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Pope Francis has said in an interview that Ukraine should have what he called the courage of the “white flag” and negotiate an end to the war with Russia that followed Moscow’s full-scale invasion two years ago and that has killed tens of thousands.

Francis made his comments in an interview recorded last month with Swiss broadcaster RSI, well before Friday’s latest offer by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to host a summit between Ukraine and Russia to end the war.

Erdogan made the fresh offer after a meeting in Istanbul with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Zelenskiy has said while he wants peace he will not give up any territory.

The Ukrainian leader’s own peace plan calls for the withdrawal of Russian troops from all of Ukraine and the restoration of its state borders. The Kremlin has ruled out engaging in peace talks on terms set by Kyiv.

A spokesman for Zelenskiy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the pope’s remarks.

In the interview Francis was asked for his position on a debate between those who say Ukraine should give up as it has not been able to repel Russian forces, and those who say doing so would legitimise actions by the strongest party. The interviewer used the term “white flag” in the question.

“It is one interpretation, that is true,” Francis said, according to an advance transcript of the interview and a partial video made available to Reuters on Saturday. It is due to be broadcast on March 20 as part of a new cultural programme.

“But I think that the strongest one is the one who looks at the situation, thinks about the people and has the courage of the white flag, and negotiates,” Francis said, adding that talks should take place with the help of international powers.

“The word negotiate is a courageous word. When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you have to have the courage to negotiate,” Francis said.

It was believed to be the first time Francis has used terms such as “white flag” or “defeated” in discussing the Ukraine war, although he has spoken in the past about the need for negotiations.

In a statement, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the pope had picked up on the term “white flag” spoken by the interviewer and used it “to indicate a stop to hostilities (and) a truce achieved with the courage of negotiations”.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/pope-says-ukraine-should-have-courage-white-flag-negotiations-2024-03-09

A US military ship is sailing towards the Middle East, carrying equipment to build a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza, the army says.

The support ship, General Frank S Besson, set sail from a military base in the state of Virginia on Saturday.

It comes after President Joe Biden said the US would build the floating harbour to help get aid into Gaza by sea.

The UN has warned that famine in the Gaza Strip is “almost inevitable” and children are starving to death.

Aid deliveries by land and air have proved difficult and dangerous.

The World Food Programme had to pause land deliveries after its convoys came under gunfire and looting. And on Friday, there were reports that five people had been killed by a falling aid package, when its parachute failed to open properly.

The US ship departed “less than 36 hours” after Mr Biden made his announcement, US Central Command wrote on X.

It is “carrying the first equipment to establish a temporary pier to deliver vital humanitarian supplies” to Gaza, the statement continued.

The Pentagon has said it could take up to 60 days to build the pier with the help of 1,000 troops – none of whom would go ashore.

Charities have said those suffering in Gaza cannot wait that long.

Meanwhile, an aid ship laden with some 200 tonnes of food was still waiting for clearance to set sail from a port in Cyprus on Sunday morning.

It is hoped the vessel, Open Arms, will be able to depart before Monday, following an EU announcement that a new sea route would be opened over the weekend to allow aid to sail directly from Cyprus – the closest EU country to Gaza.

The ship belongs to the Spanish charity of the same name, Open Arms, and the food on board has been provided by US charity World Central Kitchen.

It is unclear how any aid delivered by sea would get safely to shore before the US pier is built. Gaza has no functioning port and its surrounding waters are too shallow for large vessels.

However Oscar Camps, the founder of Open Arms, told the Associated Press that at the destination point – which remains a secret – a team from the World Central Kitchen has been building a pier to receive the aid.

Israel has welcomed the ocean initiative, and said aid would be delivered after security checks were carried out in Cyprus “in accordance with Israeli standards”.

Israel’s military launched an air and ground campaign in the Gaza Strip after Hamas’s attacks on Israel on 7 October, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 253 others were taken hostage.

More than 30,900 people have been killed in Gaza since then, the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry says.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68526503

The F-35A Joint Strike Fighter has been certified to carry thermonuclear weapons as tensions between Russia and NATO hit a breaking point.

A NATO stealth fighter has been certified to carry nukes including the terrifying B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bomb as tensions between NATO and Russia hit a boiling point.

The F-35A Joint Strike Fighter has become the first stealth fighter of its class to be green-lit to carry nuclear weapons.

A spokesperson for the F-35 Joint Program Office told Breaking Defence: “The F-35A is the first 5th generation nuclear-capable aircraft ever, and the first new platform (fighter or bomber) to achieve this status since the early 1990s.

“This F-35 Nuclear Certification effort culminates 10+ years of intense effort across the nuclear enterprise, which consists of 16 different government and industry stakeholders.”

They added: “The F-35A achieved Nuclear Certification ahead of schedule, providing US and NATO with a critical capability that supports US extended deterrence commitments earlier than anticipated.​”

The move comes as tensions between NATO and Russia continue to escalate following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

On Thursday, Sweden officially joined the NATO alliance, breaking from decades of neutrality.

The country began its process to join shortly after the invasion of Ukraine.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said that “unity and solidarity” would be Sweden’s “guiding lights”.

US President Joe Biden added: “NATO stands more united, determined, and dynamic…together with our newest ally Sweden – NATO will continue to stand for freedom and democracy for generations to come.”

Source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1875287/nato-f35a-fighter-jet-nuclear-bombs

President Joe Biden ‘s growing frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to mount, with the Democrat captured on a hot mic saying that he and the Israeli leader will need to have a “come to Jesus meeting.”

The comments by Biden came as he spoke with Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., on the floor of the House chamber following Thursday night’s State of the Union address.

In the exchange, Bennet congratulates Biden on his speech and urges the president to keep pressing Netanyahu on growing humanitarian concerns in Gaza. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg were also part of the brief conversation.

Biden then responds using Netanyahu’s nickname, saying, “I told him, Bibi, and don’t repeat this, but you and I are going to have a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting.”

An aide to the president standing nearby then speaks quietly into the president’s ear, appearing to alert Biden that microphones remained on as he worked the room.

“I’m on a hot mic here,” Biden says after being alerted. “Good. That’s good.”

The president on Friday acknowledged the comments, lightheartedly poking at reporters that they were “eavesdropping” on his conversation. Asked if he thought Netanyahu should be doing more to alleviate the humanitarian suffering, Biden responded, “Yes, he does.”

A widening humanitarian crisis across Gaza and tight Israeli control of aid trucks have left virtually the entire population desperately short of food, according to the United Nations. Officials have been warning for months that Israel’s siege and offensive were pushing the Palestinian territory into famine.

Biden has become increasingly public about his frustration with the Netanyahu government’s unwillingness to open more land crossings for critically needed aid to make its way into Gaza.

In his address on Thursday, he called on the Israelis to do more to alleviate the suffering even as they try to eliminate Hamas.

“To Israel, I say this humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip,” Biden said.

The president announced in his speech Thursday that the U.S. military would help establish a temporary pier aimed at boosting the amount of aid getting into the territory. Last week, the U.S. military began air dropping aid into Gaza.

Biden said the temporary pier, ”will enable a massive increase in humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza.”

Source: https://apnews.com/article/biden-netanyahu-hot-mic-gaza-885b97a75d15d15ae7f7a47d0125c918

President Joe Biden took on Donald Trump in a fiery speech to Congress on Thursday, accusing his election rival of threatening U.S. democracy and kowtowing to Russia, as he laid out his case for four more years in the White House.
In his last State of the Union address before the election, Biden, a Democrat, charged Trump, his Republican challenger in the Nov. 5 election, with burying the truth about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assault, bowing to Russian President Vladimir Putin and torpedoing a bill to tighten restrictions at the U.S. border with Mexico.

The 68-minute speech gave Biden, who is suffering from low approval ratings, a chance to speak directly to millions of Americans about his vision for another four-year term and present a contrast with Trump, whose name he did not mention but whose presence reverberated throughout the speech.
Speaking before a joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate, Biden opened his remarks with direct criticism of Trump for his comments inviting Russian Putin to invade other NATO nations if they did not spend more on defense.

“Now my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, quote, ‘Do whatever you want,'” Biden said. “I think it’s outrageous, it’s dangerous and it’s unacceptable.”
Biden, who has been pushing Congress to provide additional funding to Ukraine for its war with Russia, also had a message for Putin: “We will not walk away,” he said.
The president also drew a contrast with Trump over abortion rights and the economy, and he directed several barbs at Republican lawmakers in the chamber with off-the-cuff banter that appeared designed to assuage concerns about his age and mental acuity.

Biden came out swinging at the top of his speech with robust attacks. He accused Trump and Republicans of trying to rewrite history about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot by the former president’s supporters seeking to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory.
“My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth about January 6. I will not do that,” Biden said, a signal that he will emphasize the issue during his re-election campaign. “You can’t love your country only when you win.”

