was facing attacks and acute shortages of supplies.

“Every time you get into Gaza you always think it cannot get worse. But it gets worse,” Dr Rik Peeperkorn told reporters in Geneva.

He described how al-Awda hospital was “overwhelmed with injuries” and running low on supplies. Hostilities had damaged the facility, disrupted access and deterred people from seeking healthcare, he added.

He said the Indonesian hospital was barely functioning, almost inaccessible, and that most patients had left last week after a staff member was killed, one patient was injured and the facility was damaged during intensified hostilities.

Only 15 people, including patients and staff, were still inside the hospital as of Tuesday, urgently in need of food and water, he added.

The hospital’s generator was also struck by an Israeli quadcopter on Monday night, causing a large fire and a blackout, according to MER-C Indonesia, the NGO that built the facility.

On Wednesday, a woman inside the hospital told the BBC by telephone that two of the patients were in a “serious condition”.

In the background of the call, crashes could be heard.

“Five minutes ago, there was intense shooting in the surroundings of the hospital,” she said, adding that she could see tanks.

The woman also said that they still had supplies of food inside the hospital, but were “facing a water crisis”.

The IDF told the BBC it was operating in the area around the hospital and targeting “terrorist infrastructure sites”, but that it was not targeting the hospital itself.

In another incident on Tuesday, a paramedic said his ambulance was shot at by an Israeli drone while he was transporting staff and food between al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals.

Khaled Sadeh said he was with another ambulance when bullets hit both vehicles’ windshields. Nobody was injured.

Dr Salha shared photos of the ambulances and confirmed that Mr Sadeh was unable to return to al-Awda because of the threat of Israeli fire.

The BBC supplied details of the allegations and photos to the IDF, but it said it “could not confirm” the reports.

Hospitals and medical personnel are specially protected under international humanitarian law.

Hospitals only lose that protection in certain circumstances. They include being used as a base from which to launch an attack, as a weapons depot, or to hide healthy fighters.

The IDF has insisted that its forces operate in accordance with international law. In most instances where it has attacked hospitals, it has said they were being used improperly by Hamas – an allegation the group has denied.

In the southern city of Khan Younis, the European hospital – the only facility providing neurosurgery, cardiac care and cancer treatment in Gaza – has been out of service since 13 May.

That day, the hospital’s courtyard and surrounding area was hit by a series of Israeli air strikes that Israel’s defence minister said targeted an underground bunker where the head of Hamas’s military wing, Mohammed Sinwar, was hiding. Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said the attack killed at least 28 people, but it is not clear yet whether Sinwar died.

The facility has also been inside an Israeli-designated evacuation zone covering almost the entire eastern half of Khan Younis since Monday.

Dr Tedros said Nasser, al-Amal and al-Aqsa hospitals, as well as one field hospital, were within 1km of the zone.

Dr Victoria Rose, a British surgeon working at Nasser hospital, said in a video posted on social media on Wednesday that she was very worried about the facility being evacuated or cut off by an Israeli troops advance from al-Aqsa, which in the central town of Deir al-Balah.

“If we get cut off from the Middle Area, there really are no other hospitals around us that could cope with the evacuation of Nasser,” she explained.

“We have some amazing field hospitals… but none of them are capable of doing the type of surgery that we’re doing here. And none of them have ICU capacity or generated oxygen. So, even all of them together couldn’t cope with the amount of patients that we have.”

She warned: “If Nasser is evacuated, we really are looking at the imminent death of hundreds of patients because we won’t be able to take them anywhere.”

Nasser was also hit by an Israeli strike on 13 May, killing two people including a Palestinian journalist who was being treated for injuries he sustained in a previous strike on a tented camp at the complex. The attack also destroyed 18 beds in a burns unit, according to the WHO.

The IDF accused the journalist of being a Hamas operative and alleged that the hospital was being used by the group to “carry out terrorist plots”.

Another strike on Monday severely damaged Nasser’s medical warehouse and destroyed critical WHO supplies, according to the hospital’s director.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj933kj17n0o

A FLIGHT from Honolulu to Los Angeles has been forced to turn around after a possible threat was found in a bathroom on board.

Flight radar shows the plane making an abrupt U-turn just an hour and a half into the flight to return to Daniel K. Inouye International in Honolulu on Tuesday night.

The flight, UA1169, left at 9:40 pm on May 20 but abruptly turned back around.

A United Airlines spokesperson reported a “potential security threat” was found on board.

The airline confirmed that the security threat was written on the bathroom mirror, KTLA reported.

No further information was provided as to what the threat said.

The spokesperson confirmed that law enforcement searched the plane after it landed.

“We are rebooking customers on another flight to Los Angeles that departs later this evening,” the spokesperson told KTLA on Wednesday morning.

The possible security threat came hours after a passenger was arrested on a Hawaiian Airlines flight departing from San Diego and heading to Honolulu.

Flight HA 15 was diverted off the tarmac as a passenger made a bomb threat.

The 283 passengers on board were forced to deplane around 10:30 am.

“During pushback from the gate, a guest was overheard making a threat to the safety of our aircraft,” a spokesperson for Hawaiian Airlines said.

“As a precaution, the captain immediately taxied the Airbus A330 to a safe location on the airfield, where it was met with local and federal law enforcement and guests were safely deplaned.”

A passenger on board filmed armed cops on board as they searched the aircraft for explosives.

“Bomb threat was called on the plane,” the passenger captioned the video.

The flight was reportedly moved to a secure location and was checked by K-9 units.

After searching the plane, authorities discovered “nothing suspicious” on board, KTLA reported.

Navy sailor Isai Solorzano told the outlet what he saw happen on the tumultuous flight.

“One guy stood up, they immediately told him to turn around and put him in handcuffs,” Solorzano said.

“They took him away.”

The arrest happened after law enforcement came on board and asked about the owner of certain containers.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14293573/united-airlines-honolulu-flight-security-concern/

FAST food restaurant workers can no longer afford to eat the food they’re making, a shocking new study has revealed.

A recent survey found that employees who work at restaurants like McDonald’s and Taco Bell have to work twice as long as the average US worker to afford a typical fast food meal.

Using labor statistics, financial platform Lending Tree compared the wages of fast food and counter workers to the average money people make in every other career field.

The study found that the recent skyrocketing prices of fast food are coinciding with a growing gap between the wages of an average US worker and restaurant staff.

The average fast food employee has to work for 46 minutes to purchase a typical combo meal nationwide, which averages out to $11.56, according to Lending Tree.

Meanwhile, the average American worker only needs to work for 21.2 minutes to be able to afford the same meal.

However, it depends on where you live, as the study also revealed the cities with the most expensive fast food meals.

FAST FOOD WORKERS SQUEEZED

San Francisco, California, was revealed to be the city with the highest average cost for fast food meals at $12.73.

In San Francisco, the average fast food worker makes $20.67 per hour since California has the highest minimum wage in the country.

This means they have to work 36.9 minutes to afford the typical fast food meals in their city, whether it be In-N-Out or Jack in the Box.

Other non-fast food workers in the city make about $48.15 on average, meaning they only need to work 15.9 minutes to be able to afford the average meal.

After San Francisco, the most expensive place to buy a typical fast food meal combo is in New York City.

Then, Los Angeles is ranked with the average fast food meal costing $12.24, just a cent less than New York’s meal.

However, there’s only a difference of 19.2 minutes between the time that counter workers have to be on the clock versus how long other Americans have to work to afford the same meal.

In fourth place is Seattle, Washington, where the average fast food meal combo costs $12.22.

The lowest fast food prices were recorded in Indianapolis, Indiana, at just $9.19.

That means the average fast food worker has to work 39.4 minutes to afford a meal at a fast food joint.

Meanwhile, workers earning the average city wage of $30.25 would only have to work 18.2 minutes to get a burger and French fry combo.

Plus, fast food meal prices might get even higher now after President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs kicked in last month.

From beef to palm oil and coffee, fast food giants are dealing with rising costs, and many could pass those costs on to customers.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/money/14290986/fast-food-workers-meal-price-wage-cost-expensive/

Tens of thousands of Hungarians took to the streets over the weekend after the Hungarian government tabled new legislation to monitor foreign funding for NGOs and media outlets or anyone deemed a threat to what it sees as Hungarian sovereign interest.

The bill is labeled “Transparency of Public Life” and the government says it is aimed at protecting Hungary’s sovereignty from outside interference. But activists say it mimics Russia’s foreign agent law and would similarly offer the Hungarian government sweeping powers to crack down on the press and critical voices in civil society.

The protests are the latest cry for help from Hungarians looking at the European Union to reign in their government.

Some of the protesters in front of the parliament in the Hungarian capital Budapest held a big flag of the European Union imprinted with the English word HELP.

What is Hungary’s new “transparency law?”

If the draft bill were to turn into law, activists say, the government could control media outlets and NGOs or even dissolve them.

In December 2023, Hungary passed a national law on the “Defence of Sovereignty” and established what it called a Sovereignty Protection Office (SPO) to investigate organizations that use foreign funds to influence voters.

With the new law, that agency will be responsible for investigating all kinds of organizations and authorized to blacklist those who receive foreign funding without prior government approval.

If blacklisted, organizations will also lose access to donations through Hungary’s annual 1% income tax contribution scheme, potentially pay a fine of 25 times these funds, and their owners will be made to declare their assets.

Reports suggest that the country’s secret services have been authorized to assist SPO in any investigations.

Tineke Strik, Hungary rapporteur of the European Parliament, told DW that Hungary’s transparency bill was aimed at “dissolving all organizations, all media outlets, even punishing all individuals, that criticize the government. That is exactly what the Russian law does.”

Russia’s foreign agent law was adopted in mid-2022, in what human right organizations described as a smearing campaign to discredit legitimate Russian civic activism.

“The law expands the definition of foreign agent to a point at which almost any person or entity, regardless of nationality or location, who engages in civic activism or even expresses opinions about Russian policies or officials’ conduct could be designated a foreign agent, so long as the authorities claim they are under ‘foreign influence,'” the NGO Human Rights Watch said.

Hungary’s “transparency” bill “authoritarian”

Peter Magyar, the leader of Hungary’s opposition Tisza party and the only Hungarian politician seen to be a credible challenger to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s 14-year grip on power, also accused the government of adopting Russian-style legislation to strip funding for activists and journalists, including through EU grants. He said it was “copying its master, [Russian President ] Vladimir Putin.”

A statement signed by 300 international organizations including the human rights organization Amnesty International described the bill as an “authoritarian attempt to retain power” that “aims to silence all critical voices and to eliminate what remains of Hungarian democracy.”

The non-profit group Transparency International said the new bill threatened to “end civil society” and, if passed, would empower the government to “persecute with impunity.”

It said the law would apply to EU grants and foreign donations as small as €5 ($5.70), and that “vague language” adopted in the bill left “wide room for political misuse, threatening a broad swathe of civil society — including independent media, watchdog organizations, and ordinary citizens engaged in public life.”

Last year, Georgia adopted a similar law amidst much uproar at home and in Brussels. The move is suspected to have scuttled the country’s chances of joining the EU.

But while Georgia is an EU candidate nation, Hungary is a full-fledged member of the bloc.

What could the EU do to ensure Hungary aligns with the EU’s value system?

Zsuzsanna Vegh, a program officer at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said that theoretically the EU could move ahead with the Article 7 procedure it first initiated in 2018.

The Treaty on the European Union outlines a procedure for addressing serious and persistent breaches of EU values by member states underArticle 7. It allows for the suspension of certain rights, including voting rights in the Council of the European Union, if a member is determined to be in repeated violations of the EU’s fundamental principles, such as weakening rule of law, democracy and freedoms.

“The EU could declare that there is indeed systematic violation of democracy and rule of law in Hungary and suspend its voting rights” in the Council of the European Union, where the bloc debates and decides its policies, Vegh said.

“But that is still a political decision and it is unlikely.”

Some European parliamentarians have advocated that the EU slash Hungary’s funding to force it to reduce corruption that has an adverse impact on the EU’s financial interests. But experts say the same method could also be effective in encouraging Hungary to stick to the EU’s value system.

“We urge the European Commission to increase pressure on Viktor Orban’s government to cease violating EU values and EU Laws by immediately suspending all EU funding for Hungary in line with the applicable legislation to protect the Union’s financial interest,” more than two dozen EU parliamentarians wrote in a letter to the European Commission on May 20.

Vegh said that while some funds for Hungary had already been cut there was no precedent of the EU cutting all funding marked for a member state.

However, Teona Lavrelashvili, a visiting fellow with the Wilfried Martens Center in Brussels, said this could be done.

“Yes, the European Union can suspend funds to Hungary if its new transparency bill — or any law — undermines the rule of law or threatens the EU’s financial interests. This power comes from the Rule of Law Conditionality Mechanism.”

She contended that a law that weakens civil society also undermines the EU’s overall economic interests.

What is the EU’s most likely next step?

The EU also has other options that it can resort to before cutting funds intended to aid economic development in Hungary and thus to benefit the general population.

Back in 2017, it managed to dissuade Hungary from introducing a similar transparency law by initiating an infringement procedure, a multilayered process through which the EU expressed its displeasure to Hungary. Upon no change in Budapest’s attitudes, Brussels eventually took Hungary to the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU)

The court concluded that Hungary had “introduced discriminatory and unjustified restrictions on foreign donations to civil society organizations.”

Since the new bill was tabled last week, the EU has refrained from scolding Hungary and merely said it is waiting to see whether it is enacted into law.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/eu-mulls-options-as-hungary-announces-russian-style-foreign-agent-law/a-72623228

From its origins in China, tea has spread across trade routes over centuries, becoming a daily ritual for half of the world’s population.

Recently, Kenyan President William Ruto met with one of China’s top three tea producers, Fuzhou Benny Tea Industries, to explore opportunities for increasing the presence of Kenyan orthodox and specialty teas in China. Additionally, Kenya aims to strengthen its bilateral trade relationships with China by expanding its exports of other important commodities, such as coffee, avocados, and macadamia nuts, according to a statement published on a Kenyan government website.

The high-level meeting brought together key stakeholders from Kenya’s tea sector, including representatives from Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, the KenyaTea Development Agency, and the Kenya Tea Board. “We will soon be allowing tea factories, to sell their teas directly to the international markets without intermediaries,” Mutahi Kagwe, Kenya’s Minister of Agriculture, told local reporters after the meeting.

The East African country is the world’s biggest exporter of black tea.

In 2024, Kenya’s tea industry accounted for nearly 158 billion Ksh ($1.22 billion, €1.065 billion) in annual revenues and supported over 750,000 farmers, according to the country’s tea trade regulating body, Kenya Tea Board (KTB).

“Benny Tea Industries will be making $100 million worth of investments in Kenya,” Willy Mutai, CEO of the Kenya Tea Board, told DW. “According to Mutai, the agreement would allow Chinese firms, such as Benny Tea, to export tea packaging material from China to Kenya tax-free.

However, for Kenyan tea farmer Samuel Kariuki, such an agreement could disrupt the local industry. ” There could be an interruption when it comes to our supply chains, Kariuki, who is a manager at Sensory Garden Kenya, told DW.

“Tax-free packaging materials from China might sort of undercut the local packaging suppliers.”

Search for more tea markets

Challenges such as fluctuating prices, competition from other tea-producing nations, and the need for value addition have forced Kenya to seek strategic partnerships in its tea trade. “Internationally, we face a lot of stringent certification requirements which are very costly and complex for us as farmers,” Kariuki said.

“Meeting standards like [those of ] the Rainforest Alliance and the likes of fair trade requires some amount of investment that we as farmers are possibly not able to have. Either way, even if we had that kind of investment, the investment is not guaranteed that, you know, there’s going to be a return,” Kariuki added.

Moreover, US President Donald Trump’s tariffshave sent shockwaves through the global markets.

Kenya hopes that its new partnership with China will improve the production of high-quality Kenyan tea, diversify the country’s tea exports, and align its tea industry with international market demands.

In addition, it will facilitate setting up modern factories in Kenya for technological transfer and bringing equipment to the country that can be used to produce teas that match the quality standards of the Chinese market.

Kenya hopes to establish standard user packaging facilities, enabling tea farmers to add value at the source. Mutai explained that Kenya is changing its policies to accommodate international buyers, allowing them to buy raw material or branded teas directly from factories in Kenya.

The Trump tariffs’ effect

Trump’s tariffs on China have forced the world’s second-largest economy to seek and solidify trade partnerships with countries such as Kenya. Although Trump gave the world a 90-day relief, Kenya is already grappling with the 10% universal tariff that the US president left intact.

“We are currently doing 10% tariffs on the US,” Mutai noted, emphasizing that the US trade barriers offer a significant opportunity for Chinese investors in tea. “They can come and pack here in Kenya.”

Kenya’s tea industry stands to benefit significantly from two major trade frameworksThe African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

Kenya’s two crucial trade deals

Under the AfCFTA, Kenya gains preferential access to a vast African market by eliminating tariffs and reducing trade barriers among member states. This agreement facilitates smoother intra-African trade, allowing Kenyan tea to reach new and growing markets across the continent more competitively.

It also encourages regional value chains, enabling Kenya to process and package tea locally before exporting, thereby increasing earnings and creating jobs. The agreement has already shown promise, with Kenya exporting tea to Ghana under AfCFTA protocols.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/tea-for-two-as-kenya-seeks-to-boost-exports-to-china/a-72620827

A suspected suicide bomber targeted a school bus in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least four children and two adults on Wednesday (May 21), in an attack the government accused India of backing.

The bus driver and his assistant were among those killed in the attack in Khuzdar district of Balochistan province, on the way to a school that caters to the children of army personnel and civilians living in the area.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif accused arch-rival India of backing the militants that carried out the attack, coming almost two weeks after the two sides settled a ceasefire to end their most serious conflict in decades.

“Terrorists operating under Indian patronage attacking innocent children on a school bus is clear evidence of their hostility,” his statement added.

The military also said in a statement that the attack was “planned and orchestrated” by India.

The nuclear-armed neighbours regularly trade accusations that the other supports militant groups operating in their territory.

The four-day conflict earlier this month was sparked by an attack on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir that India accused Pakistan of backing, for which it took revenge.

Pakistan denied any involvement in the attack.

“PROBE SUGGESTS SUICIDE BOMBING”

No group has yet claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s bombing.

Sarfraz Bugti, the chief minister of Balochistan province, said four children, the bus driver and his assistant were killed.

“A bus carrying children of the (Army Public School) was targeted with a bomb, the nature of which is still being determined,” Yasir Iqbal Dashti, a senior local government official in Khuzdar district, told AFP.

“The initial probe suggests it was a suicide bombing,” he added.

New Delhi’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement that “India rejects the baseless allegations”, adding that it was “second nature” for Pakistan to blame India.

A senior police official confirmed the death toll to AFP on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorised to speak to the media, adding that more than two dozen people were wounded.

The military earlier put the death toll at five, including three children, in a statement to media.

Images shared on social media showed the shattered remains of a school bus and a pile of school bags nearby.

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) is the most active militant group in the region where there has been a sharp rise in attacks, mostly targeting security forces or people from outside the region.

In March, dozens of militants and off-duty security force members died when the BLA took control of a train with hundreds of passengers on board.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/children-killed-school-bus-attack-pakistan-suspected-suicide-bombing-5143926

A Vietnamese court on Wednesday (May 21) jailed 23 officials and business people over the illegal exploitation and export of rare earths.

The trial comes after the US Geological Survey (USGS) this year significantly revised down its estimate of rare earth deposits in Vietnam, which it once considered the world’s second largest.

The nine-day trial in Hanoi saw verdicts handed down to 27 defendants, including former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Nguyen Linh Ngoc, who was given three years in jail for “violating state regulations causing wastefulness”.

Others were given a range of prison sentences – with 16 years being the highest – for a number of offences, including violation of regulations on natural resources exploitation and causing environmental pollution.

Four people were given suspended sentences.

According to the court, the case concerning the exploitation, trade and export of mineral resources was “especially serious”.

The court said that a firm called Thai Duong Company was unlawfully granted a mining licence for rare earth exploitation in Yen Phu mine in northern mountainous Yen Bai province between 2019 and 2023.

Defendants involved – including environment officials as well as chief accountants and executives at various companies – sold the rare earths and iron ore from the mine for close to US$30 million, much of it to China.

USGS slashed this year its estimate of Vietnam’s rare earth reserves from an estimated 22 million tonnes to 3.5 million tonnes, threatening its ambitions to compete with Beijing in a sector crucial to high-tech devices.

The revision meant the country dropped from the world’s second largest reserve holder to the sixth, behind China, Brazil, India, Australia and Russia.

USGS describes mineral reserves data as “dynamic”.

Reserves may be reduced as ore is mined or the feasibility of extraction diminishes, or they may continue to increase as additional deposits are developed, USGS says.

Rare earths are a group of 17 heavy metals that are abundant in the Earth’s crust across the globe.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/vietnam-jails-23-people-rare-earths-exploitation-5144626

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has accepted the Boeing 747 that the Gulf emirate of Qatar offered to President Donald Trump for use as Air Force One, the Pentagon said Wednesday (May 21).

Qatar’s offer of the jet – which is valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars – has raised huge constitutional and ethical questions, as well as security concerns about using an aircraft donated by a foreign power for use as the ultra-sensitive presidential plane.

“The Secretary of Defense has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar in accordance with all federal rules and regulations,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement.

“The Department of Defense will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered for an aircraft used to transport the President of the United States,” Parnell said, referring questions to the US Air Force.

The US Constitution prohibits government officials from accepting gifts “from any King, Prince or foreign State”, in a section known as the Emoluments Clause.

But Trump has denied there are any ethical issues involved with accepting the plane, saying it would be “stupid” for the US government not to take the aircraft.

“It’s a great gesture,” the 78-year-old billionaire told reporters at the White House last week when asked if the oil-rich Gulf state would expect anything in exchange.

“I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer. I mean, I could be a stupid person (and) say ‘no we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.'”

The leader of the Democratic minority in the US Senate introduced legislation earlier this week that would block Trump from using the aircraft.

Chuck Schumer’s Presidential Airlift Security Act would prohibit the Pentagon from using taxpayer funds to retrofit any plane previously owned by a foreign government for use as the presidential plane.

“Donald Trump has shown time and again he will sell out the American people and the presidency if it means filling his own pockets,” Schumer said in a statement.

“Not only would it take billions of taxpayer dollars to even attempt to retrofit and secure this plane, but there’s absolutely no amount of modifications that can guarantee it will be secure.”

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/us-accepts-qatar-boeing-747-jet-trump-air-force-one-5145311

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said on Wednesday (May 21) that Singapore rejects attempts by foreign embassies to incite domestic reactions to international issues involving third countries, adding that complex issues are best resolved through appropriate channels for diplomacy to be effective.

The ministry’s comments came a day after the US embassy in Singapore published a video on Facebook criticising China’s position on the South China Sea.

The post drew a response from the Chinese embassy in Singapore on Wednesday, saying that the US embassy “deliberately distorts the ins and outs” of the South China Sea issue.

In its video on Tuesday, the US embassy made use of visual and verbal references to HDB flats and Singapore town councils to illustrate its point.

It likened China’s claim of nearly the entire South China Sea to an inconsiderate neighbour claiming common spaces in HDB corridors and lift landings as their own.

It also drew an analogy between the United Nations International Court of Justice and the local town councils, depicting China as the neighbour who would ignore the town council’s rulings.

“China says it ‘owns’ nearly the entire South China Sea. International law says otherwise,” said the US embassy in the Facebook post.

“In 2016, the Hague tribunal ruled Beijing’s sweeping claims have no legal basis – yet construction, patrols, and coercion continue. From militarised reefs to “grey zone” tactics, this isn’t just a maritime dispute – it’s a test of international order, stability, and peace.”

China claims most of the South China Sea despite a 2016 ruling by an international arbitral tribunal that found Beijing’s claims have no basis under international law. China does not recognise the decision.

On Wednesday, the Chinese embassy in Singapore said that the US embassy “deliberately distorts the ins and outs of the South China Sea issue”.

“By putting its own priorities over international rules, habitually withdrawing from international conventions and organisations, bullying and coercing other countries on issues like tariffs, and publicly declaring seizing the control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, the US wants to reimpose the law of the jungle where might makes right upon the rest of the world,” the Chinese embassy said in a Facebook post.

“What the US has done is a body blow to the existing international order and rules, and that is why it is universally recognised that the US is the least qualified to even talk about international law.”

The post went on to say that the US somehow believes that, as a country that refuses to join the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, it has the privilege of “microscoping other countries’ compliance with the Convention”.

It also added that the US has even deployed intermediate-range missile system in the region to stoke division and confrontation, which the Chinese embassy called “the most destructive force to peace in the South China Sea”.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/mfa-united-states-chinese-embassy-south-china-sea-5144911

Are Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce living together in the Sunshine State?

Fans are convinced the Kansas City Chiefs tight end let it slip that he and the pop star are playing house during a telling moment in his “New Heights” podcast.

Plus, Swifties are wildly divided over the long-awaited first song from “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” that finally dropped Monday, a “Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version)” that debuted on the Season 6 premiere of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Caitlin Clark plays coy about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s plans amid couple’s ‘break’ from spotlight

Caitlin Clark subtly addressed what pals Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have been up to amid their “break” from the spotlight.

The WNBA star confirmed the couple’s current mindset when asked whether they would be attending an Indiana Fever basketball game this season.

“Oh gosh, I don’t know,” Clark told USA Today in an interview published Wednesday. “I mean, I hope so.”

“I feel like they’re also living — they’re in vacation mode right now,” the athlete, 23, continued.

Taylor Swift has chance to buy original recordings back — and one unlikely person is ‘encouraging’ the deal: sources

It may not be such a “Cruel Summer” this year.

Taylor Swift will finally have the chance to buy back the original recordings of her first six albums, sources tell Page Six, after their original sale prompted one of the bitterest fallouts of her career.

Swift had “Bad Blood” with music impresario Scooter Braun in 2019 after he bought the master recordings of her first albums for $300 million, prompting her to re-record them all as “Taylor’s versions.”

At the time Swift accused Braun — who managed Justin Bieber and, at one time, Kanye West but not Swift — of being a “bully” and “the definition of toxic male privilege in our industry.”

Braun sold the recordings on a year later to investment firm Shamrock Capital for a profit, but the company is now interested in selling them back to Swift.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/05/20/celebrity-news/taylor-swift-live-updates-5-20-2025/

Congratulations are in order for Kim Kardashian.

The Skims founder took to her Instagram Story on Wednesday to celebrate her graduation from law school after six years

“All of you guys have been on this journey with me,” she said in her speech during a private commencement ceremony hosted by family and friends.

Kardashian, 44, explained that her desire to study law began after feeling “dumbfounded” watching a video on Twitter.

The reality star dolled up in a gray sweater, leather skirt, black stockings and white pumps for the special occasion.

Another video showed her putting on a tan graduation cap.

She beamed as one of her mentors called her law journey “the most inspiring.”

“Six years ago, Kim Kardashian walked into this program with nothing but a fierce desire to fight for justice. No law school lectures, no ivory tower shortcuts, just determination,” her mentor said.

She went on to say that Kardashian dedicated “18 hours a week, 48 weeks a year for six straight years.”

“That’s a total of 5,184 hours of legal study,” she said. “That’s time she carved out while raising four children, running businesses, filming television shows and showing up in courtrooms to advocate for others.”

Another clip showed the “Kardashians” star hugging her mentors and holding her diploma.

A sneak peek of the celebratory luncheon revealed that Kardashian’s study flashcards had been turned into placemats.

The mom of four also shared a photo of her son Psalm West wearing a tan suit and tie inspired by his late grandfather, attorney Robert Kardashian Sr.

Another photo showed the 5-year-old carrying a briefcase, while Kardashian’s 7-year-old daughter, Chicago West, wore a black pinstripe suit inspired by her mom’s 2023 look at Harvard Business School.

An insider told Us Weekly that Kardashian’s graduation ceremony was a surprise.

The businesswoman was reportedly told she would be attending a “regular family brunch” when her loved ones surprised her.

“They are all excited and proud of her and wanted to surprise her to celebrate this accomplishment,” the insider said. “Her law mentors are also surprising her, and she has no clue they will be there.”

The outlet reported that Kardashian has passed the multistate professional responsibility exam and can now move on to the bar exam, which will allow her to practice law in California.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/05/21/celebrity-news/kim-kardashian-celebrates-finally-earning-law-degree-at-surprise-graduation/

He’s a traitor to the cause, an infidel and a “slave” who “groveled” before US President Donald Trump. In the latest edition of its weekly newsletter, the extremist group known as the “Islamic State,” or IS, didn’t hold back how it really felt about Syria’s new interim president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, and his meeting with Trump last week.

In fact, this sort of enmity between the IS group and the rebel group al-Sharaa once led, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, is not new.

Between 2012 and 2013, HTS was part of the IS group before switching to ally itself with al-Qaeda. Then after cutting ties with al-Qaeda in 2016, HTS spent almost a decade fighting IS in parts of the country it controlled. So the criticism of al-Sharaa’s more moderate, expedient political courseis not unexpected.

But there is another aspect to the al-Naba text, in which IS also calls on foreign fighters inSyria to defect from the current government led by al-Sharaa. Foreign fighters upset at al-Sharaa’s diplomacy with the US should join IS, the group exhorted.

The al-Naba text and al-Sharaa’s meeting with Trump has refocused attention on one of the interim government of Syria’s toughest problems: What to do about the presence of foreign fighters in the country.

During last week’s meeting, the US president pressed al-Sharaa to “tell all foreign terrorists to leave Syria” making it one of the conditions for sanctions relief.French and German envoys have made similar statements and in general, the fear is that Syria could become a haven for groups with extremist ideologies that then become active internationally.

Who are Syria’s foreign fighters?

It’s hard to know exactly how many foreigners were fighting alongside HTS. There could be anywhere between 1,500 and 6,000, with many experts suggesting it’s most likely a number in the middle of that range.

The largest group is comprised of Uyghurs, who many Syrians refer to as “Turkistanis,” from central and East Asia, including China.

Other fighters are from Russia and other former Soviet states, the Balkans, Turkey, and various Arab countries.

Most came to Syria early during the country’s civil war in response to calls from the IS group, which was trying to establish a caliphate at the time. After it broke ties with both IS and al-Qaeda, some foreigners left HTS, while others stayed.

Late last year, during the HTS-led campaign that ousted Syrian dictator Bashar Assad several groups of foreigners, including Uyghurs and Chechens, apparently played an integral part in the campaign’s success.

Al-Sharaa has said they should be rewarded for their help and in January, a number of foreign fighters were appointed to senior positions in the new Syrian military, a decision that caused some controversy.

It’s hard to say how important the foreign fighters are to Syrian security forces now, Aaron Zelin, an expert on HTS and a senior fellow at the Washington Institute told DW, “because there are obviously a lot more Syrians than foreigners.”

But some are more important than others, he noted. For example, fighters from the Uyghur contingent now act as something of a personal security force for al-Sharaa. “They’re essentially the ones protecting him because he trusts them, they’re viewed as brothers in arms from the fight against Assad,” Zelin said.

A Syrian refugee now living in Germany told DW he had met a number of foreign fighters while combatting Assad regime forces in the Syrian city of Aleppo. “Some were good, some not so good,” he said, requesting anonymity for security reasons. “They were very focused on fighting and a lot of them had a Salafist mindset,” he noted, referring to the conservative, fundamentalist Sunni Muslim movement. “They wanted to go where the battles were.”

But, added the former fighter, “the ones that stayed now have families in Syria. So personally, I’d give them a chance — especially because if we expel them, we also expel the women and the children. Anyway, don’t forget, there are also a lot of Syrians who would share at least some of that [religious] mindset.”

How dangerous are the foreign fighters?

Foreign fighters with a more hardline religious bent have been accused of taking part in recent violence against Syrian minorities. They have also been blamed for policing female dress and social customs in Syria’s bigger cities.

Until very recently HTS was still positioning itself as a “defender of Sunni Islam,” Orwa Ajjoub, a research analyst and expert on Syria, explained in a text for the Italian Institute for International Political Studies in March. But after the fall of the Assad regime, the group set a more liberal course, he wrote.

“This abrupt change in narrative presents a significant adjustment for the rank-and-file,” Ajjoub explained. “This transition may be challenging for fighters used to a narrower, sectarian viewpoint. Many HTS fighters, having never left the conservative environment of Idlib, are now encountering less conservative communities in Damascus.”

Joining the ‘Islamic State’

“If HTS continues its trend toward relative moderation — such as tolerating unveiled women, alcohol sales and participation in a Western-style political process … hardline elements within HTS, particularly foreign jihadis, could break away, defect to, or cooperate with ISIS or al-Qaeda,” Mohammed Salih, a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a Philadelphia-based think tank, warned in January.

But Zelin said he was skeptical about foreign fighters in Syria posing “any large-scale threat.”

The ones who felt HTS was no longer hardcore enough for them have most likely already left, he noted, and many of the less radical foreign fighters who stayed are highly disciplined. For years now, al-Sharaa has also tried to sideline, arrest or expel any foreign fighters who resisted the group’s new course.

Of course, individual foreign fighters could still commit crimes or cause problems, he said. “But the larger threat comes from foreign fighters already inside the “Islamic State,” the ones continuing to fight a low-level insurgency in eastern Syria, as well as those detained in northeast Syria by the SDF,” he explained, referring to detention camps run by Syrian Kurds.

Source :https://www.dw.com/en/how-dangerous-are-syrias-foreign-fighters-really/a-72613223

JOE Biden’s cancer diagnosis has shocked the nation as questions swirl over when he fell ill – especially after President Donald Trump accused his administration of “not telling the facts.”

But Biden is far from the first president to experience serious health issues around the time they were in office – and some leaders left the public in the dark entirely.

Speaking from the Oval Office on Monday, Trump questioned how Biden’s cancer wasn’t caught sooner.

“I’m surprised the public wasn’t notified a long time ago,” Trump said while addressing Biden’s prostate cancer.

“To get to stage nine, that’s a long time.

“When you take tests, as a male, that test is very standard.”

The president, 78, said he had undergone a full physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center just last month, adding that a prostate exam is typically included.

“This is dangerous for our country,” Trump warned, slamming Biden’s administration for “not telling the facts.”

Trump called the diagnosis “very very sad,” and blasted former White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor, who previously declared Biden to be in good health.

O’Connor had issued Biden a nearly clean bill of health in February 2024, saying he “identified no new concerns” during the former president’s last physical.

That exam did not include a prostate check though Biden had a colonoscopy in 2021.

Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre previously defended skipping a cognitive test, telling reporters, “The president doesn’t need a cognitive test.”

“That is not my assessment, that is the assessment of the president’s doctor, that is also the assessment of his neurologist,” she said in 2022.

But Trump countered on Monday, “If it’s the same doctor that said there’s nothing wrong there, and that’s being proven to be a very sad situation.

“I think someone is going to have to speak to his doctor.”

SECRET ILLNESSES

Secret illnesses among presidents aren’t new as several past leaders went to extreme lengths to keep serious conditions under wraps.

According to a study conducted by the University of Arizona, five US presidents hid health issues and illnesses from the American public during their presidencies.

Chester Alan Arthur, the 21st US president, was diagnosed with Bright’s disease, a fatal kidney illness, less than a year after taking office.

Arthur received his diagnosis of Bright’s Disease in the 1880s.

But biographer Zachary Karabell stated a more accurate diagnosis for the former president would have been “glomerulonephritis,” which would have made it very difficult for Arthur’s body to expel any toxins.

“His blood and body were slowly being poisoned by his own digestion,” Karabell noted.

Arthur’s health rapidly declined and he died two years after leaving office in 1886.

Grover Cleveland, who became president in 1893, secretly had a tumor removed from the roof of his mouth aboard a friend’s yacht to avoid alarming the public or spooking markets.

A sample of the lesion was sent by presidential doctor Major Robert O’Reilly anonymously to the Army Medical Museum and Johns Hopkins for evaluation and the results came back for carcinoma.

Cleveland’s health concern coincided with a national financial depression and his surgery would come a few months before he was expected to address Congress.

The president worried reports of his surgery risked unsettling the markets and the public, so it was done in secret on his friend Commodore Elias Benedict’s yacht, the Oneida.

Cleveland’s surgery was performed in secret on July 1, 1893 to remove the tumor in his mouth and White House aides told the public he simply had a tooth removed.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was almost always confined to a wheelchair due to polio but used braces and aides to simulate walking and appear mobile during public events.

With the support of reporters, Roosevelt was able to keep his use of a wheelchair under wraps over the four terms of his presidency.

According to the University of Arizona, the media helped downplay the president’s disability and he was largely photographed above the waist, with very few photos existing of him using his wheelchair.

John F. Kennedy suffered from numerous illnesses throughout his life, reportedly showing symptoms of Addison’s disease, though the diagnosis was never officially confirmed.

As a child, Kennedy dealt with stomach problems, scarlet fever, and a mysterious illness during his private school years that left him completely debilitated.

While his private school illness was unknown, it has been described by scholars as a blood condition, either jaundice or hepatitis.

Kennedy’s health problems, including severe back pain, followed him into adulthood, with his father John Kennedy Sr. even pulling strings to get his health record overlooked so he could join the Navy.

When Kennedy ran for the presidency in 1960, he was asked about having Addison’s Disease, but his camp categorically denied the story, only conceding at the time that Kennedy had “some mild adrenal insufficiency.”

Woodrow Wilson, meanwhile, had multiple strokes before and during his presidency, including one so severe that his wife and doctor hid the truth even from him.

A stroke in 1919 left Wilson incapacitated for the rest of his term.

A cover-up followed, led by his second wife Edith and his physician, Dr Grayson.

“They thought that it would be best if Wilson was not informed of just how serious his condition truly was,” the University of Arizona Health Sciences Library noted in an exhibit on presidential illnesses.

The voters were unaware of Wilson’s hidden medical issues that could have drastically affected decision-making.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14280432/biden-prostate-cancer-hidden-illness-health-us-presidents/

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has congratulated Asim Munir for his promotion as field marshal and called it “Well-deserved.” On microblogging website X he said, “On behalf of the entire nation, I extend my heartfelt felicitations to General Syed Asim Munir, NI (M) on his well-deserved promotion to the rank of Field Marshal.”

“His exemplary leadership during Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos crushed enemy’s nefarious designs and brought great honor to our Motherland,” he added.

He further said, “Under his command, our valiant Armed Forces staunchly defended Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity with unity, courage and the highest standards of military professionalism.”

The federal government in Pakistan on Tuesday promoted Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) General Asim Munir to the rank of field marshal, the highest military rank in the country. The rank is extremely rare—last awarded in 1959 to General Ayub Khan. The decision was made during a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Source : https://www.freepressjournal.in/world/well-deserved-pakistan-pm-shehbaz-sharif-congratulates-asim-munir-for-promotion-as-field-marshal

Jennifer Lopez showed a little too much skin last night.

The “Unstoppable” actress attended the Ring Them Bells benefit concert, honoring composer John Kander‘s 98th birthday in New York City, where she suffered a wardrobe malfunction in her plunging gown.

As Lopez strolled into the Stephen Sondheim Theatre with photographers capturing her every move, her silky peach The New Arrivals by Ilkyaz Ozel dress ($835) shifted a bit.

Lucikly, the multi-hyphenate, 55, topped the risqué look with a a coordinating statement-making feather jacket.

“💋🕷️” the A-lister, who starred in the 2025 film “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” composed by Kander, captioned an Instagram post of the bold look.

“Glow mode: activated. JLo. Peach perfection,” celebrity makeup artist Scott Barnes wrote. “LOVE THIS COLOR ON YOU. YOU LOOK SO DELIGHTFUL ❤️❤️❤️,” another said.

“THEY CALL HER J-GLOW cuz she’s hella GLOWING TONIGHT 💚 ✨ @jlo” a third commented.

Lopez, who was one of the performers at the Monday night concert, attended the afterparty at Bryant Park Grill in a second dress, which kept her much more covered up on top — though she showed plenty of leg with a wild hip-high slit.

Her white high-neck Stephane Rolland gown boasted shimmering stones around the collar and a long train.

She paired the look with silver platform stiletto heels and a glittering clutch.

Lopez’s attendance last night comes just a week after she suffered a painful face injury while rehearsing for the 2025 American Music Awards, which she’s set to host on Monday.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/05/20/style/jennifer-lopez-suffers-wardrobe-malfunction-in-plunging-peach-gown/

New eye-popping photos show Amazon founder Jeff Bezos spanking his fiancée Lauren Sánchez on his $500 million superyacht off the coast of Cannes this week.

Sánchez, 55, can be seen sunbathing in a tiny leopard print thong bikini and straw bucket hat on a lounge chair, as her billionaire groom-to-be raised his hand to take a swat at her rear.

A bikini-clad pal nearby appeared to laugh at the hijinks.

During the outing, Sanchez showed off her rear on all fours in the skin-baring two-piece suit while reaching out to grab her hat.

At one point, she sat up and raised her right arm as if to celebrate. In additional snapshots, Bezos, 61, rubbed his bride-to-be’s bikini clad body and kissed her ear.

She also rested her head by his lap as he caressed her hair during the sunny boat ride. In additional photos, Bezos leaned over the mom of three to snuggle as they packed on the PDA.

The Blue Origin founder donned a chic pair of aviator sunglasses and swim trunks with a simple short sleeved blue T-shirt.

The couple sat down for a casual meal on the yacht with pals, as well.

Bezos is said to have obtained the massive vessel Koru in 2021 — it reportedly boasts a 417-foot length, several decks, and three masts.

A wooden figurehead at the helm of the yacht appears to have been created in the image of Sánchez, complete with flowing long hair and flawless physique.

In February, buzz emerged that the couple would tie the knot aboard the yacht in June off the coast of Italy, with CNN reporting that more than 200 distinguished guests will be attendance.

More recent reports revealed that the bride and groom, as well as their guests, will be staying in Aman Venice and the Gritti Palace. Both hotels command $500,000 per night.

Sánchez has already kicked off the festivities with a multi-day star-studded bachelorette celebration over the weekend.

After a dinner at the historic Lafayette’s Paris restaurant on Thursday, the bride-to-be and several famous gal pals were spotted having a luncheon on Friday afternoon.

On Friday evening, Katy Perry, Eva Longoria, Kris Jenner, Kim Kardashian and more joined the journalist for a lavish boat party on the Seine.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/05/20/celebrity-news/photos-of-jeff-bezos-spanking-lauren-sanchez-while-lounging-on-superyacht/

Wendy Ortiz was surprised to find out she was being fined by U.S. immigration authorities for being in the country illegally – but it was the amount that truly shocked her: $1.8 million.
Ortiz, 32, who earns $13 an hour in her job at a meatpacking plant in Pennsylvania, has lived in the United States for a decade, after fleeing El Salvador to escape a violent ex-partner and gang threats, she said in an interview and in immigration paperwork. Her salary barely covers rent and expenses for her autistic 6-year-old U.S.-citizen son.

“It’s not fair,” she said. “Where is someone going to find that much money?”
In the last few weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump has started to operationalize a plan to fine migrants who fail to leave the U.S. after a final deportation order, issuing notices to 4,500 migrants with penalties totaling more than $500 million, a senior Trump official said, requesting anonymity to share internal figures.
Reuters spoke with eight immigration lawyers around the country who said their clients had been fined from several thousand dollars to just over $1.8 million.
The recipients of the notices were informed that they had 30 days to contest, in writing, under oath, and with evidence as to why the penalty should not be imposed.

The steep fines are part of Trump’s aggressive push to get immigrants in the U.S. illegally to leave the country voluntarily, or “self deport.”
The Trump administration plan, details of which were first reported by Reuters in April, include levying fines of $998 per day for migrants who failed to leave the U.S. after a deportation order.
The administration planned to issue fines retroactively for up to five years, Reuters reported. Under that framework, the maximum would be $1.8 million. The government would then consider seizing the property of immigrants who could not pay.
It remains unclear exactly how the Trump administration would collect the fines and seize property.

IMMIGRATION LAWYERS BAFFLED

The fines reviewed by Reuters were issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but a separate agency – Customs and Border Protection – has been asked to process them and handle potential forfeitures, Reuters reported in April.

CBP is still working out the complicated logistics to conduct seizures, a CBP official said, requesting anonymity.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in April that immigrants in the U.S. illegally should “self deport and leave the country now.”
The fines stem from a 1996 law that was enforced for the first time in 2018, during Trump’s first term in office, and target the roughly 1.4 million migrants who have been ordered deported by an immigration judge.
The Trump administration withdrew fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars against nine migrants who sought sanctuary in churches in his first term after a legal challenge, but proceeded with smaller penalties. Joe Biden’s administration dropped the fines in 2021.

Robert Scott, a New York City-based immigration lawyer, said he was baffled when one of his clients – a low-income Mexican woman who has lived in the U.S. for 25 years – also received a $1.8 million fine.
“At first you look at something like this and think it’s fake,” he said. “I’ve never seen a client receive anything like this.”
Scott said the woman received a final deportation order in 2013 but was not aware of it at the time. The woman filed a motion last year to reopen the removal order, which is still pending, Scott said.
“She hasn’t been hiding,” he said. “I find it curious that they would pick on someone like that. I don’t know if it’s random, I don’t know if she’s low-hanging fruit. I don’t know.”

SEEKING RELIEF, THEN TARGETED

After crossing the border in 2015, Ortiz was released to pursue her asylum claim when an officer found she had a credible fear of persecution, documents show. But she said she never received an immigration court hearing notice and was ordered deported after failing to show up to court in 2018.
Ortiz’s immigration lawyer requested humanitarian relief from the U.S. government on Jan. 8, saying she faced danger in El Salvador and that her son would not have access to services for autistic children. The petition asked for “prosecutorial discretion” and for the government to reopen and dismiss her case.
Twelve days later, Trump took office and launched his wide-ranging immigration crackdown.
Rosina Stambaugh, Ortiz’s attorney, said she had requested a 30-day extension and was considering ways to fight the fine in court.
“She is a mother of an autistic child, she has no criminal history, and they have all of her background information,” Stambaugh said. “I just think it’s absolutely insane.”
Lawyers said clients who received the notices also included spouses of U.S. citizens, who were actively trying to legalize their immigration status.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/low-income-migrants-fined-up-18-million-by-trump-administration-2025-05-20/

In 1959, Field Marshal Ayub Khan exiled Pakistan’s top civilian leaders and seized total control. With Munir now wearing the same rank, is history about to echo?

In 1959, then-Pakistan President Iskander Mirza became disillusioned with democracy and invited then-Pakistan Army Chief Ayub Khan to impose martial law, wrongly assuming he could keep him in check.

Pakistan was facing absolute political chaos after its creation due to the Partition of India in 1947. Constant no-confidence motions, collapsing coalitions and a crumbling parliamentary system crippled Pakistan and the government was losing grip on Islamabad as well as on eastern Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

After its creation, Pakistan witnessed a rapid churn in leadership. Seven prime ministers came and went between 1947 and 1958, none completing a full term. Civilian institutions remained weak, with the parliament unstable, the bureaucracy dominant and the military growing in influence.

The Muslim League, once the face of the freedom struggle, had splintered and lost ground. Following the deaths of MA Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan, unelected officials and bureaucrats held sway.

A new constitution in 1956 turned Pakistan into a republic but failed to bring political stability.

Due to this Mirza abolished the 1956 Constitution, declared martial law and appointed General Ayub Khan as Chief Martial Law Administrator on October 7, 1958.

Mirza thought Ayub would remain a loyal subordinate while he continued to pull the strings from the presidency. Instead, Ayub moved fast.

He assumed the presidency himself, becoming Pakistan’s first military ruler.

What is noteworthy is the fact that when Ayub took power in 1959, he first promoted himself to Field Marshal to cement his hold on power.

The move was both symbolic and political as he positioned himself above the military and civilian leadership.

He ruled until 1969 under a military-backed setup that brought press censorship and a tightly controlled presidential system. His regime laid the groundwork for decades of military dominance in Pakistan.

Fast forward to 2025, Pakistan has a new Field Marshal — General Asim Munir. He is the first army chief to get this title since Ayub Khan. The decision was approved by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s cabinet on May 20, just days after the Pakistan Army took heavy losses in the latest conflict with India.

The violence began after a terror attack in Pahalgam killed Indian tourists. In response, India launched Operation Sindoor, hitting terror camps in Pakistan and PoK. When the Pakistan Army tried to protect these camps, Indian forces also struck their air bases and military posts, causing major damage.

Munir’s promotion comes in the middle of rising tensions. He has backed groups involved in cross-border attacks and has used sharp language about India, even invoking the two-nation theory that led to the Partition in 1947.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/asim-munir-gets-field-marshal-title-last-time-it-happened-pakistan-slid-into-dictatorship-ws-kl-9345376.html

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to not let a group of migrants being flown to South Sudan leave the custody of U.S. immigration authorities after saying they appeared to have been deported in violation of a court order.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston during a hastily arranged virtual hearing said that while he was not going to order the airplane to turn around, that was an option the U.S. Department of Homeland Security could employ to comply with his order.

Murphy warned that officials could be held in criminal contempt if he found they violated his previous order barring the swift deportation of migrants to countries other than their own before they could raise any concerns that they might face torture or persecution there.
“I have a strong indication that my preliminary injunction order has been violated,” Murphy told Elianis Perez, a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Murphy, an appointee of former Democratic President Joe Biden, said any migrants covered by the injunction en route to the African nation must remain in the government’s custody pending a further hearing on Wednesday.

He said the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, could comply with that order in a myriad of ways, including keeping the migrants on the plane on the tarmac once it lands.
“I’m not going to limit DHS on where they hold them,” Murphy said. “If they want to turn the plane around, they can.”
The agency did not respond to requests for comment.
The development marked a new clash between the federal judiciary and Republican President Donald Trump’s administration in its efforts to implement Trump’s calls for mass deportations as part of his hardline immigration agenda.
Another jurist, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, last month found “probable cause” to hold officials in criminal contempt for violating his order halting deportations of alleged members of a Venezuelan gang who had no chance to challenge their removals.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday maintained a block on Trump’s deportations of Venezuelan migrants under a 1798 law historically used only in wartime, faulting his administration for seeking to remove them without adequate due process.

‘PLEASE HELP!’

The class action lawsuit before Murphy was filed after the Department of Homeland Security in February instructed immigration officers to review cases of people granted protections against being removed to their home countries to see if they could be re-detained and sent to a third country.
Murphy issued a preliminary injunction on April 18 designed to ensure any migrants being sent a third country were provided due process under the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment and a “meaningful opportunity” to raise any fears for their safety.
In a motion filed earlier Tuesday, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said they learned that nearly a dozen migrants held at a detention facility in Texas were being flown to South Sudan, whose conditions have long been dangerous even for locals.

The United Nations has warned that the country’s spiraling political crisis could reignite the brutal civil war that ended in 2018.
Among the migrants on the plane was a Vietnamese man who was being held at the Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas. Perez during Tuesday’s hearing said the man had been convicted of murder, and a top lawyer with the Department of Homeland Security said the plane had at least one rapist on it, too.
The Vietnamese man’s spouse had emailed his lawyer saying that he and 10 other individuals were believed to have been deported to South Sudan. The group also included nationals of Laos, Thailand, Pakistan and Mexico, the spouse said.
“Please help!” the spouse wrote. “They cannot be allowed to do this.”
Lawyers for the migrants said an attorney for another individual from Myanmar likewise had been notified he was being sent to South Sudan.
Yet Perez later Tuesday said the man was instead flown to Myanmar. She could not explain the change in destination, which a lawyer for the migrants, Trina Realmuto of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said “defies logic.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/immigrant-rights-advocates-claim-us-violated-court-order-by-deporting-migrants-2025-05-20/

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday the number of visas he has revoked was probably in the thousands, adding that he believed there was still more to do.
Republican President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to ramp up deportations and revoke student visas as part of its wide-ranging efforts to fulfill his hardline immigration agenda.

“I don’t know the latest count, but we probably have more to do,” Rubio told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that oversees foreign affairs.

Asked to give an estimate, he said it was probably in the thousands at this point, an increase from March, when he said the State Department may have revoked more than 300 visas.
Rubio said the 300 revoked visas were a combination of student and visitor visas. He said he signed each action.
“A visa is not a right. It’s a privilege,” Rubio said on Tuesday.
Trump administration officials have said student visa and green card holders are subject to deportation over their support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza, calling their actions a threat to U.S. foreign policy and accusing them of being pro-Hamas.