He also knocked Republicans for seeking to roll back healthcare provisions under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and driving up deficits, and jibed them for taking money from legislation they had opposed.
Biden faces discontent among progressives in his party about his support for Israel in its war against Hamas and from Republicans over his stance on immigration, but the mood among Democrats in the chamber was rapturous. They greeted Biden with cheers and applause, prompting him to quip that he should leave before he even began.
Trump, meanwhile, sent a steady stream of messages blasting Biden on his Truth Social platform. “He looks so angry when he’s talking, which is a trait of people who know they are ‘losing it,'” Trump wrote. “The anger and shouting is not helpful to bringing our Country back together!”
AGE, ECONOMY AT ISSUE
Opinion polls show Biden, 81, and Trump, 77, closely matched in the race. Most American voters are unenthusiastic about the rematch after Biden defeated Trump four years ago.
Trump, facing multiple criminal charges as he fights for re-election, says he plans to punish political foes and deport millions of migrants if he wins a second White House term. Representative Troy Nehls, a Republican, wore a shirt with Trump’s face and the words “Never surrender” on it.
The speech may be the Democratic president’s biggest stage to reach voters weighing whether to vote for him, choose Trump, or sit out the election. Nikki Haley, Trump’s last remaining rival for his party’s presidential nomination, dropped out on Wednesday.
Biden emphasized his support of abortion rights and pledged to make them the law of the land if Americans voted in enough Democratic lawmakers to do so.
He also sought to burnish his reputation about the strength of the U.S. economy and renew his quest to make wealthy Americans and corporations pay more in taxes, unveiling proposals including higher minimum taxes for companies and Americans with wealth over $100 million.
Any such tax reform is unlikely to pass unless Democrats win strong majorities in both houses of Congress in the November vote, which is not forecast.
Biden proposed new measures to lower housing costs, including a $10,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers – an acknowledgement of consumers’ distress over high mortgage interest rates – while boasting of U.S economic progress under his tenure.
The U.S. economy is performing better than most high-income countries, with continued job growth and consumer spending. But
Americans overall give Trump better marks in polls for economic issues.
“Joe Biden is on the run from his record … to escape accountability for the horrific devastation he and his party have created,” Trump posted before the speech on his Truth Social platform.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/state-union-biden-sharpen-contrast-with-trump-2024-03-07/

Sweden joined NATO in Washington on Thursday, two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced it to rethink its national security policy and conclude that support for the alliance was the Scandinavian nation’s best guarantee of safety.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson handed over the final documentation to the U.S. government on Thursday, the last step in a drawn-out process to secure the backing of all members to join the military alliance.

“Good things come to those who wait,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said as he received Sweden’s accession documents from Kristersson.
Blinken said “everything changed” after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, citing polls showing a massive shift in Swedish public opinion on joining NATO.
“Swedes realized something very profound: that if Putin was willing to try to erase one neighbor from the map, then he might well not stop there.”

For NATO, the accessions of Sweden and Finland – which shares a 1,340-km (830-mile) border with Russia – are the most significant additions in decades. It is also a blow for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has sought prevent any further strengthening of the alliance.
Sweden will benefit from the alliance’s common defence guarantee under which an attack on one member is regarded as an attack on all.

“Sweden is a safer country today than we were yesterday. We have allies. We have backing,” Kristersson said in an address to the Swedish nation from Washington. “We have taken out an insurance in the Western defence alliance.”
Hakan Yucel, 54, an IT worker in the Swedish capital, said of the accession: “Before, we were outside and felt a little bit alone. … I think that the threat from Russia, it’s going to be much less now.”
U.S. President Joe Biden, in a statement, said the addition of Sweden made NATO “more united, determined, and dynamic than ever,” adding that the accession of Sweden and Finland to the alliance meant the addition of “two highly capable militaries.”

Sweden adds cutting-edge submarines and a sizable fleet of domestically produced Gripen fighter jets to NATO forces, and is a crucial link between the Atlantic and Baltic.
“Sweden’s accession makes NATO stronger, Sweden safer and the whole Alliance more secure,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement.
Russia has threatened to take unspecified “political and military-technical counter-measures” in response to Sweden’s move.
“Joining NATO is really like buying insurance, at least as long as the United States is actually willing to be the insurance provider,” said Barbara Kunz, a researcher at defence think tank SIPRI.
While Stockholm has been drawing ever closer to NATO over the last two decades, membership marks a clear break with the past, when for more than 200 years, Sweden avoided military alliances and adopted a neutral stance in times of war.
After World War Two, it built an international reputation as a champion of human rights, and since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, successive governments have pared back military spending.
As recently as 2021, its defence minister had rejected NATO membership, only for the then-Social Democrat government to apply, alongside neighbour Finland, just a few months later.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/sweden-set-become-natos-32nd-member-pm-visits-washington-2024-03-07/

The Ukrainian prime minister was meeting with Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

A Russian missile exploded in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa early Wednesday, just hundreds of feet from where President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was meeting with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, according to sources and officials.

“It hit in a couple of hundred of meters (about 300 feet) from us, while the meeting was going,” a source said.

The source also added that this was “the closest call ever,” excluding Zelenskyy’s trips to visit troops on the front lines.

Zelenskyy had shown the Greek prime minister around the port, the two got back in the car, and then as they were in the car preparing to leave, they heard the air raid siren go off followed shortly by the missile striking and hitting the port.

However, according to the source, it is unlikely that Zelenskyy was the target, with the source saying Russians were likely just launching missiles at their usual targets.

“Yes, a missile strike was carried out in Odesa, probably by a ballistic weapon, hitting one of the buildings in the port infrastructure. But this is not in any way related to a specific visit. It is related to the terror that the enemy is carrying out quite methodically,” a Ukrainian spokesperson for the joint press center of the Ukrainian Southern Defense Forces said Wednesday after the attack.

Zelenskyy’s trip was not announced before Wednesday but his location was known by the time the strike hit his location.

Neither of the leaders was harmed.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said they successfully struck a hangar in a port in Odesa where unmanned boats of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were being prepared in a statement Wednesday.

A source with the Biden administration told ABC News it doesn’t seem like Zelenskyy was the target of the Russian missile strike in Odesa but said it was certainly a very dangerous and reckless attack.

The strike was “yet another reminder of how Russia is continuing to attack Ukraine recklessly every single day and of Ukraine’s urgent needs, in particular, for air defense interceptors,” a U.S. National Security Council spokesperson said.

At least five people were killed in the Russian strike on Odesa, a Ukrainian navy spokesman said.

Source: https://abcnews.go.com/International/missile-explodes-ukrainian-president-volodymyr-zelenskyys-meeting-greek/story?id=107844297

Nikki Haley suspended her presidential campaign on Wednesday after being soundly defeated across the country on Super Tuesday, leaving Donald Trump as the last remaining major candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination.

Haley didn’t endorse the former president in a speech in Charleston, South Carolina. Instead, she challenged him to win the support of the moderate Republicans and independent voters who supported her.

“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him. And I hope he does that,” she said. “At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people.”

Haley, a former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador, was Trump’s first significant rival when she jumped into the race in February 2023. She spent the final phase of her campaign aggressively warning the GOP against embracing Trump, whom she argued was too consumed by chaos and personal grievance to defeat President Joe Biden in the general election.

Her departure clears Trump to focus solely on his likely rematch in November with Biden. The former president is on track to reach the necessary 1,215 delegates to clinch the Republican nomination later this month.

Haley’s defeat marks a painful, if predictable, blow to those voters, donors and Republican Party officials who opposed Trump and his fiery brand of “Make America Great Again” politics. She was especially popular among moderates and college-educated voters, constituencies that will likely play a pivotal role in the general election. It’s unclear whether Trump, who recently declared that Haley donors would be permanently banned from his movement, can ultimately unify a deeply divided party.

Haley planned to address donors on a Zoom meeting Wednesday afternoon, according to two people familiar with the plans.

Trump on Tuesday night declared that the GOP was united behind him, but in a statement shortly afterward, Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said, “Unity is not achieved by simply claiming, ‘We’re united.’”

“Today, in state after state, there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump,” Perez-Cubas said. “That is not the unity our party needs for success. Addressing those voters’ concerns will make the Republican Party and America better.”

Haley has made clear she doesn’t want to serve as Trump’s vice president or run on a third-party ticket arranged by the group No Labels. She leaves the race with an elevated national profile that could help her in a future presidential run.

Swiftly following her speech Wednesday, Trump’s campaign in a fundraising email falsely claimed that Haley had endorsed his candidacy and did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the message. Earlier this week, Haley said she no longer feels bound by a pledge that required all GOP contenders to support the party’s eventual nominee in order to participate in the primary debates.

In a social media post, Trump continued to mock his former rival, while at the same time extending an invitation to “all of the Haley supporters to join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation. BIDEN IS THE ENEMY, HE IS DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY,” he wrote. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

On Wednesday, Biden welcomed any voters who had backed Haley, acknowledging Trump’s previous rejection of her supporters.

“Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign,” Biden said in a statement. “I know there is a lot we won’t agree on. But on the fundamental issues of preserving American democracy, on standing up for the rule of law, on treating each other with decency and dignity and respect, on preserving NATO and standing up to America’s adversaries, I hope and believe we can find common ground.”

A group that had targeted independents and Democrats to vote for Haley over Trump in Republican primaries is now pushing those voters to back Biden in November. On Wednesday, Primary Pivot said it was “pivoting” again with a new initiative — Haley Voters for Biden — which might ultimately amount to basically encouraging Democrats to revert back to supporting their party’s likely eventual nominee.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/nikki-haley-republican-trump-super-tuesday-losses-95ab56b68a8eefbbf04ef90f2f00ef29

Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu stepped up his anti-India rhetoric and told a gathering in Baa atoll that no Indian military personnel, not even those in civilian clothing, would be present inside his country after May 10. According to a report by Edition.mv, the comments were made by pro-China Muizzu while addressing the Baa atoll Eydhafushi residential community during his tour across the atoll.

He said that “people are spreading false rumours to twist the situation” as his government was “successful” in “expelling Indian troops from the country”. His statement comes less than a week after an Indian civilian team reached the Maldives to take charge of one of the three aviation platforms in the island nation, well ahead of the March 10 deadline agreed by the two nations for the withdrawal of Indian military personnel.

“That these people [Indian military] are not departing, that they are returning after changing their uniforms into civilian clothing. We must not indulge such thoughts that instil doubts in our hearts and spread lies,” the portal quoted Mr Muizzu, widely regarded as a China-backed leader, as saying.

“There will be no Indian troops in the country come May 10. Not in uniform and not in civilian clothing. The Indian military will not be residing in this country in any form of clothing. I state this with confidence,” he said, on a day when his country signed an agreement with China to receive free military aid.