Trump’s critics have called the effort an attack on free speech rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“I know this will be adjudicated in court, but the idea that one individual could on their opinion of someone’s future activity or expected activity … toss somebody’s visa, seems to me an extraordinary violation of due process,” Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley told Rubio at the hearing.
Earlier this month, a Tufts University student from Turkey was held for over six weeks in an immigration detention center in Louisiana after co-writing an opinion piece criticizing her school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza. She was released from custody after a federal judge granted her bail.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/rubio-may-have-revoked-thousands-visas-crackdown-continues-2025-05-20/

This was revealed during a meeting of the National Accounts Committee, chaired by Pakistan’s Secretary of Planning.

The Pakistani federal government has reportedly fallen short of its economic growth target for the fiscal year 2024-25, achieving a growth rate of just 2.68 per cent against a projected 3.6 per cent, as reported by ARY News on Tuesday, citing sources from Pakistan’s National Accounts Committee.

According to ARY News, the report was revealed during a meeting of the National Accounts Committee, chaired by Pakistan’s Secretary of Planning. The meeting revealed that the country’s economic output reached USD 411 billion, with per capita income increasing to USD 1,824. Sector-wise performance varied, with agriculture growing by 1.8 per cent during the first three quarters, while the industrial sector declined by 1.14 per cent. Notably, the services sector posted a strong growth of 39 per cent between July and March, as per ARY News.

In parallel, Pakistan is preparing to raise USD 4.9 billion in external commercial financing for the next fiscal year (FY2025- 26), according to sources familiar with the matter. As part of its financing plan, the government intends to secure USD 2.64 billion in short-term loans from commercial banks at expected interest rates of 7-8 per cent, without strict conditions or performance benchmarks, as per ARY News.

An additional USD 2.27 billion is also expected to come through long-term borrowing arrangements from commercial banks.

Efforts to tap four international banks

This includes a proposal to obtain USD 1.1 billion from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), along with USD 500 million each from Standard Chartered Bank and Dubai Islamic Bank. A commercial guarantee is also being sought for a USD 500 million loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), ARY News reported.

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/pakistan-misses-fy-2024-25-growth-target-eyes-usd-4-9-billion-in-external-loans-101747788255865.html

For Ukraine and its allies, who spent months trying to win Donald Trump over to their cause in the war started by Russia, it is back to square one.
In a two-hour conversation with Russian leader Vladimir Putin late on Monday, the U.S. president dropped his earlier insistence on an unconditional 30-day ceasefire that he hoped would kickstart what promise to be long and tortuous peace talks.

Ukraine backed that proposal while Russia did not.

Trump also signalled that the war he once promised to end in 24 hours was no longer his to fix – a message that leaves Ukraine vulnerable and its allies worried.
It is another blow to Kyiv, coming less than three months after Trump’s public falling out with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Since then, Europe’s leaders have scrambled to repair the relationship and regain the initiative.
In the weeks before the phone call, Trump had threatened to slap tougher sanctions on Russia if it did not show progress towards peace, a move Ukraine hoped would convince Putin to step back from his maximalist demands in any negotiations.

That “stick” approach is gone for now, replaced by the “carrot” of economic partnership with the United States if and when the war ends.
“In the phone call on Sunday with European leaders, Trump had agreed on the proposed approach – ask for (an) unconditional ceasefire and apply sanctions if nothing is moving,” said a European diplomat, speaking anonymously to be frank about Europe’s disappointment.
“But he obviously dropped this idea when he talked to Putin … It is impossible to trust him for more than one day. He does not seem to be interested in Ukraine at all.”
Trump said Russia and Ukraine would immediately start negotiations toward ending the war, adding later that he thought “some progress is being made.”
When Trump spoke with European leaders including Zelenskiy after the Putin call, a person familiar with the discussion described the reaction to Trump’s position as one of “shock.”

‘PLAYING FOR TIME’

Ukraine and its European allies have presented a united front since Monday’s call, announcing new sanctions on Russia and vowing to continue to engage with the United States.
They do not discount the possibility that Trump may change his mind again.
But mistrust of Putin runs high. His army is bigger than Ukraine’s, it has been eking out gains along a 1,000-km (620-mile) front line for more than a year and Russia insists that any deal should reflect realities on the battlefield.
“Putin is clearly playing for time. Unfortunately, we have to say Putin is not really interested in peace,” German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Tuesday.
Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at the London-based Chatham House think tank, agreed Putin was in no rush to negotiate a settlement.
“For Russians, the battlefield and diplomacy are two sides of the same coin,” she said.

“Putin gets the upper hand on the battlefield through procrastination in diplomacy and by denying Europe an opportunity to … organize itself.”
After speaking to Trump, Putin said Moscow was ready to work with Ukraine on a memorandum about a future peace accord and that efforts to end the war that Russia began with its full-scale invasion in February 2022 were on the right track.
U.S. support has been key to Ukraine’s ability to stave off defeat, and Trump’s lurch away from his predecessor Joe Biden’s support for Kyiv has left it scrambling to keep him engaged.
The United States has been the biggest single contributor to Ukraine’s war effort through tens of billions of dollars in military aid, and Kyiv relies on U.S. military intelligence to identify enemy targets and movements in real time.
What happens to that support once the aid agreed under Biden runs out over the summer is a crucial question that Ukraine is seeking to answer. The United States has not made its position clear.
Europe has promised to maintain direct aid and arms purchases, but the United States would have to agree to sell its weapons and there are some U.S. munitions that cannot be replaced, namely air defences and short-range guided missiles.
There is also the economic pressure the U.S. could bring against Russia, whose economy has weathered Western sanctions on the energy and banking sectors, but which is showing signs of strain from the enormous costs of the war.

DASHED HOPES

As they have done since Trump returned to the White House, Ukraine’s allies rallied around Zelenskiy after this latest diplomatic setback.
But the outcome of Trump’s phone call with Putin will be particularly hard to swallow because they saw signs they were starting to win him over to putting pressure on Moscow.
Several times in March and April, Trump expressed frustration at Putin’s apparent foot-dragging, questioned whether he was being played by the Russian leader and threatened tougher sanctions against Moscow.
The stated positions between the U.S. and Europe remained far apart on key points including territory, but Kyiv viewed Trump’s pronouncements as positive after the disastrous White House meeting in February when Zelenskiy and Trump publicly fell out.
A minerals deal signed by Ukraine and the United States last month was viewed as a further sign of progress, as were recent negotiations in Istanbul where officials from Ukraine and Russia met directly for the first time in nearly three years.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/trump-putin-call-war-ukraine-is-another-blow-kyiv-its-allies-2025-05-20/

Federal Reserve officials said on Tuesday that higher prices are coming on the back of rising U.S. import tariffs and counseled patience before making any interest rate decisions before it is clear whether the inflation shock will be fleeting or more persistent.
“One thing that we’ve heard is that a lot of the tariff impact to date has actually not shown up in the numbers yet. There’s been a lot of front-running, building inventories and all those sorts of things. And we are hearing from an increasing number of businesses that those strategies … are starting to run their course,” Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said on the sidelines of a conference in Florida.

“If these pre-tariff strategies have run their course, we’re about to see some changes in prices, and then we’re going to learn how consumers are going to respond to that,” said Bostic, who now expects the U.S. central bank will have to wait longer for clarity about the economy’s direction and make any changes to interest rates.
“We should wait and see where the economy is going before we do anything definitive,” said Bostic, who anticipates only a single quarter-percentage-point cut in the Fed’s policy rate this year and several months on the sidelines waiting for the effect of Trump administration policies to become clear.

“I think the best action we can take is to sit on our hands and really carefully go through the data, engage with our communities, hear what they’re thinking about, hear about the choices that they’re making, and see how that all comes together,” Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack said at an Atlanta Fed event. Her comments were echoed by San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly in a joint appearance.
So far the main impact appears to be in sentiment surveys showing households and businesses are less confident about the economic horizon and expect higher inflation.
In an interview on Bloomberg Television on Tuesday, Stephen Miran, who chairs the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, pushed back on the idea that the tariffs imposed by the administration so far and potentially added in coming weeks would result in meaningful inflation.

“We have been introducing tariffs since day one of this administration,” Miran said, yet there has “been no real meaningful effect on inflation,” with recent consumer price index reports coming in weaker than expected.
But Fed officials and analysts say they expect the impact has just not filtered through yet to the economy.
Walmart , the world’s largest retailer and a major importer of goods from China, said last week that price increases were on the way, comments that drew a rebuff from President Donald Trump.
“We can control what we can control,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said during the company’s quarterly earnings call. Even trimming the tariffs on Chinese goods to 30%, as the administration recently did in backing off a more exorbitant 145% levy, “will result in higher prices,” he said.

INFLATION EXPECTATIONS

The waiting game for Fed officials may prove a long one. The central bank has kept its policy rate in the current 4.25%-4.50% range since December, but says it will remain difficult to anticipate where the economy is heading until the tariff issue and other policies are settled for good – and enough time lapses after that to gauge the impact.
In comments to the Economic Club of Minnesota on Tuesday, St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem said the central bank needed to guard first and foremost against a rise in inflation expectations, and key to that effort will be assessing if coming price hikes seem like one-time increases or risk turning into something more persistent.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/us-economy-may-be-brink-price-hike-wave-feds-bostic-says-2025-05-20/

Jennifer Lopez is being sued for posting photos of herself at a Hollywood party, with the photographer and a paparazzi agency saying she failed to get permission to use them.

The singer and actress shared pictures on social media of herself arriving at the Amazon MGM Studios and Vanity Fair Party in Los Angeles the night before this year’s Golden Globes in January.

Photographer Edwin Blanco and Backgrid, the agency he was working for, have each filed lawsuits saying they own the copyright to two photos.

The pictures were used “to promote Ms Lopez’s public appearances, boost user engagement, increase shareability, and lend credibility to her branded content”, they argue.

Backgrid and Mr Blanco are seeking up to $150,000 (£112,000) damages each per photo.

The pictures showed the star in a white dress and a white faux fur coat outside the party at Chateau Marmont.

She posted them on Instagram and X with the caption “GG Weekend Glamour”, and they were then shared by numerous fan and fashion pages.

“Ms Lopez’s unauthorised use of the Images is commercial in nature, intended for the purpose of self-promotion,” the lawsuits said.

“For example, Ms Lopez used the Images to spotlight the designer of her clothing and jewellery, leveraging the publicity from the event to promote her fashion affiliations and brand partnerships.”

Any person who is in a photo doesn’t own the copyright to the picture – that usually belongs to the photographer or the company they work for, and they can decide who can use it and how much they must pay.

The legal documents say Backgrid and Mr Blanco contacted Lopez’s representatives after she posted them and agreed a deal and payment, but that she has not yet signed the agreement.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2qqew643go

President Donald Trump spoke with President Vladimir Putin on Monday (May 19) and said Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a ceasefire.

The Kremlin said that reaching an agreement would take time and Trump indicated he was not ready to join Europe with fresh sanctions to pressure Moscow.

In a social media post, Trump said he relayed the plan to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as well as the leaders of the European Union, France, Italy, Germany and Finland in a group call following his session with the Russian leader.

“Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War,” Trump said, adding later at the White House that he thought “some progress is being made”.

European leaders decided to increase pressure on Russia through sanctions after Trump briefed them on his call with Putin, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in an X post late on Monday.

Trump did not appear ready to follow that move. Asked why he had not imposed fresh sanctions to push Moscow into a peace deal as he has threatened, Trump told reporters:

“Well because I think there’s a chance of getting something done, and if you do that, you can also make it much worse. But there could be a time where that’s going to happen.”

Trump said there were “some big egos involved”. Without progress, “I’m just going to back away,” he said, repeating a warning that he could abandon the process. “This is not my war.”

After speaking to Trump, Putin said efforts to end the war were “generally on the right track” and that Moscow was ready to work with Ukraine on a potential peace deal.

“We have agreed with the president of the United States that Russia will propose and is ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace accord,” he told reporters near the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

European leaders and Ukraine have demanded Russia agree to a ceasefire immediately, and Trump has focused on getting Putin to commit to a 30-day truce. Putin has resisted this, insisting that conditions be met first.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Trump and Putin did not discuss a timeline for a ceasefire but did discuss trading nine Russians for nine Americans in a prisoner swap. He said the US leader called prospects for ties between Moscow and Washington “impressive”.

Russian state news agencies cited Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying that Moscow and Kyiv faced “complex contacts” to develop a unified text of a peace and ceasefire memorandum.

“There are no deadlines and there cannot be any. It is clear that everyone wants to do this as quickly as possible, but, of course, the devil is in the details,” the RIA agency quoted him as saying.

Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt said on X the call with Trump was “undoubtedly a win for Putin”.

The Russian leader “deflected the call for an … immediate ceasefire and instead can continue military operations at the same time as he puts pressure on at the negotiating table”.

HIGH-LEVEL MEETING

After speaking with Trump, Zelenskyy said Kyiv and its partners might seek a high-level meeting among Ukraine, Russia, the United States, European Union countries and Britain as part of a push to end the war.

He said he hoped this could happen soon and be hosted by Turkey, the Vatican or Switzerland. It was not immediately clear if this would be part of the negotiations Trump said would start immediately.

Trump said the Pope Leo had expressed interest in hosting the negotiations at the Vatican. The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

One person familiar with Trump’s call with the Ukrainian and European leaders said participants were “shocked” that Trump did not want to push Putin with sanctions.

In a post on X, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said only that the conversation with Trump was “good” and it was “important that the US stays engaged”.

Ukraine and its supporters have accused Russia of failing to negotiate in good faith, doing the minimum needed to keep Trump from applying new pressure on its economy.

If Trump were to impose new sanctions, it would be a milestone moment given that he has appeared sympathetic towards Russia and torn up the pro-Ukraine policies of his predecessor, Joe Biden.

Prodded by Trump, delegates from the warring countries met last week in Istanbul for the first time since 2022, in the early months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but those talks failed to produce a truce.

Prospects for progress dimmed after Putin spurned Zelenskiy’s proposal they meet face to face in Istanbul, and Trump said there would be no movement unless he and Putin met.

Putin, whose forces control a fifth of Ukraine and are advancing, has stood firm on his conditions for ending the war.

He said the memorandum Russia and Ukraine would work on about a future peace accord would define “a number of positions, such as, for example, the principles of settlement, the timing of a possible peace agreement”.

“The main thing for us is to eliminate the root causes of this crisis,” Putin said. “We just need to determine the most effective ways to move towards peace.”

Olena Lennon from the University of New Haven said the chances of a successful peace talk in any global conflict have historically been higher when the US is taking part in the process.

She added that there is still room for Washington to apply more economic leverage on Moscow.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/trump-putin-call-russia-ukraine-war-ceasefire-zelenskyy-5140231

DISTURBING new pictures show the bottles of baby oil and piles of drugs that cops found in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ hotel room when he was arrested.

Federal investigators found baby oil, lubricant, ecstasy, pink cocaine, and candy when they raided Combs’ room in New York City in September.

The pictures of the sordid hotel room, which the jury on Combs’ federal sex trafficking trial were shown on Friday, were released to the public on Monday as week two of his trial gets underway.

Jurors also saw graphic images of Cassie Ventura’s gruesome injuries she suffered at the hands of Combs, her ex-boyfriend of 10 years, who is standing trial for five criminal counts.

Combs’ attorneys have insisted that while Combs might be guilty of domestic violence, he’s not guilty of any of the charges against him, including racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, and transportation to engage in prostitution.

Multiple previously unreleased photos of Cassie’s wounds allegedly inflicted by Combs were also released for the first time on Monday.

Two pictures show an eyebrow gash Cassie suffered after Combs allegedly threw her into a bed frame in 2013, while multiple other photos show Cassie’s bruises from an instance in 2011.

Three pictures Cassie took of herself in an Uber ride leaving the InterContinental Hotel in March 2016 were also released, showing her with a busted lip and wearing sunglasses to hide her black eye.

Cassie’s ex-best friend Kerry Morgan testified on Monday that after Cassie took those selfies following the caught-on-video attack, the singer returned home, where her former best friend was staying.

Combs showed up at the apartment 30 minutes later with a hammer and tried to bust down the door, Morgan testified.

“He was hitting the door with a hammer to try to open it,” Morgan recalled, saying she was “terrified” and tried to call Combs’ security for help as she was “freaking out.”

However, Cassie appeared “numb” in the panic, Morgan told the court.

“I don’t think she cared if he came in and killed her.”

Two years after the 2016 incident, Cassie and Morgan’s friendship ended after Combs allegedly attacked Morgan with a wooden hanger.

Morgan, 39, testified she was at Cassie’s home when Combs snuck up on her while Cassie was in the bathroom.

“He came up behind me and choked me and left finger marks on my neck and hit me in the head with a wooden hanger,” Morgan said on the stand, adding that Combs asked her about Cassie’s infidelities.

“When I got up, he boomeranged a hanger at my head,” she recalled, saying the attack left her with a concussion that made her “vomit a few times” on the way to urgent care.

Morgan said she got a lawyer after the incident and planned to sue, but didn’t end up bringing a lawsuit against Combs following a meeting with Cassie a month later.

At a pizza restaurant, Cassie told Morgan she was “over-exaggerating” about the attack and told her Combs would give her $30,000 after she signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/14267864/diddy-combs-trial-court-sex-trafficking/

JOE Biden likely had cancer at the start of his presidency in 2021, a leading oncologist has claimed.

Dr Zeke Emanuel made the bombshell claim to Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough on Monday.

“He had it while he was President,” he said. “He probably had it at the start of his presidency, in 2021.”

He questioned how such an advanced form of prostate cancer had flown under the radar until now.

Dr Emanuel was previously appointed to a 16-person COVID advisory board by President Biden.

The 82-year-old former president was seen by his doctors last week where a prostate nodule was found after urinary symptoms.

The cancer has reportedly spread to Biden’s bones.

“He’s had this for many years, maybe even a decade, growing there and spreading,” Dr Emanuel alleged.

“That’s right. It’s a little surprising,” he added, to the visible scepticism of his host.

He went on: “I looked back at the records and there’s no evidence that when he got his health status and the medical records were released, that he had a prostate specific antigen.

“Now, it is true that a lot of people recommend not doing a prostate-specific antigen after 70.

“But President Biden’s been in public life a very long time. He was vice president and had a lot of exams under 70. So it’s a little surprising that they didn’t do it.”

Israel said on Monday (May 19) it would “take control” of the whole of Gaza as it intensified attacks across the territory, where aid entered for the first time in more than two months after the easing of a total blockade.

With supply shipments blocked by Israel since Mar 2, the World Health Organization warned Gaza’s “two million people are starving”.

Israel, facing mounting criticism over the humanitarian crisis, has announced it would let limited aid into Gaza and said the first five trucks entered Monday, carrying supplies “including food for babies”.

UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said in a statement that nine trucks had been “cleared to enter … but it is a drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed”.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, who was unable to confirm the exact number of trucks inside Gaza, said that “none of the aid has been picked up” at a designated zone as it was “already dark” and due to “security concerns, we cannot operate in those conditions”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited “practical and diplomatic reasons” for the resumption of aid, saying that “images of mass starvation” could harm the legitimacy of Israel’s war effort.

The leaders of Britain, France and Canada issued a harsh condemnation of Israel’s conduct of the war, slamming its “egregious actions” in Gaza, particularly the expanded offensive and the “wholly inadequate” resumption of aid.

They warned of “concrete actions” if Israel did not ease its stepped-up offensive. Netanyahu called their joint statement a “huge prize” for Hamas.

A group of 22 countries, including France, Britain, Canada, Japan and Australia said in a joint statement that Gaza’s population “faces starvation” and “must receive the aid they desperately need”.

“METHODICAL DESTRUCTION”

In southern Gaza, the Israeli military issued an evacuation call to Palestinians around Khan Yunis city ahead of what it described as an unprecedented attack.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said 91 people were killed in Israeli attacks across the territory on Monday.

Netanyahu, in a video posted on Telegram, said that “the fighting is intense and we are making progress”.

“We will take control of all the territory of the strip,” he added.

Israel’s military said on Monday it had struck “160 terror targets” in Gaza over the past day.

The UN’s OHCHR rights office said Israel’s actions were in defiance of international law and tantamount to ethnic cleansing.

Netanyahu said that Israel “will not give up. But in order to succeed, we must act in a way that cannot be stopped”, justifying to his hardline supporters the decision to resume aid.

FAMINE RISK

Israel has said its blockade aimed to force concessions from Hamas – whose October 2023 attack triggered the war – but UN agencies say there are critical shortages of food, clean water, fuel and medicines.

“Tonnes of food are blocked at the border, just minutes away,” World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “The risk of famine in Gaza is increasing with the deliberate withholding of humanitarian aid.”

Last week, US President Donald Trump, a key ally of Netanyahu, acknowledged that “a lot of people are starving”.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir argued against any resumption of aid, saying on X that “our hostages receive no humanitarian aid”.

But Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, also of the far right, defended the decision, saying it would “allow civilians to eat and our friends in the world to keep giving us diplomatic protection”.

“LIKE APOCALYPSE”

Khan Yunis resident Mohammed Sarhan told AFP that Gaza’s main southern city “felt like the apocalypse”.

“There was gunfire coming from every apartment, fire belts, F-16 warplanes and helicopters firing,” he said.

Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee called on Gazans in the city and nearby areas to “immediately” leave the “dangerous combat zone”.

AFPTV footage from Khan Yunis’s Nasser Hospital showed a young boy in a tracksuit being treated as two other boys, both barefoot and bleeding, sat on the floor.

Further north in Deir el-Balah, Ayman Badwan mourned the loss of his brother in an attack.

“We are exhausted and drained – we can’t take it anymore,” he told AFP.

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

Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/israel-take-control-all-gaza-pm-netanyahu-5140396

Nvidia boss Jensen Huang announced plans for Taiwan’s “first AI supercomputer”, as he showcased on Monday (May 19) the company’s latest advances in artificial intelligence.

Global semiconductor chip giants have gathered in Taiwan for the island’s top tech expo, Computex, as the sector grapples with the impact of US tariffs and disrupted supply chains.

Huang said Nvidia would work with Taiwanese tech giants Foxconn and TSMC as well as the government to build Taiwan’s “first AI supercomputer here for the AI infrastructure and AI ecosystem”.

“Taiwan doesn’t just build supercomputers for the world … we’re also building AI for Taiwan,” Huang said in a keynote address, describing the island as the “centre” of the industry.

“Having a world-class AI infrastructure in Taiwan is really important.”

Taiwan-born Huang also spotlighted a further upgrade to Nvidia’s Blackwell processing platform, as well as new hardware and software for robotics and “AI agents” that can perform company tasks.

And he announced a new version of Nvidia’s NVLink technology, enabling customers to build semi-custom AI infrastructure.

“In 10 years time, you will look back and you will realise that AI has now integrated into everything and in fact we need AI everywhere,” Huang said, wearing his trademark black leather jacket.

Computex will draw computer and chip companies from around the world to Taiwan, whose semiconductor industry is critical to the production of everything from iPhones to the servers that run ChatGPT.

Taiwan produces the bulk of the world’s most advanced chips, including those needed for the most powerful AI applications and research.

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon announced the company planned to expand into data centres, but he did not elaborate.

Top executives from MediaTek and Foxconn will also speak at Computex, where advances in moving AI from data centres into laptops, robots and cars are in the spotlight.

Tech expert Paul Yu told AFP the industry was at a “critical juncture” for AI hardware development.

“Over the past two and a half years, significant investment has driven rapid advances in AI technology,” said Yu, of Witology Markettrend Research Institute.

He added that “2025 to 2026 will be the crucial period for transitioning AI model training into profitable applications”.

“TAIWAN TO CONTINUE TO THRIVE”

While US tariffs were the biggest issue facing the sector, most companies at Computex “will shy away from addressing tariffs directly as the situation is too uncertain”, said Eric Smith of specialist platform TechInsights.

Last month, Washington announced a national security probe into imports of semiconductor technology, which could put the industry in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s trade bazooka and inflict potentially devastating levies.

Since taking office in January, Trump has threatened hefty tariffs against many of America’s biggest trade partners with the aim of forcing companies to move production to US soil.

Export-dependent Taiwan has pledged to increase investment in the United States as it seeks to avoid a 32 per cent US tariff on its shipments.

But there are concerns the island could lose its dominance of the chip sector – the so-called “silicon shield” protecting it from an invasion or blockade by China and an incentive for the United States to defend it.

TSMC, the Taiwanese contract chipmaking giant, has unveiled plans to inject an additional US$100 billion into the United States, on top of the US$65 billion already pledged.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/nvidia-jensen-huang-taiwan-first-ai-supercomputer-5138516

Torrential rains forced a halt on Monday (May 19) to Indonesia’s search for 14 missing in its easternmost region of Papua after a landslide killed six workers at a gold mine and injured four, officials said.

The rains had triggered Friday’s landslide, which hit a small mine run by residents of the Arfak mountains of West Papua province, said Abdul Muhari, the spokesperson of Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency.

Authorities will resume on Tuesday their search for those missing after the disaster, which engulfed temporary shelters used by miners.

The search effort was hampered by “damaged roads and mountainous tracks as well as bad weather”, Yefri Sabaruddin, the head of a team of 40 rescuers, including police and military officials, who retrieved five bodies, told Reuters.

Travelling to the site required 12 hours from the nearest town, he said.

Monday’s tally was updated from an earlier figure of one dead and 19 missing.

Small-scale and illegal mining has often led to accidents in Indonesia, where mineral resources are located in remote areas, in conditions difficult for authorities to regulate.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/indonesia-papua-landslide-gold-mine-kills-6-missing-14-5138971

Rihanna was a vision in blue on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival 2025.

The “Umbrella” singer wore a bright blue halter dress — giving major Smurfette vibes after voicing the iconic animated character in the upcoming “Smurfs” movie.

The pop star gave a glimpse at her baby bump with the revealing custom Alaïa gown in turquoise silk georgette, designed by Pieter Mulier.

She styled her hair in an updo and carried a sky blue clutch, accessorizing with diamond cuff earrings, several jeweled rings and chic blue stilettos.

Her longtime partner, A$AP Rocky, joined her at the event in a classic black Saint Laurent suit.

The rapper helped Rihanna down the stairs and shielded her from the rain with an umbrella.

The expectant couple also snuggled up for some PDA while posing for photographers. At one point, the Fenty Beauty founder stopped to sign autographs for fans.

The “Diamonds” songstress, 37, confirmed her third pregnancy during her appearance on the Met Gala 2025 red carpet May 5.

At that event, Rihanna showed off her growing belly in a cropped Marc Jacobs suit jacket paired with a wool bustier top and a pinstripe skirt.