Earlier last month, after a high-level meeting in Delhi on February 2 between the two sides, the Maldivian foreign ministry said India would replace its military personnel operating the three aviation platforms in the Maldives by May 10 and the first phase of the process would be completed by March 10.

In his maiden address to Parliament on February 5, he made similar remarks.

There are 88 military personnel manning the three Indian platforms that have been providing humanitarian and medical evacuation services to the people of the Maldives for the last few years using two helicopters and a Dornier aircraft.

Muizzu rode to power last year on an anti-India stance and within hours of taking oath demanded India to remove its personnel from the strategically located archipelago in the Indian Ocean.

The Maldivian news outlet further reported that while the first troops to depart the country are the Indian military personnel operating the two helicopters in Addu City, the military personnel present in Haa Dhaalu atoll Hanimaadhoo and Laamu atoll Kahdhoo are also expected to leave ahead of May 10.

India had agreed to remove their troops from Maldives under the condition that a number of their civilians equivalent to the military presence are brought to operate the aircraft.

The Maldivian opposition has been directing criticism at the administration asserting that the Indian personnel sent to Maldives as civilians are in reality military officials out of uniform and that the government has no way to ascertain otherwise, the portal claimed.

Source: https://www.news18.com/world/maldives-tells-indian-officials-to-leave-by-may-10-after-signing-military-pact-with-china-8804303.html

The United States on Tuesday revised language in a draft United Nations Security Council resolution to back “an immediate ceasefire of roughly six-weeks in Gaza together with the release of all hostages,” according to the text seen by Reuters.
The third revision of the text – first proposed by the U.S. two weeks ago – now reflects blunt remarks by Vice President Kamala Harris. The initial U.S. draft had shown support for “a temporary ceasefire” in the Israel-Hamas war.
The U.S. wants any Security Council support for a ceasefire to be linked to the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Washington had been averse to the word ceasefire.
It has vetoed three draft council resolutions – two of which would have demanded an immediate ceasefire – during the five-month-long war. Most recently, the U.S. justified its veto by saying that such council action could jeopardize efforts by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar to broker a pause in the war and the release of hostages.
U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday it was in the hands of Hamas whether to accept a deal for a ceasefire as delegations held a third day of talks with no sign of a breakthrough.
The U.S. traditionally shields Israel at the United Nations, but it has also abstained twice, allowing the council to adopt resolutions that aimed to boost aid to Gaza and called for extended pauses in fighting.
In retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, Israel launched a military assault on Hamas in Gaza that health authorities say has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians with thousands more bodies feared lost amid the ruins.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-now-pushes-un-back-immediate-gaza-ceasefire-free-hostages-2024-03-06/

For the first time in more than nine months, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk is no longer the world’s richest person.

Mr Musk lost his position at the top of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index to Mr Jeff Bezos after shares in Tesla tumbled 7.2 per cent on March 4. He now has a net worth of US$197.7 billion (S$265.5 billion), while Mr Bezos has a bigger one of US$200.3 billion.

It’s the first time that Mr Bezos, 60, the founder of Amazon.com, has topped Bloomberg’s ranking of the richest people since 2021.

The wealth gap between Mr Musk, 52, and Mr Bezos, which at one point was as wide as US$142 billion, has been shrinking as Amazon and Tesla shares move in opposite directions. While both are among the so-called Magnificent Seven stocks that have propelled US stock markets, Amazon shares have more than doubled since late 2022 and are within striking distance of a record high. Tesla is down about 50 per cent from its 2021 peak.

Tesla shares fell on March 4 after preliminary data showed shipments from its factory in Shanghai slumped to the lowest in more than a year. Amazon, meanwhile, is coming off its best online sales growth since early in the pandemic.

Pay package problem
Mr Musk’s wealth could take a further hit after a Delaware judge struck down his US$55 billion pay package at Tesla, where he’s chief executive. The decision took the side of an investor who had challenged Mr Musk’s compensation plan, which had been the largest in history.

Options that were included in the voided plan are one of Mr Musk’s largest assets, alongside his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX. The Bloomberg index continues to include them in its calculations of his wealth.

Source: https://www.straitstimes.com/business/elon-musk-loses-world-s-richest-person-title-to-jeff-bezos

Donald Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic president Joe Biden in November’s US election.

The US Supreme Court has given a boost to Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign after ruling that states cannot kick him off the ballot for his actions over the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

America’s highest court reversed a decision of the Colorado Supreme Court, which had determined Trump could not serve again as president under a rarely-used constitutional provision.

The US Supreme Court has now ruled unanimously that states cannot keep presidential candidates from appearing on ballots without action from Congress first.

The latest ruling applies to all states, not just Colorado, and it means efforts to remove him from ballots in places such as Maine and Illinois – which had been on hold pending today’s decision – will also come to an end.

Speaking after the decision was announced, the former president said: “Essentially, you cannot take somebody out of the race because an opponent would like to have it that way.

“It has nothing to do with the fact that it’s the leading candidate, whether it was the leading candidate or a candidate that was well down on the totem pole.”

Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic president Joe Biden in November’s US election.

Section 3 of the constitution’s 14th amendment prohibits those who previously held government positions but later “engaged in insurrection” from running for various offices.

The court in Washington DC ruled the Colorado Supreme Court had wrongly assumed states can determine if a presidential candidate or other candidate for federal office is ineligible.

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The latest ruling makes it clear that Congress, rather than states, has to set rules on how the 14th amendment provision can be enforced.

Trump also called for presidents to have immunity from prosecution, saying: “If a president doesn’t have full immunity, you really don’t have a president because nobody that is serving in that office will have the courage to make, in many cases, what would be the right decision, or it could be the wrong decision.”

His only remaining rival for his party’s nomination is former South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley.

The former president’s eligibility had been challenged in court by a group of six voters in Colorado – four Republicans and two independents – who portrayed him as a threat to American democracy and sought to hold him accountable for the 6 January riots in 2021.

This is a sweeping victory for Donald Trump, but it isn’t a great surprise.

It was all about whether Donald Trump was disqualified from running again for president because of his involvement in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The Supreme Court in Colorado (each state has its own top court) had concluded he was involved in an insurrection and that this fact disqualified him from running for president under a clause in the US constitution’s 14th amendment.

Two other states, Maine and Illinois, made similar decisions.

But now the US Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, ruled that individual states do not have the authority to determine whether a presidential candidate is ineligible under a provision of the constitution’s 14th amendment.

The justices’ ruling makes it clear the US Congress, not individual states, set rules on how the 14th amendment provision can be enforced.

“Because the constitution makes Congress, rather than the states, responsible for enforcing section 3 against all federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse,” the ruling said.

This means the decision applies to all states, not just Colorado.

The top court is often accused of being politically driven because the justices are appointed by the president.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-restored-to-colorado-ballot-after-supreme-court-rejects-he-was-accountable-for-capitol-riots-13087233

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recalled how External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar countered the West over New Delhi’s decision to purchase crude oil from Moscow amid the Ukraine war.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has recalled how External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar gave a strong response to European leaders “to mind their own business” when they asked why New Delhi continued to align itself with Moscow amid the war in Ukraine.

He made the remarks at the World Youth Forum in Russia’s Sochi while responding to a query on why India was continuing to purchase oil from Russia amid the Ukraine war.

Describing Jaishankar as his “friend”, Lavrov said the former had questioned how much oil Europe had begun purchasing and stressed that India buying crude oil from Russia was a “national dignity”.

“My friend, Foreign Minister Subramanyam Jaishankar, was once at the UN, giving a speech. He was asked why they started buying so much oil from Russia. He advised them to mind their own business and reminded them at the same time how much oil the West had started buying and continued to buy oil from the Russian Federation. This is national dignity,” Lavrov was quoted as saying by Sputnik news agency.

Lavrov’s statement came amid criticism in Europe against India that its procurement of Russian crude oil is detrimental to the effectiveness of the Western sanctions imposed on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In a notable shift in its import patterns, India significantly increased its oil purchases from Russia following the geopolitical tensions arising from Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Despite global sanctions, India capitalised on discounted Russian oil prices, with imports growing from zero in January 2022 to 1.27 million barrels a day by January 2023.

Throughout 2023, India’s oil imports from Russia more than doubled to 1.79 million barrels a day, making Russia the dominant supplier, even as imports from traditional suppliers like Iraq saw a contraction.

In an interview with German economic daily Handelsblatt last month, Jaishankar said that India expanded its economic ties with Russia despite Moscow’s military aggression in Ukraine. He also said that Russia never violated India’s interests and the bilateral ties remain “stable and friendly”.

He said India’s energy suppliers in the Middle East gave priority to supply petroleum products to Europe that paid higher prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“When the fighting started in Ukraine, Europe shifted a large part of its energy procurement to the Middle East — until then the main supplier for India and other countries,” Jaishankar said.

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/s-jaishankar-russia-lavrov-west-crude-oil-ukraine-invasion-sanctions-europe-2510601-2024-03-05

The expected decision comes ahead of “Super Tuesday” this week, when voters in 15 states will pick their party candidates for November’s presidential election.

The US Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling on Monday on Colorado’s bid to ban Donald Trump from running for president.

It comes after the Colorado Supreme Court said in December that the Republican could not stand for election in the state because he had “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” – as is forbidden under the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

The judges ruled Trump was disqualified from the presidency because he had incited 2021’s January 6 riot at the Capitol building in Washington DC in an attempt to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election.

The former president strongly denies the claims and his lawyers argue the riot did not amount to an insurrection.

Following the Colorado ruling, the case was taken to the US Supreme Court, the highest court in America, for a final decision.

In an unusual move, officials issued an update on Sunday to reveal that an unspecified Supreme Court ruling would be published on Monday – even though judges are not scheduled to sit that day.

However, it is widely expected that the announcement will be about the Colorado case because so-called “Super Tuesday” will be held this week.