The mom of two finished the look with black-and-white shoes, a wide brim hat and a stylish detached collar with a polka-dot scarf.

The Savage X Fenty founder — who already shares sons RZA, 3, and Riot, 1, with Rocky — has become known for her fierce fashions during her pregnancies.

She once confessed she had no intention of wearing typical “maternity” clothes.

“When I found out I was pregnant, I thought to myself, ‘There’s no way I’m going to go shopping in no maternity aisle,” she told Vogue in a 2022 interview.

“I’m sorry — it’s too much fun to get dressed up,” she continued. “I’m not going to let that part disappear because my body is changing.”

Of her bold pregnancy fashion choices, Rihanna also told Bustle in 2022 that she would describe her maternity style as “rebellious.”

“It’s been me personally saying, I’m not going to buy maternity clothes,” she told the outlet. “I’m not gonna buy maternity pants, jeans, dresses, or [do] whatever society told me to do before.”

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/05/19/style/rihanna-is-smurfette-at-the-cannes-film-festival-2025/

Denzel Washington got into a heated confrontation with a handsy photographer at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

The actor, 70, was walking the red carpet Monday for the premiere of his movie “Highest 2 Lowest” when he began exchanging words with one of the many photogs lined up to capture the stars of the event.

Washington walked up to the shutterbug, put his pointer finger in the man’s face and appeared to chastise him.

The photographer smiled, laughed and seemingly tried to keep the moment lighthearted by grabbing the Oscar winner’s arm, but that only escalated the situation.

“Stop it, stop it, stop it,” Washington repeated as he flung the man’s hand off his arm and walked away.

Reps for the star did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.

Prior to the exchange, Washington was chatting with co-star A$AP Rocky. As director Spike Lee walked over to speak to the rapper, Washington turned his attention to the photog in question.

Despite the tense situation, the actor was all smiles once inside the theater, where he, Lee and Rocky earned a standing ovation for their work in the film.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/05/19/celebrity-news/denzel-washington-gets-into-heated-confrontation-with-handsy-photographer-at-cannes-film-festival/

Former Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton bristled at the prospect of a female Republican winning the White House, fretting that it would condemn women to be subordinates of the patriarchy.

Clinton, 77, argued that, with few exceptions, female Republicans tend to undermine feminist ideals while reflecting on the advice she’d give to women seeking the presidency.

“Well, first of all, don’t be a handmaiden to the patriarchy, which kind of eliminates every woman on the other side of the aisle, except for very few,” Clinton sniped with a sigh during a forum at The 92nd Street Y in New York City earlier this month.

Clinton’s remarks were made on May 1, but footage of the exchange didn’t surface until last week and was unearthed by the Daily Caller.

Examples of Republican women who aren’t “handmaidens to the patriarchy” include Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), according to Clinton.

“There’s a few,” she admitted.

Moderator Margaret Hoover, a Republican pundit and host of PBS’ “Firing Line,” refrained from pushing back against Clinton on that point. Hoover’s husband, John Avlon, unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY) last year.

The former secretary of state and first lady also lamented how women haven’t yet been able to punch through the glass ceiling and win the presidency, referencing both her and former Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeats.

“Look, first we have to get there, and it is, you know, obviously so much harder than it should be,” Clinton continued. “So, you know, if a woman runs who I think would be a good president — as I thought Kamala Harris would be, and as I knew I would be — I will support that woman.”

Unlike Clinton, Harris largely refrained from harping too much on gender politics during her 107-day sprint for the presidency in the 2024 election cycle.

Harris also significantly outperformed President Trump with female voters, according to exit poll data.

Beyond Harris and Clinton, former presidential hopeful Nikki Haley had made inroads on the Republican presidential primary in 2024 but fell far short of beating Trump for the party nod.

Clinton has previously dissed GOP women.

In 2019, she published a book titled “The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience,” which listed over 100 women. Clinton later defended her decision not to include former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the tome.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/05/19/us-news/hillary-clinton-frets-that-a-female-republican-president-would-be-handmaiden-to-the-patriarchy/

Just as India showed flickers of progress toward its long-held dream of becoming the world’s factory, Washington and Beijing announced a trade “reset” that could derail Delhi’s ambitions to replace China as the global manufacturing hub.

Last week, Trump’s tariffs on China dropped overnight – from 145% to 30%, vs 27% for India – as the two sides thrashed out an agreement in Switzerland.

As a result, there’s a chance manufacturing investment that was moving from China to India could either “stall” or “head back”, feels Ajay Srivastava of the Delhi-based think tank, Global Trade Research Institute (GTRI).

“India’s low-cost assembly lines may survive, but value-added growth is in danger.”

The change in sentiment stands in sharp relief to the exuberance in Delhi last month when Apple indicated that it was shifting most of its production of iPhones headed to the US from China to India.

That may well still happen, even though US President Donald Trump revealed that he had told Apple CEO Tim Cook not to build in India because it was “one of the highest tariff nations in the world”.

“India is well positioned to be an alternative to China as a supplier of goods to the US in the immediate term,” Shilan Shah, an economist with Capital Economics, wrote in an investor note before the deal was announced. He pointed out that 40% of India’s exports to the US were “similar to those exported by China”.

There were early signs that Indian exporters were already stepping in to fill the gap left by Chinese producers. New export orders surged to a 14-year high, according to a recent survey of Indian manufacturers.

Nomura, a Japanese broking house, also pointed to growing “anecdotal evidence” of India emerging as a winner from “trade diversion and supply-chain shift in low and mid-tech manufacturing” particularly in sectors like electronics, textiles and toys.

Some analysts do believe that despite the so-called trade “reset” between Beijing and Washington, a larger strategic decoupling between China and the US will continue to benefit India in the long run.

For one, there’s greater willingness by Narendra Modi’s government to open its doors to foreign companies after years of protectionist policies, which could provide tailwind.

India and the US are also negotiating a trade deal that could put Asia’s third-largest economy in a sweet spot to benefit from the so-called “China exodus” – as global firms shift operations to diversify supply chains.

India has just signed a trade pact with the UK, sharply cutting duties in protected sectors like whiskey and automobiles. It offers a glimpse of the concessions Delhi might offer Trump in the ongoing India-US trade talks.

But all of this optimism needs to be tempered for more reasons than one.

Apart from the fact that China is now back in the running, companies are also “not entirely writing off other Asian competitors, with countries like Vietnam still on their radars”, economists Sonal Verma and Aurodeep Nandi from Nomura said in a note earlier this month.

“Hence, for India to capitalise on this opportunity, it needs to complement any tariff arbitrage with serious ease-of-doing-business reforms.”

A tough business climate has long frustrated foreign investors and stalled India’s manufacturing growth, with its share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stuck at around 15% for two decades.

The Modi government’s efforts, such as the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, have delivered only limited success in boosting this figure.

The government’s think tank, Niti Aayog, has acknowledged India’s “limited success” in attracting investment shifting from China. It noted that factors like cheaper labour, simpler tax laws, lower tariffs, and proactive Free Trade Agreements helped countries like Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and Malaysia expand exports – while India lagged behind.

Another major concern, says Nomura, is India’s ongoing reliance on China for raw materials and components used in electronics like iPhones, limiting Delhi’s ability to fully capitalise on supply chain shifts.

“India’s earnings from making iPhones will only rise if more of the phone is made locally,” Mr Srivastava told the BBC.

According to him, right now Apple earns over $450 per iPhone sold in the US while India keeps less than $25 – even though the full $1,000 is counted as an Indian export.

“Just assembling more iPhones in India won’t help much unless Apple and its suppliers also start making components and doing high-value work here. Without that, India’s share stays small, and the export numbers go up only on paper -possibly triggering more scrutiny from the US without real economic gain for India,” Mr Srivastava said.

The jobs created by such assembly lines aren’t very high quality either, says GTRI.

Quite unlike companies like Nokia which set up a factory in the southern city of Chennai in 2007 where suppliers moved in together, “today’s smartphone makers mostly import parts and push for lower tariffs instead of building supply chains in India”, explained Mr Srivastava. He noted that, in certain instances, the investment made could be lower than the subsidies received under India’s PLI scheme.

Finally there are concerns that Chinese exporters could try to use India to reroute products to the US.

India doesn’t seem averse to this idea despite the pitfalls. The country’s top economic adviser said last year that the country should attract more Chinese businesses to set-up export oriented factories and boost its manufacturing industry – a tacit admission that its own industrial policy hadn’t delivered.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly34p1jwvgo

The US Supreme Court has said it will allow the Trump administration to terminate deportation protections for some 350,000 Venezuelans in the US.

The ruling lifts a hold that was placed by a California judge that kept Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in place for Venezuelans whose status’ would have expired last month.

Temporary Protected Status allows people to live and work in the US legally if their home countries are deemed unsafe due to things like countries experiencing wars, natural disasters or other “extraordinary and temporary” conditions.

The ruling marks a win for US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly tried to use the Supreme Court to enact immigration policy decisions.

The Trump administration wanted to end protections and work permits for migrants with TPS in April 2025, more than a year before they were originally supposed to end in October 2026.

Lawyers representing the US government argued the California federal court, the US District Court for the Northern District of California, had undermined “the Executive Branch’s inherent powers as to immigration and foreign affairs,” when it stopped the administration from ending protections and work permits in April.

Ahilan Arulanantham, who represents TPS holders in the case, told the BBC he believes this to be “the largest single action stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status in modern US history”.

“That the Supreme Court authorized this action in a two-paragraph order with no reasoning is truly shocking,” Mr Arulanantham said. “The humanitarian and economic impact of the Court’s decision will be felt immediately, and will reverberate for generations.”

Because it was an emergency appeal, justices on the Supreme Court did not provide a reasoning for the ruling.

The court’s order only noted one judge’s dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

In August, the Trump administration is also expected to revoke TPS protections for tens of thousands of Haitians.

The ruling on Monday by the Supreme Court marks the latest in a series of decisions on immigration policies from the high court that the Trump administration has left them to rule on.

Last week, the administration asked the Supreme Court to end humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuela immigrants.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg78471n85o

Russia launched on Sunday its largest drone attack on Ukraine since the start of the war, destroying homes and killing at least one woman a day before U.S. President Donald Trump is due to discuss a proposed ceasefire with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine’s intelligence service said it also believed Moscow intended to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile later on Sunday as an attempt to intimidate the West. There was no immediate response from Moscow to the accusation.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, straining to restore ties with Washington after a disastrous February White House visit, met Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Rome on Sunday on the sidelines of Pope Leo’s inauguration.
Zelenskiy said the meeting was “good” and released pictures of Ukrainian and U.S. officials sitting outside at a round table and smiling. Ukrainian media said the meeting lasted 40 minutes.
“I reaffirmed that Ukraine is ready to be engaged in real diplomacy and underscored the importance of a full and unconditional ceasefire as soon as possible,” said Zelenskiy, who also met the new pope.

Ukraine and Russia held their first face-to-face talks in more than three years on Friday, under pressure from Trump to agree to a ceasefire in a war he has pledged to bring to a quick end. The foes agreed to swap 1,000 prisoners each but failed to agree a truce, after Moscow presented conditions that a member of Ukraine’s delegation called “non-starters”.
The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Poland planned to speak to Trump before the U.S. and Russian presidents speak on Monday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said. The four European leaders jointly visited Kyiv last week and have been calling for Trump to back new sanctions on Russia.
Asked if it was time to impose tougher sanctions on Russia, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that was up to Trump.
“I think we will see what happens when both sides get to the table,” he told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” programme.

“President Trump has made it very clear, that if President Putin does not negotiate in good faith, that the United States will not hesitate to up the Russia sanctions along with our European partners.”
After a night of air alerts, Ukraine’s air force said that as of 8 a.m. on Sunday Russia had launched 273 drones at Ukrainian cities, more than the previous record Moscow had set in February on the war’s third anniversary.

‘I COULD HEAR THE DRONE’

Pope Leo XIV formally began his reign on Sunday by reaching out to conservatives who felt orphaned under his predecessor, calling for unity, vowing to preserve the Catholic Church’s heritage and not rule like “an autocrat”.
After a first ride in the popemobile through an estimated crowd of up to 200,000 in St. Peter’s Square and surrounding streets, Leo was officially installed as the 267th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church at an outdoor Mass.

Well-wishers waved U.S. and Peruvian flags, with people from both countries claiming him as the first pope from their nations. Born in Chicago, the 69-year-old pontiff spent many years as a missionary in Peru and also has Peruvian citizenship.
Robert Prevost, a relative unknown on the world stage who only became a cardinal two years ago, was elected pope on May 8 after a short conclave of cardinals that lasted barely 24 hours.
He succeeded Francis, an Argentine, who died on April 21 after leading the Church for 12 often turbulent years during which he battled with traditionalists and championed the poor and marginalised.

In his sermon, read in fluent Italian, Leo said that as leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics, he would continue Francis’ legacy on social issues such as combating poverty and protecting the environment.
He vowed to face up to “the questions, concerns and challenges of today’s world” and, in a nod to conservatives, he promised to preserve “the rich heritage of the Christian faith”, repeatedly calling for unity.
Crowds chanted “Viva il Papa” (Long Live the Pope) and “Papa Leone”, his name in Italian, as he waved from the open-topped popemobile ahead of his inaugural Mass, which was attended by dozens of world leaders.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert who clashed with Francis over the White House’s hardline immigration policies, led a U.S. delegation alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also Catholic.

Vance briefly shook hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the start of the ceremony. The two men last met in February in the White House, when they clashed fiercely in front of the world’s media.
Zelenskiy and Leo were to have a private meeting later on Sunday, while Vance was expected to see the pope on Monday.
In a brief appeal at the end of the Mass, Leo addressed several global conflicts. He said Ukraine was being “martyred”, a phrase often used by Francis, and called for a “just and lasting peace” there.
He also mentioned the humanitarian situation in Gaza, saying people in the Palestinian enclave were being “reduced to starvation”.
Among those in the crowds on Sunday were many pilgrims from the U.S. and Peru.

Dominic Venditti, from Seattle, said he was “extremely excited” by the new pope. “I like how emotional and kind he is,” he said. “I love his background.”

APPEAL FOR UNITY

Since becoming pope, Leo has already signalled some key priorities for his papacy, including a warning about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence and the importance of bringing peace to the world and to the Church itself.
Francis’ papacy left a divided Church, with conservatives accusing him of sowing confusion, particularly with his extemporaneous remarks on issues of sexual morality such as same-sex unions.
Saying he was taking up his mission “with fear and trembling”, Leo used the words “unity” or “united” seven times on Sunday and the word “harmony” four times.
“It is never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda or by means of power. Instead, it is always and only a question of loving, as Jesus did,” he said, in apparent reference to a war of words between Catholics who define themselves as conservative or progressive.
Conservatives also accused Francis of ruling in a heavy-handed way and lamented that he belittled their concerns and did not consult widely before making decisions.
Referring to St. Peter, the 1st century Christian apostle from whom popes derive their authority, Leo said: “Peter must shepherd the flock without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, lording it over those entrusted to him. On the contrary, he is called to serve the faith of his brothers and sisters, and to walk alongside them.”
Many world leaders attended the ceremony, including the presidents of Israel, Peru and Nigeria, the prime ministers of Italy, Canada and Australia, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
European royals also took their place in the VIP seats near the main altar, including Spanish King Felipe and Queen Letizia.
Leo shook many of their hands at the end of the ceremony, and hugged his brother Louis, who had travelled from Florida.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/pope-leo-take-charge-catholic-church-grandiose-inaugural-mass-2025-05-18/

Meghan Markle “berated” one of her wedding caterers so badly that Queen Elizabeth II had to intervene, royals biographer Katie Nicholl claimed.

“On one occasion in the run-up to the wedding, Meghan went to Windsor Castle for a menu-tasting and ended up having a tense exchange with a member of staff,” Nicholl claimed in her book “The New Royals,” per the Daily Mail.

“Meghan was at the castle to taste some of the dishes, and told one of the caterers she could taste egg,” a source claimed.

“She got quite upset, saying that the dish was meant to be vegan and macrobiotic.”

According to Nicholl’s source, the incident got back to the queen who allegedly decided to address the issue.

“Suddenly the Queen walked in and said: ‘Meghan, in this family we don’t speak to people like that,’” the insider claimed.

A rep for the Duchess of Sussex did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.

This wouldn’t be the first time Markle, 43, has been accused of being “difficult” with palace staff.

In February, British journalist Tom Quinn claimed she earned the nickname “Duchess of Difficult” before she and husband Prince Harry stepped down from their royal duties and moved to the US in 2020.

“She could be difficult because she was finding life difficult — trying to feel her way and work out the intricacies of a positively medieval, labyrinthine system,” an anonymous palace staff member reportedly told him.

The insider claimed the “Suits” alum was also called “Mystic Meg” because of her “new agey” views, which were deemed “so woke.”

The source further claimed, “Through absolutely no fault of her own, Meghan wasn’t always great with her staff — she just wasn’t used to it as Harry was.”

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/05/18/royal-family/meghan-markle-berated-wedding-caterer-royal-author-claims/

Wall Street share futures slipped with the dollar on Monday, while Treasury yields rose as concerns about erratic U.S. economic policies were underlined by Moody’s downgrade of the country’s credit rating.
Asian shares also fell as a mixed bag of Chinese economic data showed the domestic economy was struggling even as U.S. tariffs began to bite into exports, while the White House kept up its rhetorical pressure on trade partners.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent used television interviews on Sunday to dismiss the Moody’s downgrade, while warning trade partners they would be hit with maximum tariffs if they did not offer deals in “good faith”.
Unease over the United States’ $36 trillion of debt has also mounted as Republicans got closer to passing a sprawling package of tax cuts, which some estimate could add $3 trillion to $5 trillion in new debt over the next decade.
Bessent is off to a G7 meeting this week for more talks, while U.S. Vice President JD Vance and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met on Sunday to discuss trade.

“It remains to be seen whether the 10% reciprocal rate – excluding Canada and Mexico – will broadly remain, or will go up or down for some countries,” said JPMorgan economist Michael Feroli, who estimates the current effective tariff of around 13% was equal to a tax rise worth 1.2% of GDP.
“Beyond disruptions from higher tariffs themselves, policy uncertainty should additionally weigh on growth.”

The tariff war has sapped consumer sentiment and analysts will be scouring earnings from Home Depot (HD.N), and Target (TGT.N), this week for an update on spending trends.
In markets, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS), shed 0.8%, with Japan’s Nikkei (.N225), down 0.7%.
Chinese blue chips (.CSI300),  eased 0.4% as retail sales missed forecasts for April, while industrial output slowed but not by as much as feared.

EUROSTOXX 50 futures were flat, while FTSE futures fell 0.3% and DAX futures lost 0.2%.

DOLLAR DOUBTS

S&P 500 futures slid 1% and Nasdaq futures 1.3%, though that followed major rallies last week in the wake of President Donald’s Trump decision to lower levies on China.
Yields on 10-year Treasuries rose another 7 basis points to 4.51%, extending Friday’s reversal on the Moody’s news, while 30-year yields grazed 5.0%.
Markets are still pricing in only 52 basis points of Federal Reserve rate cuts this year, compared to more than 100 basis points a month ago. Futures imply just a 33% chance of a move by July, rising to 72% by September.
A host of Fed speakers are on the diary this week, including influential New York Fed President John Williams and Vice Chair Philip Jefferson later on Monday. Fed Chair Jerome Powell is also due to speak on Sunday.

The Reserve Bank of Australia is widely expected to cut its rates at a meeting on Tuesday, while likely signalling it is still cautious about easing too far.
Higher yields offered little comfort to the dollar, which was drifting lower amid investor unease with the volatility of U.S. trade policy. The euro edged up 0.1% to $1.1184 , while the dollar slipped 0.3% to 145.19 yen .
In an interview published over the weekend, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said the dollar’s recent decline reflected a loss of confidence in U.S. policies and this could benefit the euro currency.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/markets/global-markets-wrapup-1-2025-05-19/

Vice President JD Vance shook hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in their first public encounter since their infamous Oval Office blow-up and later had a “good meeting” at the residence of the US ambassador to Italy.

Vance and Zelensky briefly crossed paths Sunday while attending the first formal mass by Pope Leo XIV in St. Peter’s Basilica, smiling as they greeted each other. Second lady Usha Vance joined her husband in greeting Zelensky as well.

Zelensky was seated nearby European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, not far from Vance. Vance led the US delegation along with fellow Catholic, Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Following that encounter, Vance and Zelensky met privately in the Villa Taverna, the residence of the US ambassador to Italy, according to a spokesperson for the vice president. They were joined by Rubio and Andriy Yermak, who leads the Office of the President of Ukraine.

The pair talked about ongoing efforts to end the bloody war in Ukraine and Zelensky’s desire for the US to ramp up sanctions on Russia.

“We discussed negotiations in Istanbul to where the Russians sent a low level delegation of non-decision-makers,” Zelensky later revealed on X. “I reaffirmed that Ukraine is ready to be engaged in real diplomacy and underscored the importance of a full and unconditional ceasefire as soon as possible.”

He added: “We have also touched upon the need for sanctions against Russia, bilateral trade, defense cooperation, battlefield situation and upcoming prisoners exchange.”

On Sunday, Ukraine was hit with one of the largest known drone attacks from Russia, including over 273 that pummeled the central Kyiv region as well as the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, according to Ukraine’s air force.

That brutal attack came days after the first direct negotiations between the Russians and Ukrainians since 2022, which led to a deal to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war.

Those talks, in Turkey, failed to yield a broader ceasefire deal that had initially been sought.

The last time Vance and Zelensky crossed paths, it ended in bedlam.

On Feb. 28, during Zelensky’s visit to the White House to discuss a mineral rights deal and more, the two got into a war of words in front of the TV cameras after the Ukrainian leader tried to impress upon the VP how untrustworthy Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is.

Vance underscored the importance of negotiations, which prompted Zelensky to lecture the veep about Putin’s long history of breaking international agreements. He also asked how Ukraine could trust the outcome of any diplomacy with the Kremlin.

The vice president shot back that it was “disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media” and added, “You should be thanking the president for wanting to bring an end to the conflict.”

President Trump chimed in and backed up Vance.

During the 2024 campaign, Zelensky once called Vance “too radical” for championing a plan to end the war that would have seen Ukraine cede vast swaths of territory.

Since then, Ukraine has supported the Trump administration’s push for a ceasefire — something Russia has rejected, and worked towards achieving an end to the bloody war. Vance has publicly acknowledged that Moscow’s demands are too much.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/05/18/us-news/jd-vance-and-volodymyr-zelensky-shake-hands-during-first-encounter-since-oval-office-blow-up/

DONALD Trump has issued a statement on Joe Biden after the former US president revealed he has been diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer.

The current US President took to Truth Social to wish his predecessor and his family well following the difficult news.

Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “Melania and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden’s recent medical diagnosis.

“We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.”

Biden, 82, who served as president from 2021 to 2025, confirmed he had the advanced form of the disease in a statement from his personal office.

Biden was seen last week by doctors after suffering urinary symptoms, with a prostate nodule then being found.

He was then diagnosed with prostate cancer on Friday, with the cancer cells having spread to the bone.

Tributes have poured in for the former president since the announcement, with Republicans and Democrats alike wishing Biden well.

Former President Barack Obama said he and Michelle were thinking of the entire Biden family.

He said: “Nobody has done more to find breakthrough treatments for cancer in all its forms than Joe, and I am certain he will fight this challenge with his trademark resolve and grace. We pray for a fast and full recovery.”

Biden’s Vice President Kamala Harris said: “Joe is a fighter — and I know he will face this challenge with the same strength, resilience, and optimism that have always defined his life and leadership.

“We are hopeful for a full and speedy recovery.”

Biden’s former spokesperson, TJ Ducklo, said: “No one in America is stronger than Joe Biden.

“Mine [cancer] metastasized to the bones too.

“Cancer has no f****** idea who it’s dealing with.

“Betting against Biden has never been and still remains a bad f****** bet.”

The daughter of late Republican Senator John McCain – who died of brain cancer – also sent her best to Biden, saying: “Cancer is the absolute worst. It is hell.

“It is incredibly difficult for any family, anywhere that has to deal with it.

“Wishing nothing but healing, prayers, light and strength to President Biden and his family.

“I don’t believe times like these are appropriate for politics.”

And the Democratic Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, added: “Our hearts are with President Biden and his entire family right now.

“A man of dignity, strength, and compassion like his deserves to live a long and beautiful life.

“Sending strength, healing and prayers his way.”

The former president was diagnosed with prostate cancer on Friday after discovering that the cancer cells having spread to the bone.

While it is a more “aggressive” form of the disease, which looks “very abnormal”, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive, meaning there would be the prospect of “effective management” of his illness.

The president and his family are currently reviewing treatment options with his doctors.

The statement from Biden’s personal office read: “Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms.

“On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14267030/trump-biden-cancer-statement/

Endangered water voles in Wales are being fed edible glitter in a bid to save them from extinction.

Once commonly found across south Wales, water voles are now effectively extinct in all but a few locations, according to the Wildlife Trust.

With their future hanging in the balance, conservationists have been looking for new ways to track the naturally shy individuals in the wild – which is where the glitter comes in.

Nature Conservation Cymru hopes that by offering the animals something sparkly to eat, the sparkle should come out the other end – providing some much-needed answers.

Rob Parry, chief executive of Nature Conservation Cymru, said his team had consulted with vets to ensure the edible and biodegradable glitter – the type used to decorate cakes – would not be harmful to the semi-aquatic creatures.

“It’s something that we’ve done in nature conservation before for other species, for badgers in particular where we use pellets to put in with peanuts, which badgers love,” said Mr Parry.

“So we’ve taken that idea and scaled it down to water vole size, which means using glitter.”

The hope is that if the water voles are willing to consume the glitter then it will come out in their poo, allowing the small mammals – which are often mistaken for brown rats – to be tracked by conservationists.

Different colours of glitter could be used to allow conservationists to track different families of water voles and how far they range.

It might sound like a fun idea, but Mr Parry and his team could not be more serious.

If they can track where water voles are located in the wild, they can make adjustments to the environment – like removing invasive conifers from wetland habitats or fencing off certain riverbanks to stop sheep grazing.

Measures like this could help the species to disperse through the landscape undisturbed and potentially be a life-saving intervention.

“We’ll be able to see the types of territory, the size and where they go in,” said Mr Parry.

“Are they just using the linear features, the ditches, or are they spreading out into the bog and the molinia grassland habitat?