On that day a total of 15 states – including Colorado – will host primary elections for voters to pick their party candidates for November’s presidential election.

Most commentators believe that the Supreme Court, which has a six to three conservative majority, will reject Colorado’s ruling and allow Trump to stand in the state.

During a hearing last month, Supreme Court justices expressed scepticism about the attempt to ban Trump from November’s poll.

Chief justice John Roberts said there would be “daunting consequences” if the Colorado decision was upheld and other states also barred Trump from office – as it could “decide the presidential election”.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/supreme-court-looks-set-to-issue-ruling-on-bid-to-ban-donald-trump-from-election-in-colorado-tomorrow-13086844

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley won her first GOP presidential nominating contest Sunday, notching a victory in the Washington, D.C., primary, NBC News projects — a win her campaign hopes will spark some momentum ahead of next week’s Super Tuesday contests.

Haley, who won the primary over former President Donald Trump, has for weeks pledged to stay in the race through Super Tuesday, when 15 states and American Samoa will hold nominating contests. Trump is dominating in nearly all of those states in most public polling and is expected to extend his commanding delegate lead.

Haley took 63% of the GOP primary vote to 33% for Trump. Just over 2,000 Washington Republicans cast ballots. Because Haley got more than half of the vote, she came away with the District’s 19 delegates.

Washington’s moderate set of Republicans, many of whom work in politics or government, are seen as vastly different from those in other early states, like South Carolina and Iowa, which set up a scenario in which Haley had her first legitimate chance to notch a victory. Trump got just 14% of the vote in Washington’s 2016 primary.

And expectations for turnout were also low, which opened the door to a different scenario from every other contest so far because the margins were expected to be thin.

“It could be anywhere between 2,000 and 6,000 voters,” Washington GOP chair Patrick Mara predicted in an interview last week. “So, quite frankly, there is an opportunity here for anyone to win. It just depends on voter turnout and what the campaigns are doing.”

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida won the GOP primary in 2016, when roughly 2,800 votes were cast. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who became the party’s 2012 nominee, won the contest that year, when 5,200 votes were cast, and in 2008, roughly 6,200 votes were cast in a contest won by eventual Republican nominee John McCain.

Mara said both Haley’s and Trump’s campaigns were sending text messages and making phone calls to inspire turnout, even having some volunteers go door to door.

The primary is run by the local Republican Party, unlike nominating contests in states, and there was just one polling location, at the Madison Hotel.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/haley-wins-republican-primary-washington-dc-rcna140421

Donald Trump on Saturday easily won the Republican caucuses in Michigan, where the party has been riven by infighting that some Republicans fear could hurt his campaign in the key battleground state as he gears up for the general election in November.

The former U.S. president also won the Missouri and Idaho Republican caucuses on Saturday, according to Edison Research.

In all three states Trump trounced Nikki Haley, his last remaining rival for the Republican presidential nomination, moving him closer to becoming his party’s White House standard-bearer and a likely general election rematch with President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

In Michigan, Trump beat Haley in all 13 districts taking part in the nominating caucuses, according to the state Republican Party.

Overall, Trump won with nearly 98% percent support: 1,575 votes to just 36 for Haley.

Pete Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican Party’s chair, called it an “overwhelming, dominating victory.”

More than 1,600 party insiders participated in the presidential caucus in the western Michigan city of Grand Rapids, where they were choosing delegates for Trump or former U.N. Ambassador Haley for the party’s national nominating convention in July.

Haley is fast running out of time to alter the course of the Republican nominating race. Next up is Super Tuesday on March 5, the biggest day in the primaries, when 15 states and one territory will vote.

With victories in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, the U.S. Virgin Islands, South Carolina, and now Michigan, Missouri and Idaho under his belt, Trump is far and away the frontrunner in the race, with Haley hanging on thanks to support from donors keen for an alternative to the former president.

For this election cycle, Michigan Republicans devised a hybrid nominating system, split between a primary and a caucus.

Trump won the primary convincingly on Tuesday, securing 12 of 16 delegates up for grabs. He took all of Michigan’s remaining 39 delegates at stake on Saturday.

At one of the 13 caucus meetings, the participants – knowing Trump would win easily – decided to save time by simply asking anyone who backed Haley to stand up. In a room of 185 voting delegates, 25-year-old Carter Houtman was the only person who rose to his feet.

“It was a little lonely,” Houtman told Reuters in an interview afterward.

Houtman said he would likely vote for Trump in November’s general election if he is the nominee but felt it was important to stand up for his beliefs on Saturday.

“I didn’t like the way that Trump handled himself after the last election,” Houtman said.

Dennis Milosch, 87, a Trump supporter, said the former president’s dominating win on Saturday underscored how the party has been transformed from one aligned with big business to one focused on the working class.

“Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he pays attention to, responds to, the average person,” Milosch said.

RIFT IN MICHIGAN PARTY

The contest in Michigan on Saturday had held the potential for confusion. Internal turmoil has been percolating in the party for months, pitting backers of Michigan’s former Republican Party chair, Kristina Karamo, against the faction of party members who voted to oust her on Jan. 6, and installed Hoekstra as chair.

Hoekstra, whom Trump backed as chair, was overseeing the convention in Grand Rapids. Karamo had been planning to chair a dueling convention in Detroit on Saturday, but that was canceled after a Michigan court this week affirmed her ouster and an appeals court denied her request to stay the ruling.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/amid-infighting-michigan-republicans-set-deliver-trump-another-win-2024-03-02

U.S. military C-130 cargo planes dropped food in pallets over Gaza on Saturday in the opening stage of an emergency humanitarian assistance authorized by President Joe Biden after more than 100 Palestinians who had surged to pull goods off an aid convoy were killed during a chaotic encounter with Israeli troops.

Three planes from Air Forces Central dropped 66 bundles containing about 38,000 meals into Gaza at 8:30 a.m. EST (3:30 p.m. local). The bundles were dropped in southwest Gaza, on the beach along the territory’s Mediterranean coast. The airdrop was coordinated with the Royal Jordanian Air Force, which said it had two food airdrops Saturday in northern Gaza and has conducted several rounds in recent months.

“The amount of aid flowing to Gaza is not nearly enough and we will continue to pull out every stop we can to get more aid in,” President Joe Biden said Saturday in a post on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter.

U.S. Central Command said on X that “the combined operation included U.S. Air Force and RJAF C-130 aircraft and respective Army Soldiers specialized in aerial delivery of supplies, built bundles and ensured the safe drop of food aid.”

Three Biden administration officials said the planes dropped the military Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) — shelf-stable meals that contain a day’s worth of calories in each sealed package — in locations that were thought would provide civilians with the greatest level of safety to access aid. Afterward, the U.S. monitored the sites and was able to see civilians approach and distribute food among themselves, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide additional details that had not been made public.

Biden on Friday announced the U.S. would begin air dropping food to starving Gazans after at least 115 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more wounded in the Thursday attack as they scrambled for aid, the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said.

Hundreds of people had rushed about 30 trucks bringing a predawn delivery of aid to the north. Palestinians said nearby Israeli troops shot into the crowds. Israel said they fired warning shots toward the crowd and insisted many of the dead were trampled.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Friday that the airdrops were being planned to deliver emergency humanitarian assistance in a safe way to people on the ground. The United States believes the airdrops will help address the dire situation in Gaza, but they are no replacement for trucks, which can transport far more aid more effectively, though Thursday’s events also showed the risks with ground transport.

Kirby said the airdrops have an advantage over trucks because planes can move aid to a particular location very quickly. But in terms of volume, the airdrops will be “a supplement to, not a replacement for moving things in by ground.”

The C-130 is widely used to deliver aid to remote places because of its ability to land in austere environments.

A C-130 can airlift as much as 42,000 pounds of cargo and its crews know how to rig the cargo, which sometimes can include even vehicles, onto massive pallets that can be safely dropped out of the back of the aircraft.

Air Force loadmasters secure the bundles onto pallets with netting that is rigged for release in the back of a C-130, and then crews release it with a parachute when the aircraft reaches the intended delivery zone.

The Air Force’s C-130 has been used in years past to air drop humanitarian into Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti and other locations and the airframe is used in an annual multi-national “Operation Christmas Drop” that air drops pallets of toys, supplies, nonperishable food and fishing supplies to remote locations in the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-airdrop-humanitarian-assistance-f8bc071193f89906abf21478bc70a084

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin believes a war between NATO and Russia will become inevitable if Ukraine falls and Vladimir Putin is not stopped.

NATO could be dragged into a war with Russia if Vladimir Putin’s forces are not stopped in Ukraine, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned.

Speaking at a Republican-led House Armed Services Committee hearing yesterday (Thursday, February 29), Austin said he believes Putin will not stop if Ukraine falls and Russia wins the war. This would mean NATO will almost certainly be drawn into conflict if Kyiv is defeated by Moscow’s forces, he added.

Austin told committee members: “We know that if Putin is successful here, he will not stop. He will continue to take more aggressive action in the region.”

The Secretary of Defense warned that other despots would be emboldened by a Putin victory. “Other leaders around the world, other autocrats, will look at this and they’ll be encouraged by the fact that this happened and we failed to support a democracy,” he said.

Austin then offered his chilling warning that NATO will almost certainly be dragged into a war with Russia.

“If you’re a Baltic state, you’re really worried about whether or not you’re next,” he said. “They know Putin, they know what he’s capable of … And quite frankly, if Ukraine falls, I really believe that NATO will be in a fight with Russia.”

The comments came after Congress refused to approve Joe Biden’s request for a $60 billion military aid package for Ukraine, reported Newsweek. Whilst there was bipartisan support for the aid package, it stalled amid disputes over border security.