“That will be really crucial for when it comes to planning for our upland habitats.”

The team is first testing out their theory on some captive-bred water voles which are part of a wider Natural Resources Wales (NRW) project to reintroduce colonies into the wild.

The glitter is spread onto chunks of apple, not part of their normal diet in the wild, but a food the animals love and do well on in captivity, according to Richard Davies from NRW.

“They get everything they need from apples, carrots, and some dried rabbit food as well,” he said.

He has successfully bred hundreds of water voles which have been reintroduced into the wild, though he said their release was no guarantee of survival.

“Most predators in the UK would quite happily take a water vole. They need to be able to cope with this heavy predation and replace themselves a lot,” he said.

With a BBC News camera present, the glittery purple apple was placed on top of the straw bedding which covered the water voles’ pen.

After 20 minutes, the food remained untouched, but an hour later most of it had disappeared.

The success of the project, however, does not just depend on the appetite of the water voles, but how well the glitter can retain its shine from end to end.

Mr Parry said without interventions like this, the future for water voles was uncertain.

“It’s been a perfect storm of bad things that’s happened to water voles in the last few decades,” he said.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx08exwp97o

In July last year, Jesús Cometa was shot at as he was driving through the Cauca Valley in southwest Colombia.

Gunmen on motorbikes pulled up alongside his car and sprayed it with bullets. Mr Cometa escaped uninjured but his bodyguard was hit.

“He still has a bullet lodged in his chest,” he says.

Mr Cometa is one of thousands of trade unionists who have been attacked in recent years in Colombia which, by some measurements, is the most dangerous place in the world for organised labour.

The Cauca Valley is home to the country’s sugar industry, and he is a local representative of Sintrainagro, Colombia’s largest agricultural trade union.

“When you take on these roles in the union, you lose your social life,” Mr Cometa says. “You can’t just go and hang out in a crowded bar, or on a street corner, because you never know when you might be targeted.

“Your family suffers too because they know that they’re also targets.”

This is a problem with a long history.

In his ground-breaking novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Colombia’s Nobel Prize-winning writer Gabriel García Márquez famously highlighted the massacre of workers on banana plantations in the country in the 1920s.

The Labour Ministry says that since the early 1970s, well over 3,000 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia.

And even though the nation is more peaceful than it once was, the attacks continue.

“For many years now already, unfortunately, Colombia is the deadliest country in the world for trade unionists and for trade union work,” says Luc Triangle, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), a global umbrella organization based in Brussels.

Every year the ITUC publishes a survey of the atrocities carried out against trade unionists around the world. Its most recent edition covers the year to the end of March 2024.

It found that in those 12 months, 22 trade unionists were killed for their activism around the world. Eleven of them were murdered in Colombia.

“Generally, these are targeted murders,” Mr Triangle says. “They know what they are doing. They know who they want to murder.

“It’s not targeting the big bosses of the trade unions or the leaders. They are targeting in small villages people that are doing active trade union work.

“Between 2020 and 2023, we recorded 45 murders in Colombia. In 2022, 29 murders. It’s less violent than it once was, but it’s still very violent, certainly if you compare it with other countries.”

Why is this happening?

Fabio Arias, the head of Colombia’s largest trade union federation, the CUT, says it is all part of Colombia’s long and complex civil conflict, which pitted left-wing rebel groups against right-wing paramilitaries, drug traffickers and the Colombian state, and which still rumbles on in some parts of the country.

“The trade union movement has always been linked to the parties of the left and unfortunately the many right-wing governments we’ve had in Colombia have always claimed that anyone who is a leftist is a guerrilla, a terrorist,” Mr Arias says.

“And once you’ve established that, then people feel justified in attacking them.”

He says the attacks on workers are also linked to Colombia’s illegal economies, notably the cocaine trade and illegal mining.

“If you look at where these attacks are happening, it’s in the departments of Cauca, Nariño, Putumayo, Arauca, Norte de Santander and Caquetá, because that’s where the biggest coca plantations are, and where the illegal mining is.”

It is not clear who is carrying out these killings and who is ordering them. Some trade unionists blame the private sector, saying businesses, desperate to stifle any attempt by workers to organize, are paying armed groups to carry out these atrocities.

They point to the fact that threats and attacks tend to spike at times when businesses and unions are in wage negotiations.

But as many of the attacks go unpunished, it is difficult to know who exactly is to blame.

“In the Cauca Valley there are so many different armed groups you never really know who’s behind the attacks, who’s carrying them out, who’s ordering them,” says Zenón Escobar, another sugar cane worker and local representative of Sintrainagro.

The threats in the Cauca Valley are not limited to the sugar industry.

“In 2007, I was in a van, and guys drew up next to us on a motorbike and asked for me, and then opened fire,” recalls Jimmy Núñez, the leader of a union that represents street traders in the regional capital Cali.

“My colleague who was sitting next to me was killed, and my wife was injured. In 2010 they attacked me again, on the road between Cauca and Cali.

“They opened fire on my car. In 2012 we were attacked in a shopping centre in Cali and one of us was killed. And in 2013 my family had to leave Cauca due to threats.

“In this country social leaders and trade union leaders are killed every day.”

The government says it is doing what it can to protect trade unionists. Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, heads a left-wing administration that is broadly sympathetic to the country’s workers.

In 2023, it took a step towards redressing the past by formally recognizing the trade union movement – collectively, and for the first time – as a victim of Colombia’s conflict. That gives victims a greater chance of having their cases investigated.

“We consider this as an important step to recognize the violence against trade unionists in Colombia, which was not the case before,” says Luc Triangle of the ITUC.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0j715l2d6no

Amid many other global crises, the human rights situation in Afghanistan has been overshadowed in the international media. Millions of people continue to suffer from systemic rights violations under the Taliban-run government, a UN report has found.

Tasked with assisting the people of Afghanistan, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) monitors the human rights situation in the country, issuing regular reports. In its latest update on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, UNAMA not only documented cases of gender-based violence and public floggings, but also the growing persecution of the Ismaili community.

Ismailism is a branch of Shia Islam, while Sunni Islam is the dominant religion in Afghanistan. Most members of the Ismaili community live in the country’s northern provinces, such as Badakhshan or Baghlan. In the former, there have been at least 50 cases of members of the Ismaili community being forced to convert to the Sunni faith. Those who refused to do so were subjected to physical assaults, coercion and death threats.

“They are only accepted as Muslims if they profess the Sunni faith by force,” Yaqub Yasna, a professor and member of the Afghan Ismaili community, told DW. Yasna himself was accused of blasphemy after the Taliban takeover of 2021 because he advocated enlightenment and tolerance in society. He was forced to step down from his position at his university and went into exile for fear of reprisals.

‘Breeding ground for violence’

Yasna said that even before the Taliban’s return to power, tolerance toward the Ismaili minority in Afghanistan was limited but that the political system had at least protected their civil rights.

He said that under the Taliban, tolerance had continued to decline steadily. “When their rights are violated today, they don’t know who they can turn to. Their children are forced to profess the Sunni faith,” he explained. “Under Taliban rule, only one faith is considered legitimate. Anything that deviates from their interpretation of Islam is rejected and thus creates a breeding ground for violence against religious minorities.”

Afghan human rights activist Abdullah Ahmadi confirmed there was increasing pressure on one of the last remaining religious minorities in Afghanistan. “We have received several reports showing that children from the Ismaili community are being forced to attend Sunni-run religious schools. If they refuse to do so, or do not attend classes regularly, their families have to pay heavy fines,” he said.

Ahmadi complained that the international community had responded only hesitantly to the human rights violations in his country. He called for targeted sanctions against Taliban officials, saying they “must be held accountable.”

Nowruz holiday declared ‘un-Islamic’

Historically, the country was a significant center of religious diversity, but there are very few members of non-Muslim communities left in Afghanistan today.

The last members of the Jewish community left the country in September 2021. Those Christians who still live there tend to practice their faith in secret. And the Hazaras, another ethnic minority in Afghanistan who are predominantly Shiite, continue to be persecuted.

The Taliban only accept one interpretation of religion and have banned certain rituals and festivals, including Nowruz, which marks the beginning of spring and a new year. They declared the holiday “un-Islamic” and said that nobody in Afghanistan should observe the celebration.

Women’s rights in decline

The situation of all women is also getting worse, which means that half of society is subject to systematic oppression. According to the UNAMA report, girls continue to be “barred from participating in education beyond grade six” and there has been “no announcement made by the de facto authorities regarding the reopening of high schools and universities to girls and women.”

In the western city of Herat, the Taliban has confiscated several rickshaws and warned drivers not to transport women who were unaccompanied by a “mahram,” a close male relative.

Afghans deported from Pakistan, Iran

Despite this disastrous situation, Afghans who fled to neighboring countries are being expelled en masse. According to the United Nations, around 110,000 people, including women and children, were forced to return from Pakistan in April. Large numbers of people are also being deported from Iran.

“We live in fear of being deported to Afghanistan every day,” Afghan journalist Marzia Rahimi told DW. “What am I supposed to do with my children there?”

Rahimi said that only misery and terror awaited her in Afghanistan if she returned, explaining that she had left because she was unable to continue working as a journalist under Taliban rule and would not have been able to provide her daughter with an education.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/rights-under-constant-attack-in-taliban-ruled-afghanistan/a-72559435

In a single week in the fall of 2024, ravaging fires burnt down more than 100,000 hectares of land in Portugal — an area roughly the size of Hong Kong. Plumes of smoke were visible from space. It was one of the largest wildfires in Europe that year, killing at least seven people.

Fires on that scale are likely to happen more often, scientists say.

“Many parts of Europe are facing a large increase in multi-year droughts, leading to an increased probability of extreme fires,” said Thomas Elmqvist, Environment Director of the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC). “Some areas are likely to experience severe events every two years.”

About 60,000 forest fires rage through the EU every year, causing €2 billion ($2.2 billion) in economic losses, the scientists laid out in a report published today. On average, they scorch an area nearly twice the size of Luxemburg — year by year.

Climate change, land use and urbanization fuel fires

Europe is the world’s fastest warming continent. Over the past 30 years, temperatures have risen twice as much as the global average. Elmqvist points to the established link between climate change and elevated fire danger. Increasing droughts and less rain are expected to double the fire risk by 2100.

Increasing urbanization is another culprit for the flames. Abandoned farmland and unmanaged vegetation growth have created vast landscapes of flammable biomass, the scientists analyzed. Extensive monocultures, particularly of conifers, pines, and eucalyptus trees also ignite fast.

The highest risk in Germany, for example, is in the northeastern part of the country with its large pine plantations, said Elmqvist.

Fewer but more devastating fires in the future

Having monitored wildfires over the course of two years, he concluded that the number of fires and total area burned have actually decreased in Europe, “because we have more capacity to fight them.”

But the fires will become larger and more severe.

Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are most affected, the scientists found.

Mediterranean countries are better prepared for fires compared to other European countries, says Claudia Berchtold from the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft. She is looking at research like the new EASAC study to formulate a strategy for Europe on how to deal with wildfires.

“In Germany or in the Netherlands for example, a comparatively small fire would meet a system that is not as well prepared,” she added.

More than twice as many urban areas are deemed at risk of fire in Europe than in North America and Asia, the study found.

“Urbanizations have been built into pine plantations without thinking about what happens when big fires come,” said ecologist Pierre Ibisch, who co-authored the study. “This is of course very risky.”

This happened in the small town of Borkwalde in the German state of Brandenburg. Since 2000, people edged closer and closer into the forest, even after large fires led to evacuations in a nearby town, Ibisch said.

Solutions: Controlled burning, restoring ecosystems and education

Problems like these could be avoided when landscape planners, foresters and farmers join forces, EASAC scientists say. They also call for more awareness and a public debate about the changing nature of fires.

“People living next to forests or moving into forests are not aware of the fact how much the fire is here and it’s here to stay, and that we have the chance to reduce the risk by land management,” Ibisch said.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/can-we-learn-to-live-with-wildfires/a-72567102

VLADIMIR Putin is planning to test the launch of a ballistic missile capable of striking the UK in a chilling threat to the West.

Ukraine’s military intelligence said that Russia plans to launch an RS-24 Yars intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

The GUR agency said it is a “training and combat” launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile to intimidate Ukraine and the West.

It added that the test launch was designed to “demonstratively pressure and intimidate Ukraine, and also EU and Nato member states”.

The RS-24 Yars is a three-stage, solid-fuel ICBM that has a flight range of more than 6,200 miles – more than double the distance between Russia and the UK.

It is understood to be fired with a non-nuclear warhead from Russia’s central Sverdlovsk region.

Meanwhile, the US presented Russia with a 22-point peace plan for the Russia-Ukraine ceasefire deal.

However, Vladimir Putin is understood to have refused to discuss the US-proposed peace plan.

A call between Putin and President Donald Trump is now being prepared, and both leaders are expected to talk on Monday.

It comes after Russia unleashed the “war’s biggest drone attack” after Putin defied Trump’s call to stop the “bloodbath”.

A harrowing 273 exploding drones were fired across the Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions overnight.

Meanwhile, Putin bluntly told Trump to stop trying to dictate terms to him for a ceasefire and an end to the bloodshed in the conflict.

Zelensky congratulates Dan on ‘historic victory’ in Romania’s presidential vote

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky congratulated Nicusor Dan on his “historic victory” in Romania’s presidential election.

Dan appeared early on Monday, on course to win the Romanian presidency.

“For Ukraine as a neighbour and friend it is important to have Romania as a reliable partner,” Zelenskiy said in a post on X.

“And we are confident we will. By working together, we can strengthen both our countries and our Europe.”

Putin expands nuclear missile base after test at frozen site killed five

Putin has expanded one of his nuclear weapons bases at a frozen site in Russia.

It is the same military site where five people were killed after a nuclear-powered missile exploded while testing in 2019.

New satellite images reveal construction work inside the strictly controlled military site of Nenoksa.

Three new facilities – each the size of a football field – can be seen at the centre of the naval testing site.

They have been constructed near a railway line that is thought to bring missiles and testing gear into Nenoksa.

The area, which before 2023 was forest, is now surrounded by double-barbed wire fences.

The entire compound, located some 40 miles west of Arkhangelsk in northern Russia, is thought to be more than 61,000 square meters wide – and is heavily fortified.

Construction at the Russian military site is thought to have begun in 2023, according to the Barents Observer, which has been tracking all its activities.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14240538/putin-russia-ukraine-talks-peace/

NEW aerial pictures show disgraced hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Los Angeles mansion lying silent while he stands trial on sex trafficking charges.

Shamed Combs’ home is among the larger houses in the luxurious neighborhood of Holmby Hills – a playground for the rich and famous.

Combs forked out almost $40 million on the 17,000 square-foot, 10-bedroom home back in September 2014. He put it on the market a decade later for $61.5 million.

The property boasts outdoor features such as a swimming pool, and its lawns are neat.

Inside, there is a 35-seat theater room, a wine cellar, a gym, as well as a state-of-the-art gourmet kitchen.

Its other features include a basketball court, spa room, and an outdoor loggia-style facility where barbecues can be hosted, per the Zillow listing.

There’s also an underground swimming tunnel that is linked to a grotto.

Yet the sprawling complex was the target of two raids executed by the feds in March 2024.

Cops seized 1,000 bottles of lubricant linked to Combs’ sordid marathon sex sessions, known as freak-offs, according to the indictment seen by the Fox affiliate WTTG-TV.

Agents ransacked rooms and emptied out safes inside the home as they hunted for potential evidence, The Los Angeles Times reported.

A hard drive was also seized, and the property’s security system was turned off.

Homeland Security investigators also searched Combs’ Star Island paradise in Miami Beach, Florida.

Combs’ team criticized the feds for how the raids were carried out.

Aaron Dyer, who was part of the rapper’s legal team, labeled the raids as an “unprecedented ambush.”

He claimed agents used military-level force in the operations, describing them as a “witch hunt,” per Billboard.

Rooms were left untidy, and objects were strewn across the floor, according to pictures from TMZ.

DONALD Trump has blasted staunch Democrat Taylor Swift as “no longer hot” in a fiery rant against some of his most notorious A-list haters.

The president took aim at the Cruel Summer singer after longtime critic Bruce Springsteen accused his administration of being “treasonous” in a bitter speech.

In a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump came for Kamala Harris-loving Swift, and said, “Has anyone noticed that, since I said ‘I hate Taylor Swift,’ she’s no longer ‘hot?'”

He appeared to be referencing his reaction to Swift’s gushing post about Harris ahead of the 2024 presidential election, where she described the failed candidate as a “warrior” and “gifted leader.”

“I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” she said at the time.

Trump and Swift first had bad blood boiling when she broke her political silence to start endorsing Democratic candidates in 2018 during the president’s first term.

In 2020, the singer fired up her oven to bake off a batch of Biden and Harris-decorated cookies as she encouraged her massive audience to go out and vote.

She’s gotten quieter on the political front since Harris’ embarrassing loss in November, but Trump hasn’t stayed silent on his thoughts about the pop star.

After her boyfriend Travis Kelce, a star player for the Kansas City Chiefs, lost the Super Bowl to the Philadelphia Eagles, Trump invited the winning team to the White House for a celebration.

In a brief speech to the players, Trump relived the match, saying, “I watched in person. I was there along with Taylor Swift.

“How did that work out?” he said as the champion athletes behind him laughed.

“How did that one work out?”

Trump’s hit at Swift came after Springsteen opened the floodgates when he blasted the president’s office as “corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous” at a show in Manchester, England, on Thursday.

In the speech, Springsteen said the administration is “taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers.”

“They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that has led to a more just and plural society,” he said.

A SUSPECT has been named in the explosion at a fertility clinic in Palm Springs that left one dead and four injured after FBI confirmed terror link.

Guy Edward Bartkus, 25 is believed to have targeted The American Reproductive Services clinic in California with a bomb just before 11am on Saturday, officials have said in a press conference.

“We are fairly confident that Mr. Bartkus is our primary suspect,” said Akil Davis, assistant director at the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, told reporters, adding that the agency is working to confirm that he is the person who died in the blast.

“We believe he was the subject found by the vehicle,” he continued.

“The subject had nihilistic ideations, and this was a targeted attack against the IVF facility.

“Make no mistake. We are treating this… as an intentional act of terrorism.”

Davis added that the resident of Twentynine Palms – roughly an hour’s drive from Palm Springs where a property was searched on Saturday afternoon had not been known to the FBI.

The clinic confirmed that none of its patients or staff were harmed in the blast that was caused by the bomb inside his 2010 Ford Fusion sedan where a AK-47 and an AR-Style rifle was also found, the LA Times reported.

While the fertility center was left in ruin, the IVF lab and embryos were undamaged.

On Saturday evening, officials revealed the motive behind the attack is believed to be anti-natalist ideology,

Those who identify as anti-natalist are against anyone having children as it is against the child’s will.

The FBI is investigating Bartkus’ “pro-mortalist” writings and recordings that reflected such views.

He allegedly had pro-death manifestos and was against bringing people into the world without their consent and being unable to spare them from future suffering, according to CBS affiliate KCAL.

Bartkus allegedly explained that wanting to bring on your own death was “to prevent your future suffering, and, more importantly, the suffering your existence will cause to all the other sentient beings.”

There was also allegedly a 30-minute recording about why he “decided to bomb an IVF building, or clinic.”

“I figured I would just make a recording explaining why I’ve decided to bomb an IVF building, or clinic,” he said, per the Daily Mail.

THE two Mexican Navy cadets who tragically died in the Brooklyn Bridge crash have now been pictured.

Doomed mariners America Yamilet Sanchez and Adal Jair Marcos were up on the masts of Cuauhtemoc when the ship crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge.

Sanchez was a 20-year-old talented swimmer who came from the port city of Veracruz.

The award-winning athlete is thought to have arrived in New York on May 13 as part of Cuauhtémoc’s international tour.

Meanwhile Marcos, who came from the Mexican city of Oaxaca, was onboard the ship for the past nine months, according to the New York Post.

He has been described as a beloved world traveler by his friends.

Sánchez and Marcos were among the 277 crew members on board the vessel when it struck the historic Brooklyn Bridge.

Federal authorities in New York have now launched an investigation into the fatal crash that killed two people and wounded 19.

Dramatic footage shows the vessel named the Cuauhtemoc, reversing before smashing into the New York City landmark.

Suddenly, its three masts struck the bridge and snapped one by one as the ship continued to move.

Onlookers are seen slowly backing away from the walking path by the river, before screaming and running to safety the moment the boat hit the bridge.

Officials have blamed “mechanical issues” amid speculation the ship’s engines may have been stuck in reverse.

At around 8:20pm local time, the captain was attempting to depart from New York’s Pier 17.

But disaster ensued as the ship’s masts smashed into the bridge, with them all breaking on impact and sending debris flying onto the vessel’s deck.

New York Mayor Eric Adams said the ship “lost power” and hit the bridge.

The National Transportation Safety Board is conducting the investigation.

Adams said in an update on X a few hours later: “Earlier tonight, the Mexican Navy tall ship Cuauhtémoc lost power and crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge.

“At this time, of the 277 on board, 19 sustained injuries, 2 of which remain in critical condition, and 2 more have sadly passed away from their injuries.”

More footage shows heavy traffic on the bridge at the time of the collision.

Sailors could be seen aloft in the rigging on the damaged masts but, unbelievably, no one fell into the water, officials said.

One witness, Elijah West, recalled seeing sailors falling from height off the boat sails.

He told the New York Post: “The boat was coming under the bridge, and there were sailors on top of the boat, the sails hit the bridge and then people were falling off of the boat sails.

“It was crazy. We were standing under the bridge and we all started running. Then I saw people hanging from the sails.

“Police boats came around fast – about five minutes later. And then police guided the boat to the [Manhattan] bridge and started the rescue. It was a shock.”

And 43-year-old Ismari Romero also described hearing bloodcurdling screams and cries as onlookers watched sailors – many of whom were cadets – dangling from the vessel.

He told the paper: “We were scared – a lot of people were screaming, a lot of people were crying.”

The Mexican navy said in a post on the social platform X that the Cuauhtemoc was an academy training vessel.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on X: “Our solidarity and support go out to their families.”

The Brooklyn Bridge, which opened in 1883, has a nearly 490-meter main span supported by two masonry towers.

More than 100,000 vehicles and an estimated 32,000 pedestrians cross every day, according to the city’s transportation department.

Traffic was halted after the collision but was allowed to resume after an inspection, city officials said.

New York Police Department Special Operations Chief Wilson Aramboles said the ship had just left a Manhattan pier and was supposed to have been headed out to sea, not toward the bridge.

The Cuauhtemoc is about 90.5 meters long and 12 meters wide, and according to the Mexican navy sailed for the first time in 1982.

The vessel’s main mast has a height of 48.9 meters, according to the Mexican government.

As midnight approached, the broken boat was moved slowly up the East River, going under and past the Manhattan Bridge, aided by a series of tugboats, before docking at a pier.

Onlookers continued to gather on the waterfront to watch the spectacle.

Each year the Cuauhtemoc sets out at the end of classes at the naval military school to finish cadets’ training.

This year it left the Mexican port of Acapulco, on the Pacific coast, on April 6, the navy said.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14264745/mexican-navy-ship-crashes-brooklyn-bridge/

The talks in Turkey on Friday were the first time the sides had held face-to-face talks since March 2022, weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour.
A senior Ukrainian official familiar with the talks said Russian negotiators demanded Ukraine pull its troops out of all Ukrainian regions claimed by Moscow before they would agree to a ceasefire.
Trump, writing on Truth Social, said he would speak with Putin to discuss stopping the war at 10 a.m. Eastern (1400 GMT) on Monday.
“THE SUBJECTS OF THE CALL WILL BE, STOPPING THE ‘BLOODBATH’ THAT IS KILLING, ON AVERAGE, MORE THAN 5000 RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS A WEEK, AND TRADE,” he wrote.

An Israeli airstrike killed at least 24 Palestinians in a tent encampment housing displaced families in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, local health authorities said on Sunday, as mediators hosted a new round of talks between Israel and Hamas.
Israel expanded its military offensive in the enclave and ramped up bombing that has killed hundreds of people over the past 72 hours

The Gaza health ministry said Israeli strikes in the past few days had killed hundreds of Palestinians despite a visit by U.S. President Donald Trump to the region.
Hamas described the strike as a “new brutal crime” in a statement on Sunday and blamed the U.S. administration for the escalation.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the latest strikes but it said in an earlier statement that it was conducting extensive strikes in areas of Gaza as part of its plan to reach its war objectives.
Egypt and Qatar mediators, backed by the United States, began a new round of indirect ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas on Saturday, officials from both sides said.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-airstrike-kills-least-24-gaza-mediators-host-ceasefire-talks-2025-05-17/

Oscar winner Angelina Jolie made a special appearance at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday night to present the Trophée Chopard to rising stars Marie Colomb and Finn Bennett. During the glamorous dinner ceremony, Jolie reflected on the power of international cinema to make an impact in times of global turmoil.

“I love international cinema,” Jolie told the star-studded assembly of guests, which included Cannes jury president Juliette Binoche and her fellow jurors, including Halle Berry, Jeremy Strong, Leïla Slimani and Alba Rohrwacher, as well as Quentin Tarantino and Carla Bruni. “We are brought to other lands, into private moments, even on the battlefield, we connect and we empathize. I think of films like ‘My Father Shadow’ [set during the during the 1993 Nigerian election crisis], which is premiering here at Cannes. Anything that is possible to make international cinema more accessible is necessary and welcome.”

“And none of us are naive,” Jolie, whose contributions as a humanitarian are as vaunted as her acting career, continued. “We know that many artists around the world lack the freedom and security to tell their stories, and many have lost their lives like Fatima Hassouna, killed in Gaza, Shaden Gardood killed in Sudan, and Victoria Amelina killed in Ukraine, and so many other extraordinary artists who should be with us now. We owe all of those risking their lives and sharing their stories and experiences a debt of gratitude, because they have helped us to learn and to evolve.”

The presentation of the 25th edition of the Trophée Chopard took place during a dinner on Carlton Beach co-hosted by Cannes Film Festival president Iris Knobloch, general delegate Thierry Frémaux and Chopard co-president and artistic director Caroline Scheufele.

Created in 2001, the Trophée Chopard celebrates emerging international cinema talent, each year honoring one actress and one actor with promising careers. Colomb and Bennett follow last year’s honorees Sophie Wilde and Mike Faist. Other recipients for the award, which often heralds more laurels to come, include Marion Cotillard, Diane Kruger, Léa Seydoux, Florence Pugh, Jessie Buckley, Niels Schneider, Jeremy Irvine and Joe Alwyn.

So, what is it like to have Jolie as your fairy godmother?

“She really cares about fostering young actors. I feel really honored, really lucky to be here,” Bennett told Variety at the dinner about meeting Jolie. “I just wanted to ask how she does it all. Like, as you can see, this is crazy. And she deals with it so well, completely calmly. And I think that’s amazing.”

Colomb, too, was struck by Jolie’s down-to-earth nature as they ascended the famed red steps at the Grand Lumiere before the Chopard event.

“She’s gorgeous, she’s super beautiful. I was looking at her and I was like, ‘Wow! It’s incredible, it’s unreal.’ And at the same time it’s funny because when I met her, I met a normal, nice human being,” Colomb said. “Then when you see the photos or videos afterwards, all my friends write to me like, ‘What is that?’ So, it’s pretty crazy but cool at the same time.”

Jolie shared similar praise for the young talents. “I think they’re very brave in their work. They make very brave choices, and they’re very committed and emotional and open, so they are very promising creatives, and I think they’re gonna give a lot,” Jolie told Variety. “They seem like very gracious, grateful young people, who are very professional.”

Jolie also shared the best advice her godmother, Jacqueline Bissett, gave her about navigating the business: “Learn French and do French films.”

VATICAN CITY: Pope Leo XIV will formally take up his role as leader of the global Catholic Church on Sunday (May 18), with a Mass in St Peter’s Square that will draw tens of thousands of well-wishers, including dozens of world leaders and European royalty.

Crowds are expected to cram the Square and surrounding streets in Rome for the formal celebration, which starts at 10am and includes the first ride in the white popemobile by Pope Leo, the first pope from the United States.

Born in Chicago, the 69-year-old pontiff spent many years as a missionary in Peru and also has Peruvian citizenship, meaning he is also the first pope from that South American nation.

Robert Prevost, a relative unknown on the world stage who only became a cardinal two years ago, was elected pope on May 8 after a short conclave of cardinals that lasted barely 24 hours.

He replaces Pope Francis, from Argentina, who died on Apr 21 after leading the Church for 12 often turbulent years during which he battled with traditionalists and championed the poor and marginalised.

US Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert who clashed with Pope Francis over the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies, will lead a US delegation alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also Catholic.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will also attend and would be happy to meet other leaders, a top aide has said, as he did at Pope Francis’ funeral when he had face-to-face talks with US President Donald Trump in St Peter’s Basilica.

Zelenskyy last met Vance in February in the White House, when the two men clashed fiercely in front of the world’s media.

Also expected at the Vatican ceremony are the presidents of Peru, Israel and Nigeria, the prime ministers of Italy, Canada and Australia, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Many European royals will also be in the VIP seats near the main altar, including Spanish King Felipe and Queen Letizia.

FOCUS ON PEACE
In various sermons and comments since his election as pope, Pope Leo praised his predecessor repeatedly but has not offered many hints about whether he will continue with the late pontiff’s vision of opening the Church up to the modern world.

His homily on Sunday is likely to indicate some of the priorities for his papacy, having already made clear over the past 10 days that he will push for peace whenever possible.

His first words in an appearance to crowds in St Peter’s Square on the night of his election were “peace be with you all”, echoing words Catholics use in their celebrations.

In a May 14 address to officials of the eastern Catholic Churches, many of whom are based in global hot spots such as Ukraine and the Middle East, the new pope pledged he would make “every effort” for peace.

He also offered the Vatican as a mediator in global conflicts, saying war was “never inevitable”.

Sunday’s Mass will feature prayers in several languages, in a nod to the global reach of the 1.4 billion-member Church, including Latin, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Polish, and Chinese.

As part of the ceremony, Leo will also formally receive two items as he takes up the papacy: a liturgical vestment known as a pallium, a strip of lambswool which represents his role as a shepherd, and a special band known as the fisherman’s ring.

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/pope-leo-formally-take-charge-catholic-church-inaugural-mass-5137321

A new genetic study has traced prehistoric human migration from Asia to North and South America. The findings are helping underrepresented Indigenous groups understand their ancestral origins.

The first people to inhabit the Americas migrated from modern-day Russia about 20,000 to 30,000 years ago, a new study has found.

Published on May 15 in the journal Science, the study suggests that the languages ​​and traditions of Indigenous groups living in the Americas today can be traced back to these early settlers. Traces of their cultures exist in the genes of modern Indigenous groups.

The study also found that the early settlers split into groups that became isolated in different environmental settings. The findings provide a new genetic and cultural understanding of present-day South American communities, said the researchers.

“[It fills] key gaps in our understanding of how the diverse populations of present-day South America came to be,” said Elena Gusareva, the study’s lead author, who is based at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Gusareva said the participants in the study had been “deeply motivated” to uncover their people’s history, showing the importance of ancestral knowledge for people’s identities.

The researcher cited an “urgent case” involving the Kawesqar people of Patagonia, whose population and 6,000-year-old cultural heritage is in danger of disappearing. “This genetic record is one of the last chances to preserve their legacy.”

Eurasian roots of Indigenous Americans
Gusareva and other researchers sequenced the genomes of 1,537 individuals from 139 ethnic groups in northern Eurasia and the Americas.

They compared the millions of tiny variations in the genes of modern-day Indigenous people to ancient DNA from the first peoples to arrive in the Americas, creating a genomic dataset from people previously underrepresented in ancestral science.

Tracing how these genetic codes changed in people from different geographical regions and various Indigenous groups allowed them to study patterns of population history, migration and adaptation over thousands of years.

“Our genetic analysis of Indigenous groups is crucial because their genomes carry unique insights into the earliest human history in the region,” said Gusareva’s colleague, Hie Lim Kim, a geneticist at Nanyang Technological University.

Their analysis appears to corroborate existing archaeological evidence, showing the first peoples in the Americas diverged from North Eurasians between 19,300 and 26,800 years ago.

The dates are “consistent with a large body of archaeological evidence,” said Francisco Javier Aceituno, an archaeologist at the University of Antioquia, Colombia, who was not involved in the new study.

By comparing genetic datasets, the researchers said they had been able to find the closest living relatives of Indigenous North Americans are west Beringian groups, such as the Inuit, Koryaks and Luoravetlans. Beringia was an ice bridge between modern-day Russia and North America during the last ice age.

Foundation of South America’s Indigenous groups
Gusareva and Kim’s study found that after the early settlers had arrived in South America and then split into four distinct groups — Amazonian, Andean, Chaco Amerindian and Patagonian — they each became isolated in different environments.

Aceituno told DW these groups of hunter-gatherers probably divided “to occupy new territories, generate new family groups and avoid isolation.”

Gusareva believes the new genetic data shows natural barriers, such as the Amazon rainforest and the Andes mountain range, led to the isolation of these Indigenous groups.

“This made their genetic makeup more uniform, similar to what is seen in island populations,” Gusareva said.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/dna-study-fills-gaps-in-indigenous-americans-ancestry/a-72558361

VLADIMIR Putin has expanded one of his nuclear weapons bases at a frozen site in Russia.

It is the same military site where five people were killed after a nuclear-powered missile exploded while testing in 2019.

New satellite images reveal construction work inside the strictly controlled military site of Nenoksa.

Three new facilities – each the size of a football field – can be seen at the centre of the naval testing site.

They have been constructed near a railway line that is thought to bring missiles and testing gear into Nenoksa.

The area, which before 2023 was forest, is now surrounded by double-barbed wire fences.

Both launchers are directed towards the White Sea, the latest Google Earth images show.

Similar blue launcher containers can also be seen in other test facilities for missiles in Russia.

This includes the Kapustin Yar in the Astrakhan region and, in recent years, Pankovo at Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic.

Rosatom has used the latter for testing the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile under development.

Another launch area is located by the shore in the northwest outskirts of the Nenoksa test range seems to still be active.

There is no public information available revealing what kind of missile tests will take place at the new constructions that can be seen on the latest satellite images.

In 2019, five Rosatom experts were killed after they were exposed to radiation at the Nenoksa site.

American nuke experts said the testing of a Russian nuclear cruise missile was to blame for a huge explosion at a military site.

Russia’s state nuclear agency confirmed the deaths were caused by a blast, which left a further three people injured and sparked radiation fears.

The accident happened while testing “isotopic power sources in a liquid propulsion system”, state nuclear agency Rosatom said in a statement.

But US experts claim Rosatom may have been testing an experimental nuclear-powered cruise missile, which Vladimir Putin claimed to be “invincible” against all existing and prospective defence systems.

Russian officials initially tried to play down the radiation leak, saying the levels were normal.

But a spokeswoman for Severodvinsk, a city close to the test site, said in a statement that a “short-term” spike in background radiation was recorded at noon Thursday.

In separate interviews, two experts said that a liquid rocket propellant explosion would not release radiation.

They said the explosion and radiation release could have resulted from a mishap during the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile at a facility outside the village of Nyonoksa.

Neither the Defence Ministry nor Rosatom have identified the type of weapon that exploded during the test.

But Rosatom’s statement said the explosion occurred during tests of a “nuclear isotope power source,” which led observers to conclude it was the “Burevestnik” or “Storm Petrel,” a nuclear-powered cruise missile.

Nato has code-named the missile “Skyfall.”

The missile was first revealed by Russian President Putin in his 2018 state-of-the-nation address, along with other doomsday weapons.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/14261151/vladimir-putin-nuclear-missile-base-nenoksa/

COPS have charged a second man with assault over the alleged Chris Brown bottle attack at a London nightclub.

The American R&B singer was charged with grievous bodily harm with intent after being arrested at a 5-star hotel earlier this week.

It comes after Brown allegedly assaulted a man at a London nightclub in February 2023.

He was detained by Met Police Detectives just after 2am at The Lowry Hotel in Manchester after flying into the city on a private jet on Wednesday afternoon.

He was held on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm to music producer Abe Diaw at Tape nightclub in Mayfair, Central London, in February 2023.

Brown was charged on Thursday evening and remains in police custody.

A second man has now been charged with grievous bodily harm with intent.

US national Omololu Akinlolu, 38, is due to appear at Manchester Magistrates’ Court today.

A Metropolitan Police spokesperson added: “The charge relates to an assault, which reportedly took place at a venue in Hanover Square in London, on Sunday, 19 February 2023.

“A man has already appeared in court in connection with the same matter.

“Chris Brown, 36 (05.05.89), also a US national, was charged on Thursday, 15 May with grievous bodily harm with intent.

“He appeared in custody at Manchester Magistrates’ Court on Friday, 16 May.

“He was remanded in custody to appear at Southwark Crown Court on Friday, 13 June.

“The charge relates to an assault, which reportedly took place at a venue in Hanover Square in London, on Sunday, 19 February 2023.”

The Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor for CPS London North, Adele Kelly, said: “We have authorised the Metropolitan Police to charge Chris Brown with one count of grievous bodily harm, contrary to section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.

“The alleged incident occurred in London on 19 February 2023.

“He will have his first court appearance on Friday 16 May at Manchester Magistrates’ Court.

“The Crown Prosecution Service reminds all concerned that criminal proceedings against this defendant are active and that he has the right to a fair trial.

“It is extremely important that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.”

The two-time Grammy winner was set to kick off his 20-year anniversary tour next month.

This includes two nights at the Co-Op Live stadium in Manchester before performances in Cardiff, London, Birmingham and Glasgow in June.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/14258458/chris-brown-arrest-charge-gbh-second-man-charged/

AT least 30 people have been killed and many injured as devastating storms spawning tornadoes tear through the mid-west.

Officials from Laurel County, Kentucky, confirmed that a tornado “pummeled” the region late on Friday night “causing mass casualties”.

At least 23 people were killed and dozens injured in the twister that hit Ohio Valley with rescue crews continuing to search through the flattened homes and businesses for survivors.

“Multiple fatalities have been confirmed as a result of a tornado that pummeled Laurel County late Friday evening,” Laurel County Fiscal Court said in a Facebook post.

“Destroyed homes and buildings are still being searched by emergency responders.”

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear confirmed on Saturday morning that the original death toll for the state that stood at nine had risen to 14 and was expected to grow.

“Kentucky, we’re starting today with the tough news that we lost at least 14 of our people to last night’s storms, but sadly, this number is expected to grow as we receive more information,” he wrote on X.

“Please pray for all of our affected families.”

By Saturday afternoon, the Laurel County death toll had increased to at least 23, the London Mayor Randall Weddle told the Courier Journal.

Beshear had declared a state of emergency ahead of the storms warning of a “dangerous weather system” with emergency crews and the Kentucky Guard on standby as they braced for devastation.

The National Weather Service had warned that residents in the Mid West should prepare to be hit with severe storms that could cause baseball-sized hail with winds of over 75mph.

The regions of Somerset and London reported the most significant damage as the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that the tornado touched down just before midnight on Friday.

The twister ripped through two neighborhoods and the London Corbin Airport leaving “mass casualties in its path” with at least nine people dead and “numerous [with] severe injuries”, it reported.

London resident Leslie told local emergency officials in a video how she and her family survived the terrifying storm that tore down most of their home.

“(My daughter) got scared so we went to the hallway,” she explained.

“And we were in there about two minutes and then my husband came running in and pretty much jumped on top of her because you could feel the air sucking in, and it sounded like a train.

“And then we saw stuff falling and next thing you knew, most of the house was gone.”

It’s all hands on deck to rescue as many people as we can and save lives.

Mitch McCoySt. Louis police spokesperson
“My family’s OK, I don’t know about everybody else,” she added, noting how she saw injured neighbors as they left to find safety.

“I have never personally witnessed what I‘ve witnessed here tonight. There’s a lot of devastation,” Weddle told CNN affiliate WKYT in the aftermath of the storms.

‘TRULY DEVASTATING’
Just hours earlier in the St. Louis area of Missouri, officials reported that a tornado hit Clayton around 2:30pm local time on Friday leaving at least seven people dead and many injured.

“This is truly, truly devastating,” St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer said, confirming that there had been five fatalities in her city and over 5,000 homes damaged.

Part of the Centennial Christian Church in St Louis collapsed, trapping three people as the storm ravaged the region.

City of St. Louis Fire Department Battalion Chief William Pollihan confirmed that they were rescued but one died as a result of her injuries.

Patricia Penelton died inside the church, her son-in-law Stacy Clark confirmed to NPR, saying she was a church volunteer and took part in the choir.

Jeffrey Simmons Sr. who lives opposite the church told the news outlet how he saw a weather alert on his phone moments before the lights cut out.

“Next thing you know, a lot of noise, heavy wind,” he said, recalling how he and his brother fled to the basement for safety.

“Everything was tore up,” he said after the storm had passed.

“Our priority is life and saving lives and keeping people safe tonight,” Spencer added, with the St. Louis’ Children’s Hospital confirming the treatment of 10 patients, one of whom is in “critical condition”.

The two other confirmed Missouri deaths were reported in Scott County, about 130 miles south of St Louis, by Sheriff Derick Wheetley on social media.

“Our first responders acted swiftly, even while the tornado was still active, putting themselves in harm’s way to provide immediate assistance and care to those injured,” he said.

“The tornado moved from the eastern part of the county, leaving behind a trail of destruction, with multiple homes completely lost and areas left unrecognizable.”

The National Weather Service has confirmed it is working to confirm reports that the St Louis region was hit by two tornadoes on Friday.

Photos of the aftermath show shells of homes with windows blown out and roofs torn off as residents desperately search for their belongings.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/14259396/kentucky-tornado-somerset-st-louis-missouri-dead-storm/

Mark revealed why hen dos are the most fun to take fishing – and how he donates shark meat to homeless shelters

MARK “The Shark” Quartiano boasts that he can catch anything that swims – and judging by his monster trophies, he could be right.

The master fisherman has seen bloody maulings and faced down fierce animal rights activists – but says nothing could stop him taking out thrill-seeking tourists.

Mark has been reeling in big-beast sharks from the Miami Bay for 50 years – and claims to have caught more sharks than anyone else alive.

He reckons he’s hauled 100,000 aboard his yacht, Striker-1, over the decades.

People pay to be taken on extreme fishing trips where Mark helps them catch the “fish of their dreams”.

Mark told The Sun that it’s not just midlife-crisis dads who come brave the waves.

He often hosts stag dos and hen parties – and says it’s the girls who have the most fun reeling in whoppers.

Mark says: “The girls go crazy for it – they love the big sharks. They’re allowed to drink onboard Striker-1 – we’re in the party capital of the world after all. As long as no one gets hurt.

“I’m basically on baby-sitting duty the whole time. I always joke around that next year we’ll be doing the divorce party.”

He’s also welcomed the rich and famous aboard his boat – counting the likes of Robert De Niro and Will Smith among his happy customers.

People head to sea with Mark for all sorts of different reasons.

Some want to take home a huge trophy, while others just want to watch the experts tussle a giant hammerhead.

But Mark is the man who makes it all happen. He has decades of experience, top of the range gear and a custom-built boat specialised for shark hunting.

Mark has sparred with a ridiculous number of sharks, but each one presents a different challenge.

He says: “Some sharks bite a lot harder than others. We had a big bull shark just the other day, maybe 500lb, and she was on the line for a couple of hours. She really didn’t wanna come into the boat at all.

“But you have to expect a challenge – these are big sharks battling for their lives, and they have deep water on their side. But we always get ’em in the end.”

One of his most intense showdowns came a few months ago when he spent more than six hours battling a great white.

And the biggest fish he’s ever reeled was 2300lb – which is more than a tonne.

With sharks that big, it’s vital to know what you’re doing.

And even with so many years of experience in the locker, accidents can still happen.

Mark said: “We’ve had a few guests get bitten, usually because they stand too close to the sharks while they’re trying to get a picture.”

The sharks are normally still alive when they join the crew onboard – so are still capable of chomping down.

“We also had one member of the crew get bit pretty bad on the foot,” he said.

To give him the edge over the beasts, Mark has kitted out Striker-1 with cutting-edge shark-wrangling gear.

He says: “My boat is the only one on the seas with the world-famous fighting chair over the water. It’s been my trademark for over 40 years.

“We can hoist any size shark into the boat using all our winches and block and tackles.”

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/14242220/shark-hunter-reeled-beasts-crew-mauled-mark/

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Saturday (May 17) that Walmart should “eat the tariffs” instead of blaming duties imposed by his administration on imported goods for the retailer’s increased prices.

“Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain. Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected,” Trump said in a social media post.

“Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, ‘EAT THE TARIFFS,’ and not charge valued customers ANYTHING.”

Walmart said it has always worked to keep its prices as low as possible, adding that this practice will not stop.

“We’ll keep prices as low as we can for as long as we can, given the reality of small retail margins,” the company said in a statement to Reuters.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said on Thursday the retailer could not absorb all the tariff costs because of narrow retail margins.

Even so, he said, the company was committed to ensuring that tariff-related costs on general merchandise, which primarily comes from China, would not drive food prices higher.

Many US companies have either slashed or pulled their full-year expectations amid friction between the US and its trading partners, particularly China, as consumers curtail spending.

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/trump-tells-walmart-eat-tariffs-not-raise-prices-5136986

Sean “Diddy” Combs and Casandra “Cassie” Ventura’s private — and sexually explicit — text messages have been publicly released after many of them were read aloud during the Bad Boy Records founder’s sex-trafficking trial earlier in the week.

And while a lot of the exchanges shared in the 162 pages of legal documents appear harmless, there are others that are more sordid.

In one of the text messages obtained by Page Six via Combs’ legal team, Ventura, 38, admitted there were “a lot of d–ks, a lot of partying” at an unidentified gathering.

In another particular text, The “I’ll Be Missing You” rapper, 55, wrote that he was going to “eat that p—y.”

In less shocking messages, Ventura could be seen accusing Combs of treating her like a “sidepiece” and Combs telling Venture to reach out after she got “[herself] together.”

Of course, a lot of these text messages were revealed during proceedings over the last several days when lawyers for Combs tried refuting allegations of abuse and depict Ventura as a consenting participant in his alleged “freak-offs.”

One message in particular, which was sent in 2017, showed Ventura telling Combs she was “too excited” about one of their upcoming “freak-offs.”

She also messaged Combs about forgetting an iPad — which she testified they used to record the sex marathons.

Combs even texted Ventura to “have fun, impress me” when she was on her way to a sex shop to get supplies for a “freak-off,” jurors learned.

During the pregnant singer’s four grueling days on the stand, Combs’ attorney Anna Estevao asked the “Me & U” singer to read some of the texts she sent the rapper during their relationship, which took place from 2007 to 2018.

“I can’t wait to stare at some big black d–k,” a text Ventura wrote to Combs on Aug. 7, 2009, read.

Another — in which Ventura graphically described what she couldn’t “wait” for her then-boyfriend to do to her — was so disturbing that the singer asked the judge for a break.

After Ventura finally completed her testimony — during which she said that she participated in the “freak-offs” to please Combs and avoid his anger — her husband, Alex Fine, released a powerful statement.

“Over the past five days, the world has gotten to witness the strength and bravery of my wife freeing herself of her past,” Fine, who was in court supporting his wife all week, said in his statement read by attorney Douglas Wigdor on Friday.

“I have felt so many things sitting there. I have felt tremendous pride and overwhelming love for Cass. I have felt profound anger that she has been subjected to sitting in front of a person who tried to break her.”

Fine then called out Combs and “all of those who helped him along the way.”

He added, “Please know this: You did not. You did not break her spirit, nor her smile, that lights up every room. You did not break the soul of a mother who gives the best hugs and plays the silliest games with our little girls. You did not break the woman who has made me a better man.”

Source: https://pagesix.com/2025/05/17/celebrity-news/sean-diddy-combs-cassie-venturas-explicit-text-messages-released-publicly-after-being-dissected-in-court/

Tucked away in a lane in the southern end of India’s financial capital, Mumbai, is a museum dedicated to the followers of one of the world’s oldest religions, Zoroastrianism.

The Framji Dadabhoy Alpaiwalla Museum documents the history and legacy of the ancient Parsi community – a small ethnic group that’s fast dwindling and resides largely in India.

Now estimated at just 50,000 to 60,000, the Parsis are believed to be descendants of Persians who fled religious persecution by Islamic rulers centuries ago.

Despite their significant contributions to India’s economic and cultural fabric, much about the Parsi community remains little known to the mainstream population and the wider world.

“The newly-renovated museum hopes to shake off some of this obscurity by inviting people to explore the history, culture and traditions of the Parsi community through the rare historical artefacts on display,” says Kerman Fatakia, curator of the museum.

Some of these include cuneiform bricks, terracotta pots, coins and other objects sourced from places like Babylon, Mesopotamia, Susa and Iran and are dated to 4000-5000 BCE.

These are places where Zoroastrian Iranian kings once ruled, like the Achaemenian, Parthian and Sasanian dynasties.

There are also artefacts from Yazd, a city in central Iran which was once a barren desert and the place where many Zoroastrians settled after fleeing other regions of Iran after the Arab invasion in 7th Century BCE.

One of the notable artefacts on display is a replica of a clay cylinder of Cyrus the Great, a Persian king who was the founder of the Achaemenid empire.

Fatakia says the clay cylinder – also known as the “Edict of Cyrus” or the “Cyrus Cylinder” – is one of the most important discoveries of the ancient world. Inscribed in cuneiform script, it outlines the rights granted by Cyrus to his subjects in Babylon. Widely seen as the first human rights charter, a replica is also displayed at the United Nations.

Then there are maps that trace the migration routes of thousands of Iranian Zoroastrians who fled their home country fearing persecution and travelled to India in the 8th to10th centuries, and again in the 19th century.

The collection also features furniture, manuscripts, paintings, and portraits of prominent Parsis – among them Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, founder of the iconic Tata Group, which owns brands like Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley tea.

Another striking section showcases artefacts collected by Parsis who grew wealthy in the early 19th century trading tea, silk, cotton – and notably, opium – with China. The exhibits include traditional Parsi sarees influenced by designs from China, France, and other regions shaped by these global trade ties.

Two of the museum’s most compelling exhibits are replicas of a Tower of Silence and a Parsi fire temple.

The Tower of Silence, or dakhma, is where Parsis leave their dead to be returned to nature – neither buried nor cremated. “The replica shows exactly what happens to the body once it’s placed there,” says Fatakia, noting that entry to actual towers is restricted to a select few.

The life-size replica of the fire temple is equally fascinating, offering a rare glimpse into a sacred space typically off-limits to non-Parsis. Modelled on a prominent Mumbai temple, it features sacred motifs inspired by ancient Persian architecture in Iran.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgv445jqr1o

Other states with active outbreaks – which the CDC defines as three or more related cases – include Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

New York: Texas’ measles outbreak shows signs of slowing, with fewer than 10 newly reported cases in the last week, but experts say it’s not fully over. “This outbreak does appear to be leveling off, but the affected states remain hypervigilant, and that’s because it’s travel season,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention incident manager Dr. Manisha Patel said Thursday of the southwestern outbreak, which also affects New Mexico and Oklahoma. “There is a lot of global measles activity right now.”

Across the U.S., there are 1,024 confirmed measles cases as of Friday – an increase of 23 in a week. Texas still accounts for the vast majority of cases.

There are three other major outbreaks in North America. One in Ontario, Canada, has resulted in 1,622 cases from mid-October through May 13, which rose by 182 cases in a week. Another in Alberta, Canada, has sickened 409 as of Thursday.

And the Mexican state of Chihuahua had 1,306 measles cases and one death as of Friday, according to data from the state health ministry.

Since the outbreak in the Southwest U.S. began, two elementary school-aged children in the epicenter in West Texas and an adult in New Mexico have died of measles. All were unvaccinated.

Other states with active outbreaks – which the CDC defines as three or more related cases – include Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

Measles is caused by a highly contagious virus that’s airborne and spreads easily when an infected person breathes, sneezes or coughs. It is preventable through vaccines, and has been considered eliminated from the U.S. since 2000. Here’s what else you need to know about measles in the U.S.

How many measles cases are there in Texas? There are a total of 718 cases across 32 counties, most of them in West Texas, state health officials said Friday. The state confirmed only one more case since its update Tuesday.

Hospitalizations were steady at 93 throughout the outbreak.

State health officials estimated about 1 per cent of cases – fewer than 10 – are actively infectious. Fifty-seven percent of Texas’ cases are in Gaines County, population 22,892, where the virus started spreading in a close-knit, undervaccinated Mennonite community. The county has had 406 cases since late January – just over 1.7 per cent of the county’s residents.