His warning also came as a huge NATO strike force took command of 5,000 US Navy sailors and Marines – plus a flotilla of warships – at a key location that controls access to the Middle East, North Africa and Eurasia. The transfer of command took place in the East Mediterranean, close to Israel and Gaza – and the Russian Navy’s Tartus base in Syria.

A US Navy spokesperson said: “This transfer of authority constitutes a tangible, transparent display of advanced capabilities in the maritime domain and the defensive commitment of the NATO Alliance across Supreme Allied Commander Europe’s (SACEUR) Area of Responsibility.”

Source: https://www.the-express.com/news/world-news/129654/nato-russia-war-lloyd-austin-usa

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has sued ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, saying they abandoned the startup’s original mission to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity and not for profit.
The lawsuit filed late on Thursday in California Superior Court in San Francisco is a culmination of Musk’s long-simmering opposition to the startup he co-founded. OpenAI has since become the face of generative AI, partly due to billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab. Musk went on to found his own artificial intelligence startup, xAI, launched last July.

Musk’s lawsuit alleges a breach of contract, saying Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman originally approached him to make an open source, non-profit company, but the startup established in 2015 is now focused on making money.
Musk said OpenAI’s three founders originally agreed to work on artificial general intelligence (AGI), a concept that machines could handle tasks like a human, but in a way that would “benefit humanity,” according to the lawsuit.

OpenAI would also work in opposition to Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google, which Musk said he believed was developing AGI for profit and would pose grave risks.
Instead, OpenAI “set the founding agreement aflame” in 2023 when it released its most powerful language model GPT-4 as essentially a Microsoft product, the lawsuit alleged.
Musk has sought a court ruling that would compel OpenAI to make its research and technology available to the public and prevent the startup from using its assets, including GPT-4, for financial gains of Microsoft or any individual.
OpenAI’s top executives rejected several claims that Musk made in his lawsuit, Axios reported on Friday, citing a memo.
“It was never going to be a cakewalk,” Altman said in his note, also seen by Axios. “The attacks will keep coming.”
OpenAI, Microsoft and Musk did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on the lawsuit.
Musk is also seeking a ruling that GPT-4 and a new and more advanced technology called Q* would be considered AGI and therefore outside of Microsoft’s license to OpenAI.

Reuters in November was first to report on Q* and warnings from OpenAI researchers about a powerful AI discovery.
Musk, who runs electric vehicle maker Tesla(TSLA.O), opens new tab, rocket maker SpaceX and social media platform X, decided to try to seize control of OpenAI from Altman and the other founders in late 2017, aiming to convert it into a commercial entity in partnership with Tesla, utilizing the automaker’s supercomputers, said one source with knowledge of the situation.
Altman and others resisted, and Musk resigned, saying he wanted to focus on Tesla’s AI projects. He announced his exit to OpenAI staff in February 2018 during a meeting at which Musk called for OpenAI to increase its development speed, which one researcher called reckless, the source said.
Musk did not respond to request for comment about his exit from OpenAI.
Since then, Musk on several occasions has called for regulation of AI.
“We expect this will have zero impact on AI development inside or outside of OpenAI, and would chalk it up to Musk seeking to get a slice of equity in a company he effectively founded but in which he holds no stake,” said Giuseppe Sette, president and co-founder of market research firm Toggle AI.
OpenAI’s tie-up with Microsoft is under antitrust scrutiny in the U.S. and Britain following a boardroom battle last year that resulted in the sudden ouster and return of Altman and creation of a new temporary board.
The startup plans to appoint new board members in March, the Washington Post reported on Thursday. Microsoft said in November it would have a non-voting observer seat.
Some legal experts said Musk’s allegations of breach of contract, based partly on an email between Musk and Altman, might not hold up in court.
While contracts can be formed through a series of emails, the lawsuit cites an email that appears to look like a proposal and a “one-sided discussion,” said Brian Quinn, a law professor at Boston College Law School.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/legal/elon-musk-sues-openai-ceo-sam-altman-breach-contract-2024-03-01/

U.S. President Joe Biden announced on Friday plans to carry out a first military airdrop of food and supplies into Gaza, a day after the deaths of Palestinians queuing for aid threw a spotlight on an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in the crowded coastal enclave.

Biden said the U.S. airdrop would take place in the coming days but offered no further specifics. Other countries, including Jordan and France, have already carried out airdrops of aid into Gaza.

“We need to do more and the United States will do more,” Biden told reporters, adding that “aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough.”
At the White House, spokesperson John Kirby stressed that airdrops would become “a sustained effort.” He added that the first airdrop would be likely be military MREs, or “meals ready-to-eat.”
“This isn’t going to be one and done,” Kirby said.
Biden told reporters that the U.S. was also looking at the possibility of a maritime corridor to deliver large amounts of aid into Gaza.

The airdrops could begin as early as this weekend, officials said.
At least 576,000 people in the Gaza Strip – one quarter of the enclave’s population – are one step away from famine, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Gaza health authorities said Israeli forces had killed more than 100 people trying to reach a relief convoy near Gaza City early on Thursday. Palestinians face an increasingly desperate situation nearly five months into the war that began with a Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

Israel blamed most of the deaths on crowds that swarmed around aid trucks, saying victims had been trampled or run over. An Israeli official also said troops had “in a limited response” later fired on crowds they felt had posed a threat.
With people eating animal feed and even cactuses to survive, and with medics saying children are dying in hospitals from malnutrition and dehydration, the U.N. has said it faces “overwhelming obstacles” getting in aid.
While it is unclear which type of aircraft will be used, the C-17 and C-130 are best suited for the job.
David Deptula, a retired U.S. Air Force three-star general who once commanded the no-fly zone over northern Iraq, said airdrops are something the U.S. military can effectively execute.
“It is something that’s right up their mission alley,” Deptula told Reuters.
“There are a lot of detailed challenges. But there’s nothing insurmountable.”
The United States and others also expect aid would be boosted by a temporary ceasefire, which Biden said Friday he hoped would happen by the time of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which starts on March 10.

ISRAEL ‘AWARE’ OF AIRDROP
Still, there have been questions about the effectiveness of air dropping aid into Gaza.
A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the airdrops would have only a limited impact on the suffering of those in Gaza.
“It doesn’t deal with the root cause,” the official said, adding that ultimately only opening up land borders could deal with the issue in a serious manner.
Another issue, the official added, was that the U.S. could not ensure that the aid simply didn’t end up in Hamas’ hands, given that the United States did not have troops on the ground.
“Humanitarian workers always complain that airdrops are good photo opportunities but a lousy way to deliver aid,” Richard Gowan, the International Crisis Group’s U.N. Director, said. Gowan said that the only way to get enough aid was through aid convoys which would follow a truce.
“It is arguable that the situation in Gaza is now so bad that any additional supplies will at least alleviate some suffering. But this at best a temporary band aid measure,” Gowan added.
Under pressure at home and abroad, another U.S. official said the Biden administration was looking at shipping aid by sea from Cyprus, some 210 nautical miles off Gaza’s Mediterranean coast.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/biden-announce-us-air-drop-aid-into-gaza-us-officials-say-2024-03-01/

At long last, first son Hunter Biden affirmed during his Wednesday impeachment inquiry deposition that his father, Joe, was “the big guy” referenced in an email about a business deal with a Chinese state-linked energy firm that yielded millions for Biden family members and other associates, more than three years after The Post broke the story — but rejected the notion that the president was ever penciled in for a 10% stake.

The deposition represents the first time the 54-year-old Hunter has admitted that his former business partner James Gilliar was referring to Joe Biden when he raised the prospect on May 13, 2017, of the first son holding a 10% stake in the lucrative joint venture involving CEFC China Energy “for the big guy.”

“I truly don’t know what the hell that James was talking about,” the first son said when asked about the reference, according to a transcript released Thursday.

“All I know is … what actually happened.”

The email, found on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, was first reported by The Post in October 2020 as part of a bombshell series of reports on the first son’s influence-peddling schemes.

Hunter Biden and his allies had long insisted that information found on the laptop either was not his or had been manipulated by bad actors — with dozens of former intelligence officials insisting the trove bore the hallmarks of Russian election interference.

Later in his response, Hunter said that Gilliar’s suggestion of his dad getting a stake was a “pie in the sky idea” with Biden leaving public life after eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president.

“Like, ‘Joe Biden’s out of the office. Maybe we’ll be able to get him involved,’” the first son said.

“Remember, again, is that Joe Biden, for first time in 48 years, is not an elected official and is not seeking office. And so James is probably, like, ‘Wow, wouldn’t be great if a former Vice President could be in our business together?’”

Hunter claimed to his interrogators that if he had seen the email from Gilliar at the time, “I would have picked up the phone and said, ‘You’re out of your mind.’”

“I shut it down, and the evidence of me shutting it down is the actual things you have as evidence,” the younger Biden said.

“Remember that. The agreement, the executed agreement, the executed agreement to create a company that was never operated, that’s what happened. That’s the evidence you have … Nothing to do with my dad, zero.”

The president lashed out at a Post reporter in June 2023 when pressed about being repeatedly referred to as “the big guy,” a moniker that his brother Frank also used in addition to several of Hunter’s associates.

“Why do you ask such a dumb question?” Biden shot back.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) described the deal involving CEFC China Energy as “money laundering” when speaking with reporters on a break from the deposition, pointing to a $40,000 check Joe Biden received from his brother James, following a “complicated financial transaction.”

Comer released bank records last year showing the firm, a shuttered entity that was apparently part of the Chinese Communist Party’s “Belt and Road” foreign influence campaign, paid James and Hunter Biden $6.1 million in 2017 and 2018 — including a $5 million wire on Aug. 8, 2017, days after Hunter texted a CEFC translator that he was “sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

Through a series of transfers to entities owned and controlled by Hunter, those funds flowed to other Biden family members, with $50,000 landing in a personal checking account for James and his wife, Sara — and the first brother writing the $40,000 check to the former vice president as a “loan repayment.”

At another point in the deposition, Hunter Biden described his financial relationship with his father as that of “a normal son [who] would take care of something for their dad or their dad would take care of something for their son.”

Hunter also defended patching his famous father in on speakerphone during calls with his business associates, telling the panel: “My dad calls me, like I’m sure a lot of your parents do, or a lot of you do with your children, and if I’m with people that are friends of mine, I’ll have him say hi.”

Source: https://nypost.com/2024/02/29/us-news/hunter-biden-acknowledged-joe-was-the-big-guy-in-5m-china-deal/

President Joe Biden on Thursday called on Donald Trump to help unblock a plan languishing in Congress to cut migrant crossings as the pair took part in dueling visits to the border over a top issue ahead of November’s election. Biden was in the town of Brownsville, Texas, across the Rio Grande river from Mexico, where he criticized Republicans for rejecting a bipartisan effort to toughen immigration rules after Trump told them not to pass it and give the president a win.

Biden and Trump, the Republican former president making his third bid for the White House, look set to face each other in what polls show will be a close election on Nov. 5 that looks set to be a deeply divisive rematch of the 2020 contest.
“Here’s what I would say to Mr Trump: … Instead of telling members of Congress to block this legislation, join me, or I’ll join you, in telling the Congress to pass this bipartisan security bill,” he said, while also warning he wanted people to know the cause of the inaction.

After being briefed by border patrol agents and others on the ground, Biden said they “desperately need more resources.”
Trump also met with local officials as well as Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, at the Rio Grande before speaking at Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, where border-crossers have posed a major problem for authorities in recent months.
“This is a Biden invasion over the past three years,” Trump said, citing crimes committed by migrants and referring to the issue at the border as a “war”, in the latest examples of the increasingly inflammatory language he has used in recent months.

He pledged to bring back policies in place during his term in office, including the “Remain in Mexico” plan that required some migrants to wait in Mexico for the outcome of their U.S. immigration cases.
Several hundred Trump supporters gathered on street corners in an area overlooking Shelby Park, an area that has been commandeered to block migrants crossing illegally, carrying “Make America Great Again” and “Never Surrender” flags.
Biden took office in 2021 promising to reverse the hardline immigration policies of Trump, who was in office from 2017 to early 2021, but has since toughened his own approach.
Under pressure from Republicans who accuse him of failing to control the border, Biden called on Congress last year to provide more enforcement funding and said he would “shut down the border” if given new authority to turn back migrants.
The White House is also considering using executive authority to deny more migrants asylum at the border, a source familiar with the matter has said.
Republicans have said Biden could better enforce existing laws and take new executive action without the need for Congress to approve it.

Biden was joined by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who Republican lawmakers have narrowly voted to impeach over his handling of the border, a move unlikely to succeed in the Democratic-led Senate.
“This visit is focused on the work that we do, not the rhetoric of others,” Mayorkas told reporters on Air Force One.
RISING CONCERN FOR VOTERS
A Reuters-Ipsos poll from Jan. 31 found rising concern among Americans about immigration, with 17% of respondents listing it as the most important problem facing the U.S. today, up sharply from 11% in December.
It was the top concern of Republican respondents, with 36% citing it as their main worry, above the 29% who cited the economy.
Trump was joined on his visit by Abbott, whose administration has been building a military “base camp” at Eagle Pass to deter migrants.
Eagle Pass remains a flashpoint in a heated partisan debate over border security even though the number of migrants caught crossing illegally into both there and Brownsville dropped sharply in January and February.
The number of migrants caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally hit a monthly record of 250,000 in December but dropped by half in January, a trend U.S. officials attribute to increased Mexican enforcement and seasonal trends.
A federal judge in Texas on Thursday blocked the state’s new law giving officials broad powers to arrest, prosecute and order the removal of people who illegally cross the border.
Abbott has deployed thousands of National Guard troops and laid concertina wire and river buoys to deter illegal immigration through a program called Operation Lone Star.
Some Democrats told Reuters they were turning toward Trump in Maverick County near the border, a rare Democratic stronghold in the majority Republican state of Texas.
Wendy Riojas, 25, who came to downtown Eagle Pass to see Trump visiting her hometown, voted for Biden in 2020 but does not know who she will support in November.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-trump-make-competing-election-year-visits-southern-us-border-2024-02-29/

President Vladimir Putin told Western countries on Thursday they risked provoking a nuclear war if they sent troops to fight in Ukraine, warning that Moscow had the weapons to strike targets in the West.
The war in Ukraine has triggered the worst crisis in Moscow’s relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Putin has previously spoken of the dangers of a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia, but his nuclear warning on Thursday was one of his most explicit.

Addressing lawmakers and other members of the country’s elite, Putin, 71, repeated his accusation that the West was bent on weakening Russia, and he suggested Western leaders did not understand how dangerous their meddling could be in what he cast as Russia’s own internal affairs.
He prefaced his nuclear warning with a specific reference to an idea, floated by French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, of European NATO members sending ground troops to Ukraine – a suggestion that was quickly rejected by the United States, Germany, Britain and others.

“(Western nations) must realise that we also have weapons that can hit targets on their territory. All this really threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and the destruction of civilisation. Don’t they get that?!” said Putin.
Speaking ahead of a March 15-17 presidential election when he is certain to be re-elected for another six-year term, he lauded what he said was Russia’s vastly modernised nuclear arsenal, the largest in the world.

“Strategic nuclear forces are in a state of full readiness,” he said, noting that new-generation hypersonic nuclear weapons he first spoke about in 2018 had either been deployed or were at a stage where development and testing were being completed.
Visibly angry, Putin suggested Western politicians recall the fate of those like Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler and France’s Napoleon Bonaparte who had unsuccessfully invaded Russia in the past.

MORE TROOPS FOR WESTERN BORDER

An Illinois state judge on Wednesday barred Donald Trump from appearing on the Illinois’ Republican presidential primary ballot because of his role in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but she delayed her ruling from taking effect in light of an expected appeal by the former U.S. president.
Cook County Circuit Judge Tracie Porter sided with Illinois voters who argued that the former president should be disqualified from the state’s March 19 primary ballot and its Nov. 5 general election ballot for violating the anti-insurrection clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

The final outcome of the Illinois case and similar challenges will likely be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard arguments related to Trump’s ballot eligibility on Feb. 8.
Porter said she was staying her decision because she expected his appeal to Illinois’ appellate courts, and a potential ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court.
The advocacy group Free Speech For People, which spearheaded the Illinois disqualification effort, praised the ruling as a “historic victory” in a statement.

A campaign spokesperson for Trump, the national frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, said in a statement this “is an unconstitutional ruling that we will quickly appeal.”
Colorado and Maine earlier removed Trump from their state ballots after determining he is disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Both decisions are on hold while Trump appeals.
Section 3 bars from public office anyone who took an oath to support the U.S. Constitution and then has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-is-disqualified-illinois-ballot-judge-rules-2024-02-29/

Donald Trump won South Carolina’s Republican primary on Saturday, easily beating former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in her home state and further consolidating his path to a third straight GOP nomination.

Trump has now swept every contest that counted for Republican delegates, adding to previous wins in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Haley is facing growing pressure to leave the race but says she’s not going anywhere despite losing the state where she was governor from 2011 to 2017.

A 2020 rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden is becoming increasingly inevitable. Haley has vowed to stay in the race through at least the batch of primaries on March 5, known as Super Tuesday, but was unable to dent Trump’s momentum in her home state despite holding far more campaign events and arguing that the indictments against Trump will hamstring him against Biden.

The Associated Press declared Trump the winner as polls closed statewide at 7 p.m. That race call was based on an analysis of AP VoteCast, a comprehensive survey of Republican South Carolina primary voters. The survey confirmed the findings of pre-Election Day polls showing Trump far outpacing Haley statewide.

“I have never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now,” Trump declared, taking the stage for his victory speech mere moments after polls closed. He added, “You can celebrate for about 15 minutes, but then we have to get back to work.”

South Carolina’s first-in-the-South primary has historically been a reliable bellwether for Republicans. In all but one primary since 1980, the Republican winner in South Carolina has gone on to be the party’s nominee. The lone exception was Newt Gingrich in 2012.

Trump was dominant across the state, even leading in Lexington County, which Haley represented in the state Legislature. Many Trump-backing South Carolinians, even some who previously supported Haley during her time as governor, weren’t willing to give her a home-state bump.

“She’s done some good things,” Davis Paul, 36, said about Haley as he waited for Trump at a recent rally in Conway. “But I just don’t think she’s ready to tackle a candidate like Trump. I don’t think many people can.”

At Haley headquarters on Saturday night, supporters waved her signs in front of a large projection screen showing Trump’s speech, blocking it from view. That, of course, didn’t make the defeat any less crushing.

About an hour later, Haley took the stage and said: “What I saw today was South Carolina’s frustration with our country’s direction. I’ve seen that same frustration nationwide.”

“I don’t believe Donald Trump can beat Joe Biden,” Haley said, later adding: “I said earlier this week that no matter what happens in South Carolina, I would continue to run. I’m a woman of my word.”

She said she plans to head to Michigan for its primary on Tuesday — the last major contest before Super Tuesday. Still, she faces questions about where she might be able to win a contest or be competitive.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-nikki-haley-south-carolina-primary-republicans-13237d287ce770e0a45e9bccee78e8ee

US military warns of environmental disaster from cargo spill in Red Sea

An attack by Yemeni Houthi rebels on a Belize-flagged ship earlier this month caused an 18-mile (29-km) oil slick, the US military said Saturday. It also warned of the danger of a spill from the vessel’s cargo of fertilizer.

The Rubymar, a British-registered, Lebanese-operated cargo vessel, was attacked on Feb 18 while sailing through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait that connects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, US Central Command said.