Source: https://health.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/texas-measles-outbreak-is-starting-to-slow-the-us-case-count-climbs-slightly-to-1024-cases/121236490

In San Francisco today, booking a car ride does not necessarily mean having a driver pick you up at your location. Instead, you might open the Waymo One mobile application, enter your destination, and within minutes, a silent and driverless car will pull up, and there is no one behind the wheel.

What was once a scene from the Netflix sci-fi series Black Mirror has now become a way of life there.

Waymo is a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, and it operates one of the world’s largest commercial robotaxi services.

The company’s robotaxis now clock more than 250,000 rides each week across cities in the United States such as Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco. In April, Waymo began hitting the streets of Tokyo in Japan, one of its first international locations.

In Guangzhou, China, a similar experience unfolds with self-driving giant WeRide, where a few effortless taps on your mobile phone will summon a car that arrives quietly, without a driver. All you need is a passcode and you are on your way.

WeRide’s autonomous technology also powers larger vehicles such as its fully autonomous eight-seater robobus.

Ms Tan Shi Hui, 33, who took the robobus during a business trip to the southern Chinese city last year, found the ride surprisingly ordinary.

“I felt quite calm throughout. The acceleration and deceleration were smooth, there were no sudden jerks, and even the turns felt gentle,” the independent consultant said, adding that she did not even feel “a hint of anxiety” when on the bus.

The large window panels on all sides allowed her to see clearly what was happening outside on the road, which made the journey feel reassuring, Ms Tan recalled.

Similarly, Mr Wu Linhan and his wife, Ms Amandine Honvault, both 28, tried Baidu Apollo’s self-driving taxis when they were in Guangzhou back in 2023.

Baidu Apollo is the autonomous driving platform developed by Baidu, a leading Chinese technology company.

“It felt like stepping into the future, especially when you see the car turning without anyone’s help,” Mr Wu, a freelance video and photo editor, said.

Ms Honvault, a software engineer, said that they both felt safe because the taxi was not going fast or weaving through heavy traffic.

“We knew someone was checking our itinerary and double-checking that we don’t have issues,” she added.

Hearing of such developments, where integrated autonomous vehicles (AVs) have become a part of everyday transport, it would seem that Singapore is lagging behind, even though it is often viewed as a global leader in smart technology.

Since 2015, Singapore has been facilitating on-road AV trials, but these have been primarily at controlled sites such as closed campuses or shuttle loops at Ngee Ann Polytechnic or Resorts World Sentosa.

Under current regulations, AVs can only be operated as part of authorised trials. Private ownership or public use of driverless cars remains prohibited.

Even so, experts told CNA TODAY that Singapore’s more deliberate and cautious approach towards AV testing, though more “demanding”, prioritises safety and builds up confidence for users with the technology.

Mr Daniel Chow, principal at consulting firm Arthur D Little Southeast Asia, said: “Singapore is not the first to deploy autonomous vehicles, but it may be one of the first to get it right.”

Mr Chow, who advises his firm’s clients on business growth among other areas, added that Singapore’s “slowness” in deploying AVs stems from various factors, including the need to build confidence in operating them on bus routes, ensuring public transport operators can train workers effectively and assuring commuters that the technology has been thoroughly tested before going mainstream.

Indeed, in response to queries from CNA TODAY, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said that while countries such as the US and China have deployed fleets of AVs as robotaxis, safety remains the key focus in Singapore.

“Safety is paramount and our priority is to ensure the local operating environment is suitable to facilitate their deployment in a safe manner, while also addressing issues related to public acceptance of such technology,” the authority added.

It also said that its first phase of AV deployment will focus on fixed-route shuttles such as road-sweeping and logistics AVs.

“LTA will ensure all safety and public acceptability issues are adequately addressed first, before moving on to other more complex use cases like robotaxis,” it added.

Mr Soh Ming, founder and managing director of Volt Auto, the authorised distributor of Dongfeng automobiles in Singapore, said: “The cautious approach makes sense, because in a dense city like Singapore, you don’t just roll out autonomous technology without being absolutely sure it’s safe.

“There’s no room for error.”

Dongfeng, one of the largest car manufacturers in China, has been actively developing autonomous driving technology with trials involving robotaxis, autonomous trucks and smart mobility solutions as part of its push into next-generation transport.

“We are moving slowly, but we are moving with intent. When Singapore does scale AVs, it will be with a system that is tested, integrated and trusted,” Mr Soh added.

HOW FAR AV HAS COME AROUND THE WORLD

Self-driving technology has made significant progress in recent years around the world, reaching a baseline maturity that enables it to operate on many urban roads without human drivers.

These autonomous vehicles can follow traffic rules, change lanes, react to traffic lights and avoid obstacles or pedestrians. However, AVs still need human oversight in complex scenarios such as extreme weather, unpredictable human behaviour or unusual road conditions.

Currently, most AVs that exist are classified at Level 3 or Level 4 autonomy, based on the six levels of driving automation established by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), recognised as the global standard.

Level 0 refers to full human control of the vehicle. Level 5, the highest, represents full autonomy, where the vehicle can operate on any road and under all conditions without any human intervention.

With AV technology advancing rapidly, some countries such as China, Japan and the US have embraced autonomous vehicles extensively and are scaling up their commercial operations.

Besides Waymo in San Francisco, Amazon subsidiary Zoox is preparing to expand production of its purpose-built autonomous vehicles, which feature bidirectional driving and no steering wheel.

Similarly, in China, car manufacturer Xpeng has launched the P7+, an electric vehicle featuring the company’s XNGP autonomous driving system.

Unlike rival systems, Xpeng’s does not rely on LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), a technology that uses laser pulses to create precise 3D maps of the environment, but which can be costly and bulky.

Instead, Xpeng’s system relies on a combination of cameras, ultrasonic sensors and radar to navigate complex urban conditions.

WeRide has expanded rapidly beyond China, launching robotaxi services in Abu Dhabi in partnership with ride-hailing firm Uber. It plans to extend operations to Dubai and 15 other cities globally over the next five years.

The company has also received approval in China to operate fully unmanned paid ride-hailing services in Beijing, and it holds permits for passenger rides, highway driving and remote driverless operations in Guangzhou.

Competitor Pony.ai is not far behind; at the Auto Shanghai 2025 exhibition recently, the company unveiled its seventh-generation autonomous driving system, which allows for 100 per cent mass production of robotaxis to automotive standards.

In China, Pony.ai has reduced production costs of its AV systems by 70 per cent, bringing the company closer to profitability and making mass robotaxi deployment more commercially viable.

SINGAPORE’S DRIVE TO THE FUTURE 

In Singapore, various testbeds have been rolled out across the island over the years. These include autonomous shuttle trials on Sentosa Island, campus-based deployments at the National University of Singapore and One-north, and small-scale commercial pilots such as NTUC FairPrice Group’s collaboration with logistics partner Zelos.

To address the decreasing number of truck drivers, FairPrice Group Supply Chain Business began deploying the Zelos Z10, the first fully driverless autonomous vehicle designed for the logistics sector, to transfer pallets of goods between its warehouses in Joo Koon in October 2024.

Since April 2024, WeRide Robobus has been deployed at selected hours as a pilot service to ferry passengers around Resorts World Sentosa.

Over at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, MooVita, a software provider of autonomous driving technology, has been providing autonomous shuttle services within the campus since January 2023.

To boost productivity and improve the working conditions of its employees, cleaning service Chye Thiam Maintenance has deployed the WeRide S1 Robosweeper to sweep the outdoor areas of The Esplanade and the WeRide S6 Robosweeper for road sweeping in the Marina Coastal Drive area since October 2024.

Singapore’s approach to AV integration is supported by the Centre of Excellence for Testing and Research of Autonomous Vehicles-NTU (CETRAN), established in August 2016.

CETRAN serves as a dedicated facility for testing and certifying AVs, ensuring that safety assessments are conducted before deployment on public roads.

Last November, during the Singapore International Transport Congress & Exhibition 2024, Minister for Transport Chee Hong Tat talked about Singapore’s progress in the AV space, reiterating that safety is the nation’s top priority when assessing the deployment of the technology for commercial use cases.

Even though Singapore would like to “move more quickly”, the current “calibrated and data-driven approach” is best given its dense urban environment and to ensure that the different elements of the ecosystem are ready, he said.

As for robotaxis, Mr Chee said the authorities remained open to exploring them, but he added that the ones offering point-to-point services are more complex to deploy safely compared with AVs that operate with fixed routes.

For now, trials will focus on AVs operating on defined routes, such as logistics vehicles and minibuses. However, if fixed-route robotaxis prove commercially viable, LTA would be open to exploring those as well, Mr Chee added.

“As technology continues to mature and public confidence grows, we will be able to scale up deployment across more routes and more use cases, including the possibility of full-fledged robotaxis in future,” he said.

In January this year, LTA issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) to pilot autonomous public bus services. The initiative aims to assess the technical feasibility of AV technology for public bus services and gain insights into operational aspects at both service and fleet levels.

The pilot will start with smaller buses of at least 16 seats on bus service 400, which runs around the Shenton Way bus terminal, and bus service 191, which loops from Buona Vista Bus terminal to Media Circle in One-north.

These areas were chosen for their shorter and simpler routes.

The RFP states that the buses will initially operate with bus drivers onboard as safety operators, with the possibility of moving to remote supervision after demonstrating reliability for at least six months.

LTA plans to procure six autonomous buses for a start, with operations set to begin in mid-2026 for an initial period of three years. Depending on their performance, up to 14 more buses may be acquired to expand the pilot to two more services.

Other AV initiatives involving Singapore companies include ComfortDelGro’s first robotaxi pilot programme in Guangzhou, which was launched in partnership with Pony.ai.

The two-year pilot, initiated in March this year, aims to develop and refine capabilities for autonomous vehicle technology operations and fleet management, with the goal of large-scale deployment in China and other international markets.

ComfortDelGro, Singapore’s largest taxi operator, said in response to queries from CNA TODAY that the robotaxis have been “well-received” by the public in Guangzhou, with consistent daily numbers.

So far, the pilot has experienced zero at-fault traffic incidents and zero passenger incidents, it added.

“The technology has demonstrated that it can adapt and manoeuvre well in mixed traffic and weather conditions with minimal virtual assistance, ensuring a smooth and safe ride for passengers,” ComfortDelGro said.

“The lessons learnt would be useful for application in Singapore and other parts of the world when regulations permit in the future.”

On whether ComfortDelGro will introduce its robotaxis to Singapore as well, the company said that for the robotaxis to be commercially viable on a larger scale, the technology will have to be mature enough for safe mixed-environment driving, supported by strong regulation and public trust.

“We have seen successful case studies of robotaxis on the road in China, San Francisco and other parts of the world. However, for it to take off on a more significant scale globally, it would require wider public acceptance and a stronger push at the policy level.”

“A CAUTIOUS APPROACH” BETTER FOR SINGAPORE

While other cities might be racing ahead to integrate autonomous vehicles into their public transport systems, Singapore’s “slow” approach reflects the city’s dense and highly complex environment, experts said.

Mr Alex Tang, head of Xpeng’s international division of sales and service in Singapore, said: “Bringing AV technology to a densely populated and highly regulated environment like Singapore requires a deliberate, step-by-step approach.”

It is crucial to consider the unique characteristics of Singapore’s urban landscape, including its high traffic density, diverse mix of road users who include those on personal mobility devices and the weather conditions here, he added.

Dr Dan Chia, senior lecturer at the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), said Singapore’s many pilot programmes and “step-wise” approach are also due to its lack of “greenfield spaces” as compared with other cities such as Guangzhou and San Francisco.

Greenfield spaces are undeveloped lands ideal for unrestricted design and testing.

Dr Chia, who researches AVs and intelligent transport systems, added: “China and the US have greenfield spaces to play in, where areas and surroundings can be clearly marked without too much public interaction. But in Singapore, it’s difficult, since we lack a true greenfield to test AV tech.

“A step-wise approach may seem a little bit slower compared to overseas cities, but this reduces the danger and unwanted accidents, given the more complex scenarios in Singapore.”

Although the island’s density might seem like a roadblock to adopting autonomous vehicles, Mr Chow from Arthur D Little Southeast Asia said that it is “our proving ground” and works to the country’s advantage in its foray into AV technology.

“Autonomous vehicles in Singapore have to navigate tight, highly dense and complex environments … if you can make autonomous technology work here, you can make it work in most urban environments.”

Agreeing, Mr Tang from Xpeng said the city’s well-regulated roads and high compliance with traffic rules offer a “conducive environment” for deploying and refining autonomous systems.

Dr Chia said that deploying public buses is a more challenging endeavour than robotaxis, due to real-life scenarios and “occlusions” that are difficult to test for, as well as the high expectations people have for public transport.

Occlusions are situations where a vehicle’s sensors are blocked or cannot clearly detect objects, people or other vehicles.

“When you talk about public roads, the speed of operation is different and the environment is more complex because you will have more occlusions,” Dr Chia said, citing situations such as when cyclists appear unexpectedly.

He noted that Singapore’s cautious approach is also because AV buses face more challenging demands than robotaxis, which carry just a few passengers. Buses must handle larger passenger volumes and, if standing passengers are allowed, smooth acceleration and braking become critical to avoid injuries.

Furthermore, even if the technology and testing proceed as planned, large-scale deployment of autonomous vehicles requires an “ecosystem” to ensure long-term business viability.

ECOSYSTEM WITH MANY STAKEHOLDERS 

Developing an AV transport system does not rely on technology alone – it requires “many moving parts that need to move together in concert”, Mr Chow said.

Agreeing, Mr Tang said Singapore presents unique challenges that would require significant and sustained investments, “not just in physical infrastructure, but also in digital systems and urban design that support safe and efficient AV operations”.

“It’s a confluence of different factors. The government can certainly try to orchestrate (the developments), like it currently does with electric vehicles and electrification,” Mr Chow added, noting that the upcoming RFP from LTA is a “step in the right direction”.

“Going forward, you’ll need an ecosystem approach where all of the various actors and players within the transport and mobility ecosystem invest capital, invest time and invest resources to make it happen.”

Even with successful trials, Dr Chia cautioned that deploying AV buses is “not so straightforward”. It can be costly and complex, requiring specialised expertise, extensive training and high overheads, making it a business that needs “deep pockets”.

“This business model is very different from typical bus services provided by operators like Tower Transit or under the SBS model,” he said.

“Existing bus drivers do not have the technical expertise to operate AV buses, and the technological requirements are far beyond the current baseline.”

Dr Chia noted that AV buses are far more expensive to purchase than conventional models and may not turn a profit for years, even if they run 24 hours a day, assuming that maintenance costs are manageable.

Professor Zhao Jinhua, the co-lead principal investigator of Mens, Manus and Machina, an interdisciplinary research group at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, said that scaling autonomous vehicles safely remains “a formidable challenge”.

“As AV fleets grow, the ability to maintain them efficiently becomes crucial.”

Prof Zhao said this extends beyond software and includes the physical upkeep of vehicles and robotic systems, which are needed to perform tasks such as cleaning, charging, diagnostics and repairs of the fleet for minimal downtime.

“Automating these operational tasks is a foundational step toward making AV deployment not just technologically feasible, but economically sustainable.”

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/today/big-read/big-read-self-driving-vehicles-5116971

Elon Musk’s xAI responded to widespread reports that its Grok chatbot made claims about a genocide against white citizens in South Africa, saying there had been an unauthorized change to the artificial intelligence bot. In a post on X on Thursday, xAI said it would update the system to address the problem.

Issues of political biases, hate speech and accuracy of AI chatbots have been a concern since at least the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022.

XAI said that early on Wednesday the unauthorized change was made to Grok’s response software, circumventing the normal review process.

“This change, which directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic, violated xAI’s internal policies and core values,” xAI said.

Some X users on Wednesday noticed that Grok brought up the topic of “white genocide” in South Africa in unrelated discussions about other matters, sharing screenshots of their exchanges.

Critics of a land expropriation policy in South Africa, including white South African-born Musk, have called it racist against whites. The South Africa government says that there is no evidence of persecution and that claims by U.S. President Donald Trump and others of “genocide” are unfounded.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/musks-xai-updates-grok-chatbot-after-white-genocide-comments-5136211

Cassie Ventura has tearfully told a court she would give back a $20m (£15m) legal settlement from Sean “Diddy” Combs if it meant she would never have taken part in his “humiliating” drug-fuelled sex parties.

She rejected defence suggestions that her accusations were financially motivated as she wrapped up four days of testimony in the New York criminal trial of her ex-boyfriend.

Ms Ventura, the government’s star witness, faced questioning from both legal teams about her decade-long relationship with Mr Combs, and their “freak-off” sex sessions.

Mr Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. He could face life in prison.

Ms Ventura’s testimony revealed graphic details about her sex life with the rapper and the physical violence she allegedly endured from him.

The rap mogul’s lawyers have been trying to depict Ms Ventura, 38, as an eager participant in the sexual lifestyle.

She testified this week that she was coerced into the sessions, which involved male escorts, because Mr Combs had threatened her with violence.

On Friday she addressed a $20m pay-out he gave her after she filed a lawsuit against him in November 2023.

The settlement, which came just one day after the filing of the legal action, was public knowledge, but the number was previously unknown.

Mr Combs’ lawyer, Anna Estevao, seemed to imply that Ms Ventura was strapped for cash before filing her lawsuit. The singer had just moved to her parents’ house with her husband and children.

Ms Ventura rejected this suggestion, later sharing that she would exchange the money for a life free of the “freak offs”, which she said caused her physical injuries, would sometimes go on for days, and stifled her career as a singer.

“I would have agency and autonomy,” she said.

Mr Combs’ legal team also showed the jury dozens of messages between the couple from each stage of their relationship, arguing their dynamic was toxic at times, but not criminal.

Minutes before Ms Ventura was set to leave the stand on Friday, the defence questioned her about another legal settlement she won.

Ms Ventura told the court she was expecting to receive about $10m from InterContinental Hotels, connected to her claims against Mr Combs.

The settlement relates to an incident at the InterContinental in Los Angeles in 2016, in which security footage showed Mr Combs hitting, kicking and dragging her in a hallway.

That clip was played at length in court this week, and is one of the most important pieces of evidence in the trial.

On Friday in court, Ms Ventura went through her texts after that beating. In one message she told Mr Combs: “I’m not a rag doll. I’m somebody’s child.”

She and Mr Combs were expressing love for each other days later in other texts.

The defence cross-examination continued on all day Thursday and Friday.

The prosecution squeezed in two more witnesses before court adjourned for the weekend.

One was Dawn Richard, a singer in the group Danity Kane – formed on Diddy’s MTV show Making the Band. Last year she filed a lawsuit accusing him of physical abuse and withholding her earnings.

Ms Richard testified that she saw Mr Combs assault Ms Ventura at his Los Angeles mansion in 2009.

“She fell down,” Ms Richard told the court. “She was in the foetal position.”

After the incident, she said Mr Combs took her aside and told her what she saw was “passion” and that where he is from, “people go missing” if they talk.

US Homeland Security special agent Yasin Binda took the stand as well, telling the court about the cash, drugs and baby oil that were seized from the rapper’s hotel room when he was arrested in New York.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj42nvrkgzno

Car maker Nissan says it is open to sharing factories around the world with its Chinese state-owned partner Dongfeng as it shakes up its business.

The Japanese firm, which employs thousands of people in the UK, told the BBC it could bring Dongfeng “into the Nissan production eco-system globally.”

This week, the struggling company said it would lay off 11,000 workers and shut seven factories but did not say where the cuts would be made.

Speaking about Nissan’s UK plant on Thursday at a conference organised by the Financial Times, its boss Ivan Espinosa said: “We have announced that we are launching new cars in Sunderland… In the very short term, there’s no intention to go around Sunderland.”

Nissan’s revelation it is willing to strengthen ties with the Chinese firm comes as the UK’s trade relationship with China is in the spotlight.

On Wednesday, the UK government moved to rebutt suggestions the tariff agreement it reached with the US last week could be damaging to China.

It said there was “no such thing as a veto on Chinese investment” in the deal.

The UK-US agreement rowed back on big hikes in tariffs on metals and cars imposed by US President Donald Trump, but it also included conditions requiring the UK to “promptly meet” US demands on the “security of the supply chains” of steel and aluminium products exported to America.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in London said China had “made representations to the UK, asking for clarification”.

“China is firmly opposed to any party seeking a deal at the expense of China’s interests. Should that situation arise, China will respond as necessary.”

Nissan’s latest job cuts came on top of 9,000 layoffs announced in November as it faces weak sales in key markets such as the US and China.

The total cuts will hit 15% of its workforce as part of a cost saving effort that it said would reduce its global production by a fifth.

Nissan’s own brands have struggled to make in-roads in China, which is the world’s biggest car market, as stiff competition has led to falling prices.

It has partnered with Beijing-controlled Dongfeng for more than 20 years and they currently work together to build cars in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Nissan employs around 133,500 people globally, with about 6,000 workers in Sunderland.

The firm has also faced a number of leadership changes and failed merger talks with its larger rival Honda.

Negotiations between the two collapsed in February after the firms were unable to agree on a multi-billion-dollar tie-up.

After the failure of the talks, then-chief executive Makoto Uchida was replaced by Mr Espinosa, who was the company’s chief planning officer and head of its motorsports division.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8dpy27pv0o

He was in a “Sorry” state of affairs.

Justin Bieber sold his music catalog for $200 million in December 2022 because he was on the verge of “financial collapse,” according to a new documentary.

“TMZ Investigates: What Happened to Justin Bieber,” which is now available on Hulu, digs into the 31-year-old singer’s money troubles, alleging that he was in debt from pulling out of his “Justice” World Tour in 2022.

This, despite the fact that the “Peaches” crooner has reportedly made somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion in his career.

TMZ executive producer Harry Levin claims that Bieber “had to sell his music catalog because he was broke.”

“I was on a call with multiple people — Justin’s side acknowledges that in 2022, he was on the verge of … the words were ‘financial collapse.’ And that’s why he had to sell his catalog,” Levin alleges in the documentary.

Levin also claimed that when Bieber’s then-manager, Scooter Braun, got wind of the sale, he encouraged the singer to wait until January 2023 to make the sale in order to get a tax break.

“Justin said, ‘I gotta sell it now.’ And he sold it in December. That’s how broke he was,” Levin claims.

Also in the doc, TMZ executive producer Don Nash claims that Bieber would have made $90 million had he finished his Justice World Tour, which he canceled in September 2022 because he wanted to prioritize his health.

The TMZ doc comes one month after the Hollywood Reporter published a story also alleging that Bieber had been saddled with millions of dollars in debt after canceling the tour.

Merck Mercuriadis — founder of Hipgnosis, which bought Bieber’s catalog — told the Hollywood Reporter, “With the money up front, you’re free to plan in a way where you don’t have to be beholden to anyone else. You don’t necessarily have to go on tour or make another record, if that’s not how you want to spend the next few years. You can then afford to take some risks on yourself.

“For Justin, I think that was the motivation: He had ill health and was at a time in his life where he was married and very in love and contemplating family,” he continued. “Making the deal gave him the freedom to focus on that and not have to be on the treadmill he’d been on for almost 15 years.”

Meanwhile, Bieber has also sought to dispel rumors about him and Sean “Diddy” Combs during the music mogul’s sex trafficking trial as one of his former protégés.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/05/16/entertainment/why-justin-bieber-sold-music-catalog-for-200-million-new-doc/

US President Donald Trump arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Thursday, after visiting Qatar, in the final leg of his Middle East trip. He was received by UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and welcomed in Abu Dhabi with a unique cultural performance, a video of which has caught the attention of social media users. Upon arriving at Qasr Al Watan – the UAE Presidential Palace – Trump was greeted with a traditional Al-Ayyala performance, a cultural art form from the Sultanate of Oman and the UAE, which involves women tossing their hair from side to side.

A video shared on X by White House aide Margo Martin showed Trump being led through a formation of women dramatically hair-flipping in sync with drums and chants. The US President is seen blankly watching the dancers as they flip their long hair left to right. Several men could also be seen waving sword-like objects during the performance.

“The welcome ceremony in UAE continues!” Ms Martin wrote on X while sharing the clip.

Since being shared, the video has garnered more than 5.3 million views. In the comments section, users expressed curiosity about the cultural performance. “Can someone explain the hair tossing by the females?” asked one user. “Someone pls explain what the hair/head swing is all about,” commented another.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the cultural performance, called Al-Ayyala, involves chanting poetry, drum music and dance, and simulates a battle scene. Girls wearing traditional dresses stand at the front in a row, tossing their long hair from side to side. Two rows of about twenty men face each other, carrying thin bamboo sticks to signify spears or swords.

The dance is typically performed at weddings and festive occasions in Oman and the UAE. Performers come from diverse backgrounds and age groups. The lead performer is usually an inherited role and is responsible for training other performers. Al-Ayyala is inclusive of all ages, genders and social classes.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/watch-hair-flipping-dancers-welcome-trump-to-uae-all-about-the-cultural-performance-8427034

The fortresses and cobbled streets of the ancient Croatian town of Dubrovnik are often crowded with tourists eager to visit the locations from the Game of Thrones television series or the Star Wars: The Last Jedi film.
But comments by President Donald Trump this month that he will impose a 100% tariff on all movies produced outside the United States have alarmed the entertainment industry and some locals in Dubrovnik who fear directors may no longer film there.

“There have been huge disruptions because of the tariffs that Trump plans to introduce,” said Croatian film producer Igor Aleksandar Nola, adding that budgets had already been hit by global economic upheaval.
“Part of the financing coming from banks and investment funds for audio-visual arts has been on standby because of the uncertainty,” Nola told Reuters.
Central European countries and the Balkans have been used by Hollywood for years for their dramatic scenery, mix of architectural styles and cheaper filming costs. If a movie or series is a hit those locations can become hugely popular with visitors.

“The film and Game of Thrones have changed Dubrovnik for sure,” said tourist guide Ivan Vukovic. About 1,000 tourists join a Game of Thrones tour every day, he said.