The missile attack forced the crew to abandon the vessel, which had been on its way to Bulgaria after leaving Khorfakkan in the United Arab Emirates. It was transporting more than 41,000 tons of fertiliser, CENTCOM said in a statement.

The vessel suffered significant damage, which led to the slick, said the CENTCOM statement, warning that the ship’s cargo “could spill into the Red Sea and worsen this environmental disaster”.

“The Houthis continue to demonstrate disregard for the regional impact of their indiscriminate attacks, threatening the fishing industry, coastal communities, and imports of food supplies,” it said.

The Associated Press, relying on satellite images from Planet Labs PBC of the stricken vessel, reported Tuesday that the vessel was leaking oil in the Red Sea.

Yemen’s internationally recognised government on Saturday called for other countries and maritime-protection organisations to quickly address the oil slick and avert “a significant environmental disaster”.

In a statement, the government, which sits in the southern city of Aden, said the vessel is heading toward the Hanish Islands, a Yemeni archipelago in the southern Red Sea.

The USS Mason, meanwhile, shot down an anti-ship ballistic missile launched Saturday evening from Houthi-held areas in Yemen towards the Gulf of Aden, the US Central Command said.

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/houthi-attack-on-cargo-ship-in-red-sea-causes-29km-long-oil-slick-101708803040445.html

U.S. military tracking ANOTHER balloon: Pentagon scrambles jets to investigate high-altitude object of ‘unknown origin’ over Colorado

• The military dispatched jets to investigate
• It was not deemed to be a threat
• Chinese spy balloon last year sparked a diplomatic incident with China

The U.S. military is tracking yet another balloon over the western United States, a year after a Chinese spy balloon provoked a diplomatic crisis.

The military dispatched aircraft to investigate the situation, CBS news reported, adding that it has not been determined to be a threat.

Like the spy balloon that entered U.S. airspace and slowly made its way across the U.S., the current balloon was spotted in Colorado.

The spy balloon that entered U.S. airspace over Alaska in January eventually flew over a U.S. military base in Montana. It wasn’t until it was over the Atlantic that the military shot it down off the coast of South Carolina, citing security risks of downing it over land.

That in turn provoked Beijing, which vowed countermeasures, adding yet another strain a relationship already battered by trade practices, tariffs, Taiwan, human rights, and China’s ties with Russia before President Vladimir Putin launched his Ukraine invasion.

Republicans criticized President Joe Biden for not having it downed sooner. The incident prompted a period when the military shot down other unidentified objects.

The earlier incident forced Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a planned trip to China while criticizing it as an ‘irresponsible act.’

Source : https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13119491/U-S-military-tracking-balloon-Pentagon-following-high-altitude-object-unknown-origin-Colorado.html

Any move to introduce conscription by Britain and other NATO allies would make a difference to Europe’s defences against Russia, Latvia’s foreign minister has said.

Krisjanis Karins said the larger the country, the bigger the difference.

Asked whether he was advocating such a step, the top diplomat told Sky News that he is “happily sharing” with colleagues the experience of his own nation, which reinstated mandatory military service last year in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“We think it’s a very good idea for us,” the foreign minister said, speaking on the sidelines of a recent security conference in Germany.

“I think other NATO allies could consider it as well.”

Latvia, one of the three Baltic states who are members of the NATO alliance, scrapped conscription almost two decades ago.

But it decided to reintroduce the draft as part of a plan effectively to double the size of its armed forces – professionals and reserves – to 61,000 by 2032.

“The point of the draft is to beef up capable, equipped and trained reservists,” Mr Karins, a previous Latvian prime minister, said.

“It’s not replacing the professional army. It’s augmenting the professional army.”

Asked whether he thought it would make a difference if the UK started conscription, the foreign minister said: “I think it would make a difference if any European country [did] – and of course, the larger countries, it would make a bigger difference.”

As for whether this was an idea he was pushing, he said with a smile: “It’s the experience that we have that I’m happily sharing with all of my friends and colleagues.”

But UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, who also spoke to Sky News at the Munich Security Conference last week, sounded less than keen about even training citizens voluntarily – an idea the head of the British Army appears to support – let alone mandatory military service.

“We have a professional army of professional armed forces. It’s really important that they are trained to the highest possible standards,” Mr Shapps said in an interview.

“Everyone knows that in a wartime – First World War, Second World War – scenario, of course, countries have to make other arrangements.

“That’s not the position we’re in now. We have absolutely no plans to do that now. And so that’s not something which is on the agenda currently.”

Yet a Latvian general explained how conscription is about much more than simply generating fresh boots on the ground – it is also about growing a sense of national service and a desire for each citizen to do their bit to help protect the country.

“Everyone has the right to serve – an obligation to serve – the nation,” said Major General Andis Dilans, the Chief of the Joint Staff of the National Armed Forces, Latvia’s second most senior commander.

“This is really the cornerstone of democracy,” he said in an interview in the Latvian capital Riga.

“Therefore, we looked at this not just as a war-fighting force of the conscription, but looking at the connection between the public and the military in case of crisis, in case of war.”

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/uk-and-other-nato-allies-urged-to-consider-conscription-as-ukraine-war-enters-third-year-13079348

KEY POINTS

• Federal prosecutors in New York said they charged a Japanese Yakuza leader with conspiring to traffic nuclear materials from Burma to other countries.
• Prosecutors said the accused gangster, Takeshi Ebisawa, “and his confederates showed samples of nuclear materials in Thailand” to an undercover agent from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
• “A U.S. nuclear forensic laboratory later analyzed the samples and confirmed that the samples contain uranium and weapons-grade plutonium,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan said.

Federal prosecutors in New York on Wednesday said they charged a Japanese Yakuza leader with conspiring to traffic nuclear materials from Burma to other countries in the belief that they would be used by Iran to make a nuclear weapon.

The accused gangster, Takeshi Ebisawa, “and his confederates showed samples of nuclear materials in Thailand” to an undercover agent from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration who was posing as a narcotics and weapons trafficker with access to an Iranian general, prosecutors said.

“With the assistance of Thai authorities, the nuclear samples were seized and subsequently transferred to the custody of U.S. law enforcement,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan said in a statement announcing a superseding indictment against Ebisawa and another man.

“A U.S. nuclear forensic laboratory later analyzed the samples and confirmed that the samples contain uranium and weapons-grade plutonium,” the statement said.

The indictment says that in September 2020, Ebisawa emailed the undercover DEA agent a letter in the name of a mining company offering to sell 50 metric tons of uranium and thorium for $6.85 million.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said, “It is impossible to overstate the seriousness of the conduct alleged in today’s indictment.”

Williams said Ebisawa “brazenly trafficked” the nuclear material while believing it would be used to develop a nuclear weapons program.”

The top prosecutor also said that even as he tried to sell the nuclear materials, the Yakuza leader “also negotiated for the purchase of deadly weapons, including surface-to-air missiles,” M60 machine guns, AK-47s and armor-piercing ammunition.

Ebisawa, 60, and his 61-year-old co-defendant in the case, Somphop Singhasiri, a Thai national, were previously charged in April 2022 with international narcotics trafficking and firearms offenses, Williams’ office noted.

Both defendants are scheduled to be arraigned on the new charges in Manhattan federal court on Thursday.

The Yakuza is a Japanese organized crime syndicate.

The superseding indictment against Ebisawa and Singhasiri says Ebisawa’s “criminal activities have included large-scale narcotics and weapons trafficking, and his international criminal network extends through Asia, Europe, and the United States, among other places.”

Source : https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/21/feds-charge-japanese-yakuza-leader-with-nuclear-materials-trafficking.html

Biden administration fears security threats at hundreds of sites

The Biden administration plans to invest billions in the domestic manufacturing of cargo cranes, seeking to counter fears that the prevalent use of China-built cranes with advanced software at many U.S. ports poses a potential national-security risk.

The move is part of a set of actions taken by the administration Wednesday that is intended to improve maritime cybersecurity. They include a U.S. Coast Guard directive to mandate certain digital-security requirements for deployed foreign-built cranes at strategic seaports, as well as an executive order by President Biden setting baseline cybersecurity standards for computer networks that operate U.S. ports.

Administration officials said more than $20 billion would be invested in port security, including domestic cargo-crane production, over the next five years. The money, tapped from the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in 2021, would support a U.S. subsidiary of Mitsui, a Japanese company, to produce the cranes, which officials said would be the first time in 30 years that they would be built domestically.

“We felt there was real strategic risk here,” said Anne Neuberger, U.S. deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology. “These cranes, because they are essentially moving the large-scale containers in and out of port, if they were encrypted in a criminal attack, or rented or operated by an adversary, that could have real impact on our economy’s movement of goods and our military’s movement of goods through ports.”

The claim that the China-made cranes pose a national security risk to the U.S. is “entirely paranoia,” Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said in a statement. “We firmly oppose the U.S. overstretching the concept of national security and abusing national power to obstruct normal economic and trade cooperation between China and the U.S. Playing the ‘China card’ and floating the ‘China threat’ theory is irresponsible and will harm the interests of the U.S. itself.”

The Biden administration’s actions follow a Wall Street Journal investigation last year that revealed U.S. fears that giant cranes made by a Chinese, state-owned company in use at a number of America’s ports could present an espionage and disruption risk. Cranes at some ports used by the U.S. military were flagged as surveillance threats. Officials also raised the concern that the software on the cranes could be manipulated by China to impede American shipping or, worse, temporarily disrupt the operation of the crane.

“By design these cranes may be controlled, serviced and programmed from remote locations,” said Rear Adm. John Vann, who leads the Coast Guard cyber command, during a press briefing. “These features potentially leave PRC-manufactured cranes vulnerable to exploitation,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

Source : https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-to-invest-billions-to-replace-china-made-cranes-at-nations-ports-d451ef8f?st=y4rjzw3afar0cfj

Occupants of the White House have grumbled over news coverage practically since the place was built. Now it’s Joe Biden’s turn: With a reelection campaign underway, there are signs that those behind the president are starting to more aggressively and publicly challenge how he is portrayed.