New souvenir shops were opened and jobs created for tourist guides and locals assisting in film productions out of season.
“All of this created a big economic boom,” Vukovic said.
Trump did not provide details about the timing of tariffs, leaving executives wondering how they could be applied to the film industry.
Participants at the Cannes Film Festival, which opened on Tuesday, continued a cautious business-as-usual approach after the initial shock by the tariff announcement.
Mate Frankovic, the mayor of Dubrovnik, which receives about 1.4 million tourists a year, said he did not expect the crisis to last long or seriously affect film productions and tourism in Dubrovnik.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/croatias-game-thrones-filming-sites-face-threat-trump-tariffs-2025-05-16/

FLYING taxis are set to take sports fans around Los Angeles at the next “car-free” 2028 Olympics – and they will cost the same price as an Uber.

Olympic committee LA28 have announced a partnership with Archer Aviation – and the collaboration is set to launch an incredible fleet of air cabs.

The aviation firm announced the groundbreaking plans on Thursday, which aim to cut through LA’s notoriously bad traffic.

Concepts for flying cabs have surfaced before but have failed to take off.

Aerial taxis were set to debut in the Paris Games in 2024 – but lacked certification from Europe’s safety agency.

Archer Aviation is also yet to be approved by the US Federal Aviation Administration.

But defiant founder and CEO Adam Goldstein says that his brand hopes to receive that critical certification by the end of 2025.

The mind-blowing cabs will take sports fans around the City of Angels in short 10-20 minute trips.

There will also be designated pick-up and drop-off spots for visitors and locals alike.

This network of “vertiports” includes stations at SoFi Stadium, LAX, and other hubs from Santa Monica to Orange County.

Goldstein said: “Imagine an Olympic event taking place in Dodger Stadium, and then having to get back to SoFi for the medal ceremony.

“How are you going to get there if you’re stuck in two hours [of] traffic?”

The cutting-edge passenger jets are part of a huge effort by LA28 to have a “car-free” Olympics that will allow the city to better digest the expected 15 million attendees of the Games.

And just like the popular taxi app Uber, punters will be able to request a ride using a new app on their phone.

Goldstein added that the goal for cost would be to keep prices on par with a high-end ride share like Uber Lux.

The firm plans to launch a fleet of their piloted Midnight aircraft – which is part of a family of vehicles dubbed eVTOLs.

This stands for electric vertical take-off landing aircraft.

Archer Aviation is backed by Boeing and United Airlines, and their Midnight model is built using 12 engines and propellers.

It also produces “less noise and emissions than a traditional helicopter”, according to LA28.

Goldstein explained: “There’s a reason wealthy and famous people use helicopters — they’re extremely convenient.”

His firm is projected to have a fleet of 50 air taxis by the time the 2028 Olympics take place – but demand may overtake supply.

On top of public transport, Archer Aviation’s air vehicles will also provide emergency services and security support at the Games, according to Goldstein.

He added: “We’re perfectly situated to do that kind of stuff.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/sport/14250053/flying-taxi-fleet-olympics/

THIS is the horrifying moment an Uber driver threatens a passenger with a gun after being told she has “crazy eyes”.

The shocking scenes left two female passengers terrified for their lives as a masked driver forced them out of her vehicle at gunpoint.

The Uber driver can be seen becoming increasingly irate as she shouts at Miami rapper Krissy Celess, also known as Bomb Ass Krissy.

“You’re harassing me. Get out of my vehicle right now. Get out of my vehicle,” she tells the singer.

“You’re no longer in the ride, get out, get out right now.”

The artist replies: “She got them crazy eyes.”

In a split second, the fuming driver is filmed pulling out a gun and pointing it at her passengers’ faces.

She says again “get out, get out” as she waves her weapon while sitting behind the wheel.

The women exit the vehicle and tell the Uber employee: “You’re gonna go viral, you’re going viral”.

In the moments that follow the car speeds away from the terrified victims.

Krissy posted the alarming footage with the caption: “Help us get her off the streets before she potentially harms another passenger.”

In an update, the artist confirmed Uber are investigating the “extremely concerning” incident.

The driver also appears to have been removed from the service.

Florida Police have launched a probe into the disturbing footage after Krissy filed a report.

At present, no arrests have been made.

Other shocking scenes recently caught on camera include the moment a crazed man tried to stab a flight attendant and open the emergency door mid-flight.

Disturbing footage shows Francisco Severo Torres, 34, threatening fellow passengers.

The dramatic turn of events took place aboard a United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Boston.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14250643/uber-driver-threatens-passenger-gunpoint/

THIS is the horrifying moment a plane engine panel came off mid-air, sending passengers into a frenzy.

Terrifying footage taken from inside the plane shows the panel flapping dangerously – just inches away from the propeller.

The ATR 72-600 plane got into trouble shortly after taking off from Kaohsiung International Airport in Taiwan on Friday morning.

Dramatic footage shows the metal panel of the aircraft flapping violently in the wind – leaving the engine exposed.

And for one nail-biting moment sparks can be seen flying as the panel comes within inches of the rotating propeller.

Passengers reportedly raised the alarm when the plane began to shake out of control.

The pilots quickly declared an in-flight emergency and returned the aircraft to Kaohsiung

One panic-stricken passenger said: “Not long after take off, the plane started shaking.

“Everyone looked out the window and began shouting for the flight attendants.

“The scariest part was that the flight attendants didn’t say anything, but their eyes looked terrified.

“That scared me even more.”

An investigation has been launched to determine what caused the mechanical failure.

This comes after a police plane crashed into the sea in Thailand, leaving at least five people dead.

The aircraft was caught on camera nosediving into the water before reportedly being split in two upon impact.

Officials confirmed the plane was just over 300ft off shore at the time of the fatal plummet.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14256174/plane-engine-panel-falls-mid-flight/

DONALD Trump has lashed out at James Comey after the former FBI chief shared a beach snap that has been perceived as a threat to the president.

Comey shared a picture of seashells that spelled out the code 8647.

The number 86 refers to an item being taken off the menu or “killed,” and Trump is the 47th president.

It prompted critics to claim it signified a threat toward the president.

Trump blasted Comey in an interview with Fox News journalist Bret Baier, saying a child would’ve understood the sentiment behind the social media post.

“He knew exactly what that meant – a child knows what that meant,” he said.

“If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination. It says it loud and clear.

“He wasn’t very competent but he was competent enough to know what that meant and he did it for a reason.”

Trump described Comey as a “dirty cop.”

Comey attracted a torrent of criticism from Trump’s family and federal government officials.

Kristi Noem, the head of Homeland Security, warned that Secret Service agents would launch a probe.

Meanwhile, Trump’s son, Don Jr, also echoed similar sentiments on social media.

Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, claimed Comey knew what he was doing.

“James Comey just issued a call to action to murder the President of the United States,” she wrote on X.

“As a former FBI Director and someone who spent most of his career prosecuting mobsters and gangsters, he knew exactly what he was doing and must be held accountable under the full force of the law.

“We fully support the Secret Service investigation into Comey’s threat on President Trump’s life.”

The White House cabinet secretary, Taylor Budowich, said the case is being treated seriously.

“While President Trump is currently on an international trip to the Middle East, the former FBI Director puts out what can clearly be interpreted as ‘a hit’ on the sitting President of the United States — a message etched in the sand,” he said.

“This is deeply concerning to all of us and is being taken seriously.”

Kash Patel, the current FBI director, said his team is in talks with the Secret Service.

Comey, who served as FBI director between 2013 and 2017, clarified the picture in a subsequent statement.

“I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message,” he said.

” I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.

“It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

But, Comey is expected to be interviewed by Secret Service agents, per Fox News.

Trump survived two assassination attempts in the run-up to last year’s presidential election.

He was left with a gashed ear after Thomas Crooks opened fire at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania in July.

Just weeks after the assassination attempt in Butler, shots were fired near to Trump’s Florida golf course.

Ryan Wesley Routh managed to get within 500 yards of Trump before opening fire.

Meanwhile, Comey rose to prominence when he probed Hillary Clinton’s use of her personal email system when she was Secretary of State.

He reopened the case at the height of the 2016 presidential campaign – less than two weeks before election day.

Commentators speculated that Comey’s letter, which explained why the investigation into Clinton’s emails had been reopened, cost the former first lady the election.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14249464/james-comey-beach-photo-trump-probe/

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that India and Pakistan fought three wars and got nothing.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday night said Islamabad and New Delhi should sit down at the table like peaceful neighbours and settle their outstanding issues, including Kashmir, news agency PTI reported.

Addressing a special ‘Youm-e-Tashakur’ event in Islamabad, Shehbaz said that India and Pakistan fought three wars and got nothing.

“The lesson is to sit down as peaceful neighbours and settle all outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir. Without resolution of our issues, we cannot have peace in this part of the world,” Shehbaz said.

“If peace comes, we can also cooperate in counterterrorism,” the prime minister added.

India and Pakistan reached an understanding on May 10 to end a four-day-long military confrontation marked by intense cross-border drone and missile exchanges.

Sharif’s statement comes hours after Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh asserted that Operation Sindoor is not over yet and issued a stern warning to Pakistan. “When the right time comes, we will show the full picture to the world. We have kept Pakistan on probation. If its behaviour improves, then okay, otherwise, it will be given the strictest punishment,” Rajnath Singh said.

India carried out precision strikes under ‘Operation Sindoor’ on terror infrastructure early on May 7 in response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 people.

New Delhi has made it clear that it will only have a dialogue with Pakistan on the return of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the issue of terrorism.

During Friday’s address, Sharif said that while Pakistan is a peaceful nation, it reserves the right to deliver a “befitting response” in its defence.

“Pakistan is a peaceful country, but it reserves the right to give a befitting response in its defence,” he said, referring to the recent military confrontation with India.

He praised the armed forces for responding “befittingly and effectively” and said they had written a “golden chapter” in the country’s military history.

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-pakistan-should-sit-down-to-settle-outstanding-issues-says-pm-shehbaz-sharif-101747431305124.html

JUSTIN Bieber finally spoke out on rumors he was a victim of Sean “Diddy” Combs to reclaim his power as he positions himself as a “symbol of survival and allyship,” an expert has claimed.

Bieber, 31, was mentored by Combs, 55, whose sex trafficking trial kicked off in New York this week.

Fans have speculated for months as to whether the pop star’s reported mental health problems were linked to the rapper’s trial, as he was previously close to the star when he was a teen icon.

Combs has pleaded not guilty to several federal charges, primarily related to sex trafficking and racketeering.

He is also the defendant in a handful of civil suits that have been filed by alleged sex assault victims who are both female and male.

Bieber released a statement through his rep this week, stating, “Although Justin is not among Sean Combs’ victims, there are individuals who were genuinely harmed by him.

“Shifting focus away from this reality detracts from the justice these victims rightfully deserve.”

He waited months to comment on the rumors and PR expert Chad Teixeira, who has worked with the likes of the Kardashians, feels the move was calculated.

Teixeira told The U.S. Sun, “The allegations against Diddy have reached critical mass. Bieber knows that if he doesn’t speak now, the narrative will be written without him and probably not in his favor.

“This is a moment of calculated authenticity.

“This wasn’t a delay, it was a deliberate media strategy.”

Eager to avoid a looming 20% tariff on its trans-Atlantic exports, the European Union has agreed to “intensify” trade talks with the United States after being accused of moving too slowly. EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic gave the update Thursday before a meeting of EU trade ministers in Brussels, adding that he and his US counterpart Howard Lutnick were due to meet “very soon.”

The EU summit was expected to solidify the bloc’s position in negotiations to avoid the additional levies that kick in from July, after US President Donald Trump sealed his first deals since announcing so-called reciprocal tariffs on most global imports last month.

Following a tense standoff, Washington and Beijing reached a temporary deal last week, slashing punitive tariffs from over 100% to more sustainable levels. As negotiations for a long-term deal intensify, for the next 90 days Chinese goods entering the US will incur a 30% tariff, while exports from the US to China will face a 10% levy.

Days earlier, Trump secured the first outline of a trade deal since proclaiming April 2 as “Liberation Day,” when he announced stiff worldwide tariffs. The broad pact with the United Kingdom reduces tariffs on British carmakers exporting to the US and grants American exporters, including farmers and ethanol producers, enhanced access to the UK market.

Trump under pressure to secure EU deal

While Trump continues to play hardball with Brussels, claiming earlier this week that the “European Union is in many ways nastier than China,” Andrew Kenningham, chief Europe economist for the London-based Capital Economics research house, thinks economic pressures will prevent him from pushing Brussels too far.

“The two new deals will make EU negotiators more confident that they can stick broadly to the policy already set out, which is to try to avoid escalation, threaten some retaliation but with a delay, while at the same time be willing to negotiate,” Kenningham told DW.

Even so, Capital Economics warned in a research note this week that an EU-US deal “appears harder to reach,” pointing to the bloc’s large goods trade surplus with the US and the challenge of reaching consensus among the 27 EU member states.

The EU has already threatened new tariffs on €95 billion ($107 billion) of US goods in response to Trump’s earlier tariffs on aluminum, steel and European automakers, but paused them to allow negotiations to proceed. Brussels is also considering curbs on scrap steel and chemical exports to the US.

Trump vague on demands from EU

Claudia Schmucker, head of the Center for Geopolitics, Geoeconomics, and Technology at the German Council on Foreign Relations, doesn’t think the China and UK deals really “change anything.”

“Trump is still expecting that the EU will offer something he feels is valuable enough,” Schmucker told DW, adding that the president’s demands from Europe remain a “mystery,” but are likely to include more agriculture and energy imports.

The EU has so far offered to boost imports of US liqueified natural gas, advanced AI technology and soybeans, while proposing zero-for-zero tariffs on all industrial goods. Brussels has, however, ruled out lowering other US irritants — from sales tax (VAT) and regulations, which Trump perceives as giving the bloc an unfair advantage in trade.

Last year, the US had a $235.6 billion (€210 billion) trade deficit in goods with the EU, a 12.9% increase on the previous year, according to the Office of the US Trade Representative. The latest 2023 data from Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency, puts the EU goods surplus at €157 billion.

Schmucker thinks the president’s negative rhetoric, which included an unfounded claim that the EU was created to “rip off” the US, plays into Brussels’ hands as EU states try to reach consensus on how to proceed, even as Hungary, Italy and some others push for bilateral deals.

“Even though some EU states are not fully on board with Brussels’ negotiating position, Trump’s antagonism is enough to help boost EU unity,” she said.

Ahead of Thursday’s talks in Brussels, Swedish Trade Minister Benjamin Dousa was doubtful about a speedy US-EU deal, saying he didn’t think it was likely in the “coming weeks.” If Trump keeps the baseline 10% tariff imposed on all imports as announced last month, as it did for the UK, Dousa said: “The US can expect countermeasures from us.”

EU: A key market for US services exports

Miguel Otero, senior fellow for international political economy at Spain’s Elcano Royal Institute, believes the US “has a lot to lose” from any Trump misstep.

“The EU has a big deficit when it comes to services, especially financial and digital services and entertainment platforms,” Otero told DW. “The US cannot afford to lose the European market. If we act as a single entity, then the EU has as much leverage as China.”

Although the EU has a significant goods surplus with the US, with a fifth of EU goods crossing the Atlantic last year, the bloc also accounts for 25% of US services exports, worth $275 billion in 2024. Including Switzerland and the UK, 42% of US services exports are sent to the European market.

The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, vowed this week to launch a dispute at the World Trade Organization against Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs and levies on cars and auto parts.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/can-eu-secure-swift-trade-pact-with-trump-like-china-uk/a-72543513

Putin ‘enjoys’ fooling the West, says former Russian foreign minster

After lower-level delegations from Russia and Ukraine held brief talks in Istanbul, DW spoke with Andrei Kozyrev, Russia’s foreign minister from 1990 to 1996 under Boris Yeltsin, about the ongoing situation in Ukraine.

Kozyrev, who lives in the US, lamented the slowness of sanctions on Presdient Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

“Three years ago, at the beginning there was a possibility probably to stop Putin by sanction,” he said.

The former diplomat said the sanctions have been softened by the help from China, which is “supplying Putin with everything needed for the war of attrition.”

Kozyrev doesn’t take Putin nor the Istanbul talks seriously. “It’s theatrics, diplomatic theatrics,” he said. “And Putin enjoys it.”

“He enjoys bombing Ukraine and he enjoys fooling Western leaders because that’s what he wants. The West is too weak to stand against him,” the former minister said.

Australian sentenced to 13 years in prison for fighting for Ukraine

Oscar Jenkins, a 33-year-old Australian man from Melbourne, was convicted of being a “mercenary in an armed conflict” and sentenced to 13 years in a strict-regime penal colony by a Russian-installed court in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region.

Russia considers foreigners who travel to Ukraine to fight as “mercenaries” and prosecutes them under its criminal code rather than treating them as prisoners of war, who are protected by the Geneva Convention.

The Australian government has repeatedly called on Russia to release Jenkins, a former biology teacher.

Russian forces captured Jenkins in December 2024. That same month, a video was shared by a Russian military blogger showing him being roughly interrogated and slapped in the face.

It was believed that he had been killed in captivity until Russia confirmed he was alive.

Several protesters and police officers sustained injuries during violent confrontations at a pro-Palestinian demonstration marking Nakba Day in Berlin on Thursday.

According to police, who made over 50 arrests, approximately 1,100 people took part in the demonstration in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg in remembrance of the Nakba and protesting against Israel’s continuing military operations in the Gaza Strip.

Nakba means “catastrophe” in Arabic and refers to the forced displacement or fleeing of Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 after Israel’s founding. About 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in the years before and after the proclamation of the State of Israel.

Some 1,200 Israelis — around 800 civilians — were killed and another 250 abducted in the attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7, 2023. Israel’s military response has seen over 53,000 Palestinians — mainly women and children — killed, according to health authorities in Hamas-led Gaza Strip, whose casualty counts do not differentiate between militants and civilians but are regarded as reliable by international organizations, and much of the territory laid to waste.

How did the Nakba Day protest unfold?

In Berlin on Thursday, demonstrators originally wanted to march from the Südstern square in the south of the capital to the neighboring district of Neukölln, but a local administrative court ruled that the protest must remain stationary.

“The Nakba is a continuing campaign of ethnic cleansing which has never stopped,” claimed one speaker at the demonstration. Other protesters reportedly shouted phrases accusing the Israeli government and military of being “child murderers, women murderers, baby murderers” as well as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

The latter phrase is illegal in Germany as it is considered an approval of a crime under paragraph 140 of the German Criminal Code in that it can be interpreted as a demand for the region between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea to be free of the Jewish state of Israel — an interpretation disputed by some Palestinian groups.

Police officer ‘trampled on’

According to the TAZ daily newspaper, the use of this phrase prompted attempts by police to make arrests. Police said they were also responding to “significant acts of violence” against officers “from within the crowd,” out of which bottles and stones were reportedly thrown.

According to the police, one officer was dragged into the crowd, forced to the ground and trampled on. The 36-year-old reportedly suffered severe injuries to his upper body, including a broken arm, and remains in the hospital.

“The attack on a police officer at the demonstration in Kreuzberg is nothing but a cowardly, brutal act of violence,” said Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU). “Attacks against officers are attacks on law and order and therefore against all of us.”

According to the police, 11 officers were injured in total as well as an unspecified number of protesters. The injured demonstrators were treated by the Berlin fire department, which said the scale of its deployment wasn’t particularly large.

Berlin politicians condemn ‘brutal violence’

Berlin’s senator for the interior, Iris Spranger of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), promised tough action against those arrested.

“Yesterday’s demonstration in Berlin escalated in a horrific manner,” she said.” This brutal violence against officers has nothing to do with political protest.”

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/germany-dozens-injured-at-berlin-pro-palestinian-protest/a-72568069

US President Donald Trump’s tour of the Gulf states this week — to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — was closely followed in Israel.

Trump did not visit Israel — a snub that Israeli officials played down, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already visited the White House twice — and there was a growing sense among Israeli commentators that something wasn’t quite right.

This comes at a time when Israel is facing increasing criticism and isolation from other nations over the war in Gaza.

“If you take the last month and certainly the last week, in a series of moves and a series of statements, Trump not only completely sidelined Netanyahu and kept him out of the loop, but marginalized Israel as if it was not an ally,” former senior Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas, now a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, told DW.

Meanwhile, Israel has intensified its airstrikes in Gaza, a possible indication that it is expanding its offensive in Gaza.

On Friday, heavy strikes and tank movements were reported in northern Gaza. According to local health authorities, at least 90 people were killed in strikes across Gaza, including many children. The Israeli military has issued more evacuation orders in several areas, forcing many people to flee to areas that are equally unsafe.

The unexpected recent release of the American-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander, reportedly a result of direct negotiations between the US and Hamas and mediators, was seen as a sign that Netanyahu seemed to have been sidelined or, at best, was no longer the center of Trump’s attention, according to Israeli analysts. Alexander is a soldier who was taken captive from his military post during the Hamas-led terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.

During the October 7 attack, over 200 people were taken as hostages into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Fifty-eight hostages are still in Gaza. At least 21 of them are believed to be alive.

In January, Hamas and Israel agreed on the first phase of a ceasefire, which saw 33 Israeli hostages released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. However, a second phase was never negotiated and, in March, Israel broke the ceasefire, vowing to eradicate Hamas.

Have Trump and Netanyahu fallen out?

During his Gulf trip this week, Trump concluded a $142 billion (€127 billion) arms deal with Saudi Arabia as well as a $600 billion investment deal that increases the Gulf state’s technological potential, which could be seen as threat to Israel’s own technological and military prowess.

In April, Netanyahu was invited to an urgent meeting in Washington. Netanyahu said he thought he could convince Trump to remove US tariffs on Israeli imports but he wasn’t able to. Instead Trump seemed to take Netanyahu by surprise when he announced direct US-Iran talks regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

This contrasted sharply with two leaders’ first meeting in February in the US, when Trump spoke to Netanyahu about his vision of a “Gaza Riviera” and the forced displacement of its population.

Another decision that caused a stir in Israel was Trump’s announcement on May 6 that the US had reached a truce with the Houthi group in Yemen, just two days after the rebels launched a missile at Israel’s main international airport, Ben Gurion. The Houthis vowed to continue launching missiles at Israel as long as the Gaza war continues.

Israeli commentator Pinkas suggested that Trump doesn’t like Netanyahu’s “manipulations and constant deception on both Iran and Gaza.”

Trump practices a very transactional foreign policy, Pinkas explained. “Netanyahu can only give him two things that he’s refused to give until now: A ceasefire in Gaza, which Netanyahu violated himself in March — [perhaps] he misinterpreted Trump’s laziness or disinterest as some kind of green light to attack again.

And the second is Iran,” Pinkas continued. “While Trump keeps on saying he wants an agreement with Iran and that he will pursue an agreement, Netanyahu keeps on with his belligerent rhetoric.”

Others are more cautious and say that Trump appears to be laying the groundwork for regional changes.

“I hear voices in Israel saying that he completely sidelined Netanyahu, but I think it more complicated than that,” Yaki Dayan, a former Israeli consul general in the US, and now a frequent commentator on Israeli-American relations in local media, told DW. “I think he [Trump] is taking into account all these issues that are extremely important for Israel in terms of normalization, with the Syrians and with the Saudis.”

But Israel should have been more involved, Yaki said. “We could have been in the central position, in shaping the new Middle East, as Trump is doing now,” Dayan said. But, he adds, “I think that one of the things that Trump wanted from Israel is to finish the war in Gaza, which Netanyahu is not giving him.”

Netanyahu is unlikely to do either of those things though, Pinkas argued. “If he doesn’t have those two issues, then A, he doesn’t have a [governing] coalition, and B, he doesn’t have a reason to be prime minister.”

What does it mean for the region?

Much will now depend on the next developments in Gaza. A new round of negotiations in Qatar to finalize a new deal between Israel and Hamas appear to be faltering.

Meanwhile, Israel has escalated its military offensive and Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed not to end the war, which is a key Hamas demand. The Israeli cabinet recently approved a plan to occupy large swathes of Gaza and force the already-displaced Palestinian population to relocate south, something that could be considered a war crime under international law.

And while Israel has endorsed a new humanitarian, albeit controversial aid plan proposed by the US, it has not lifted the devastating blockade on Gaza. Since March, people in the small territory have been denied food, medicine, shelter and fuel, with devastating consequences. Earlier this week, international food security experts warned that Gaza was at high risk of famine in the coming weeks.

During his visit in Qatar, Trump said, “I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good. Make it a freedom zone, let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone.”

The conflict in Gaza prevents Trump from his long-held ambition, a grand plan to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and to expand the Abraham Accords, a series of bilateral agreements between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Israel mediated by the first Trump administration.

Yet, despite the concerns over the Trump-Netanyahu relationship, there is currently no indication the US will pressure Israel to stop the military offensive there if these latest talks fail.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/donald-trump-benjamin-netanyahu-israel-hamas-war-gaza-saudi-arabia/a-72561885

A US citizen, Matar is also facing a federal trial on terrorism charges. The charges were evoked after prosecutors claimed that the stabbing was an attempt to carry out a decades-old fatwa issued in 1989 by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the publication of Rushdie’s controversial novel, The Satanic Verses.

The man who stabbed acclaimed author Salman Rushidie during a 2022 lecture in New York has been sentenced to 25 years in prison. Hadi Matar, 27, was convicted of attempted murder in February. Rushdie did not attend Friday’s sentencing but submitted a victim impact statement. He had previously testified, recounting the harrowing moment he believed he was going to die.
Matar stabbed Rushidie over a dozen times in the head and torso as the author prepared to speak at the Chautauqua Institution. The brutal assault left Rushdie, 77, blind in one eye and seriously injured. He also injured one more person.
Ahead of sentencing, Matar made a brief statement criticizing Rushdie and invoking free speech. He received 25 years (maximum punishment) for the attack on Rushdie and seven years for injuring the other victim. The sentences will run concurrently, as both injuries occurred during the same incident, said Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt.

During arguments, Schmidt said that Matar had deliberately planned the attack to cause maximum harm — not just to Rushdie, but to the audience of over 1,400 people present. Defense attorney Nathaniel Barone countered that Matar had no prior criminal record.

The 2002 incident had left Rushdie blinded by one eye. He spent nearly five weeks in hospitals and rehabilitation centers following the attack. He later detailed his recovery in his 2024 memoir, Knife.
A US citizen, Matar is also facing a federal trial on terrorism charges. The charges were evoked after prosecutors claimed that the stabbing was an attempt to carry out a decades-old fatwa issued in 1989 by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the publication of Rushdie’s controversial novel, The Satanic Verses.
Matar has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of providing material support to terrorists.

Source : https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/hadi-matar-who-stabbed-salman-rushdie-leaving-him-blind-in-one-eye-jailed-article-151656633