Within the past two weeks, an administration aide sent an unusual letter to the White House Correspondents’ Association complaining about coverage of a special counsel’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents. In addition, the president’s campaign objected to its perception that negative stories about Biden’s age got more attention than remarks by Donald Trump about the NATO alliance.

It’s not quite “enemy of the people” territory. But it is noticeable.

“It is a strategy,” said Frank Sesno, a professor at George Washington University and former CNN Washington bureau chief. “It does several things at once. It makes the press a foil, which is a popular pattern for politicians of all stripes.”

It can also distract voters from bad news. And while some newsrooms quickly dismiss the criticism, he says, others may pause and think twice about what they write.

THE WHITE HOUSE OBJECTS TO THE FRAMING OF STORIES

The letter from Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House counsel’s office, suggested that reporters improperly framed stories about the Feb. 8 release of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report. Sams pointed to stories by CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press and others emphasizing that Hur had found evidence that Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified material. Sam wrote that much of that so-called evidence didn’t hold up and was negated by Hur’s decision not to press charges.

He said it was critical to address it when “significant errors” like misstating the findings and conclusions of a federal investigation of a president occur.

It was Sams’ second foray into press criticism in a few months; last fall he urged journalists to give more scrutiny to House Republicans and the reasons behind their impeachment inquiry of Biden.

“Everybody makes mistakes, and nobody’s perfect,” Sams told the AP. “But a healthy back and forth over what’s the full story helps make both the press and the government sharper in how the country and world get the news they need to hear.”

Source : https://apnews.com/article/biden-white-house-press-age-fighting-3bda702e68181e58ead973e7c8eae0c7

The so-called “Magnificent 7” now wields greater financial might than almost every other major country in the world, according to new Deutsche Bank research.

The meteoric rise in the profits and market capitalizations of the Magnificent 7 U.S. tech behemoths — Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidiaand Tesla — outstrip those of all listed companies in almost every G20 country, the bank said in a research note Tuesday. Of the non-U.S. G20 countries, only China and Japan (and the latter, only just) have greater profits when their listed companies are combined.

Deutsche Bank analysts highlighted that the Magnificent 7′s combined market cap alone would make it the second-largest country stock exchange in the world, double that of Japan in fourth. Microsoft and Apple, individually, have similar market caps to all combined listed companies in each of France, Saudi Arabia and the U.K, they added.

However, this level of concentration has led some analysts to voice concerns over related risks in the U.S. and global stock market.

Jim Reid, Deutsche Bank’s head of global economics and thematic research, cautioned in a follow-up note last week that the U.S. stock market is “rivalling 2000 and 1929 in terms of being its most concentrated in history.”

Deutsche analyzed the trajectories of all 36 companies that have been in the top five most valuable in the S&P 500 since the mid-1960s.

Reid noted that while big companies eventually tended to drop out of the top five as investment trends and profit outlooks evolved, 20 of the 36 that have populated that upper bracket are still in the top 50 today.

“Of the Mag 7 in the current top 5, Microsoft has been there for all but 4 months since 1997. Apple ever present since December 2009, Alphabet for all but two months since August 2012 and Amazon since January 2017. The newest entrant has been Nvidia which has been there since H1 last year,” he said.

Tesla had a run of 13 months in the top five most valuable companies in 2021/22 but is now down to 10th, with the share price having fallen by around 20% since the start of 2024. By contrast, Nvidia’s stock has continued to surge, adding almost 47% since the turn of the year.

“So, at the edges the Mag 7 have some volatility around the position of its members, and you can question their overall valuations, but the core of the group have been the largest and most successful companies in the US and with it the world for many years now,” Reid added.

Could the gains broaden out?

Despite a muted global economic outlook at the start of 2023, stock market returns on Wall Street were impressive, but heavily concentrated among the Magnificent Seven, which benefitted strongly from the AI hype and rate cut expectations.

In a research note last week, wealth manager Evelyn Partners highlighted that the Magnificent 7 returned an incredible 107% over 2023, far outpacing the broader MSCI USA index, which delivered a still healthy but relatively paltry 27% to investors.

Daniel Casali, chief investment strategist at Evelyn Partners, suggested that signs are emerging that opportunities in U.S. stocks could broaden out beyond the 7 megacaps this year for two reasons, the first of which is the resilience of the U.S. economy.

Source : https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/19/magnificent-7-profits-now-exceed-almost-every-country-in-the-world-should-we-be-worried.html

The U.S. will announce a major package of sanctions against Russia on Friday over the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the two-year Ukraine war, President Joe Biden said on Tuesday.
Biden, speaking to reporters as he departed on a trip to California, did not give details.

The latest sanctions on Russia will target a range of items, including the country’s defense and industrial bases, along with sources of revenue for the economy, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.

The package will “hold Russia accountable for what happened to Mr. Navalny” and for its actions over the course of the war in Ukraine, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said.

A senior U.S. official said a sanctions package was already being planned to mark the second anniversary of the war, which Washington will now reconsider and supplement in response to Navalny’s death.

The Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Brian Nelson, is discussing sanctions over Navalny’s death on a trip to Europe this week, two sources familiar with the matter said.

Nelson, in visits to Germany, Belgium and France ahead of the second anniversary of the Ukraine war, is also discussing Washington’s authority to target those funding Russia’s war production efforts even if they are in third countries, the Treasury said. It said the U.S. is “aggressively pursuing those who attempt to evade our sanctions.”

The United States already has issued a wide array of sanctions related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 2022, including on Russian President Vladimir Putin, officials and banks.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us-announce-major-sanctions-package-friday-over-navalny-death-2024-02-20

Washington said the Algerian-proposed resolution would “jeopardise” talks to end the war.

But the move has been condemned, with US allies expressing regret the original ceasefire motion was blocked by the White House.

In its own resolution the US warned Israel not to invade the city of Rafah.

The US has previously avoided the word “ceasefire” during UN votes on the war, but President Joe Biden has recently made similar comments.

Thirteen countries on the 15-member body backed Algeria’s resolution, while the UK abstained.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Washington’s ambassador to the UN, said it was not the right time to call for an immediate ceasefire while negotiations between Hamas and Israel were continuing.

The draft resolution proposed by the US calls for a temporary ceasefire “as soon as practicable” and on the condition that all hostages are released, as well as urging barriers on aid reaching Gaza to be lifted.

However, it is unclear if or when the Security Council will vote on the form of words proposed by Washington.

After the US vetoed Algeria’s ceasefire resolution, the north African nation’s envoy to the UN said it “would have sent a strong message to Palestinians” and declared that “unfortunately the Security Council failed once again.”

“Examine your conscience, how will history judge you,” Amar Bendjama said.

Palestinian representative to the UN Riyad Mansour said the US veto was “absolutely reckless and dangerous”.

Heavy criticism also came from a series of Israeli and US allies. France’s representative, Nicolas de Rivière, expressed regret that the resolution was “not adopted given the disastrous situation on the ground”.

But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “committed to continuing the war until we achieve all of its goals”. “There is no pressure, none, that can change this,” he added.

Washington has come under immense international pressure to use its leverage to rein in Israel’s devastating operations, having spent much of the war emphasising its ally’s right to self-defence.

Israel would be bound to follow any Security Council resolution, as these are legally binding. This issue distinguishes the Security Council from the General Assembly.

It is the first time the US has called for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza at the UN, having vetoed previous resolutions using the word.

Frank Lowenstein, who served as US special envoy for Middle East peace under President Obama, called the move “a pretty significant shift” in American policy.

“What I think is most significant is what this says about the frustration level the Biden administration has with Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government,” he told the BBC World Service. “They’ve just consistently ignored us when it comes to humanitarian assistance, reducing civilian casualties and now they are dug in on this Rafah invasion that we are strongly counselling against.”

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68346027

Before the shock death of her husband Alexei in a grim Arctic prison last week, Yulia Navalnaya had always played down the idea she would one day take over as leader of Russia’s opposition. But on Monday, she vowed to continue his fight.
In a video released three days after his death and less than a month before Russia’s next presidential election, the 47-year-old mother-of-two alternated between rage and grief as she signalled she would try to help lead a shell-shocked opposition.

“In killing Alexei, (President Vladimir) Putin has killed half of me. Half of my heart and half of my soul. But there is another half of me, and it tells me that I have no right to give in. I will continue Alexei Navalny’s work, I will continue the struggle for our country,” she said.

Should she take her husband’s mantle, Navalnaya would follow a path trodden by activist widows in other parts of the world, from U.S. civil rights campaigner Coretta Scott King to Corazon Aquino of the Philippines. Closer to home, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya stood for president reluctantly after her husband Syarhei was jailed in 2020.

In a sign that some forces see Navalnaya as a possible threat, several pro-Kremlin social media accounts have begun to try to undermine her by publishing what allies say is falsified information about her life.

Recording her video in a dimly-lit room, Navalnaya accused Putin of murdering her husband and made clear she wanted revenge. The Kremlin says the authorities played no role in Navalny’s death.

“I call on you to share my fury. My fury, my anger, my hatred of those who dared to murder our future,” she said.

Any successor of Navalny would inherit a battered opposition movement whose key figures are either dead, jailed or in exile.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/yulia-navalnaya-russias-steely-new-opposition-politician-out-avenge-husbands-2024-02-19

Yemeni rebels attempting to impose a blockade on Israel fired rockets on a British ship and reportedly managed to sink it, the first time it has succeeded since the start of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza

The United Kingdom’s Maritime Trade Operations Agency (UKMTO) reported Monday that the Houthis sunk a ship traveling in the Red Sea, south of the port city of Mukha in Yemen. It is the first time since the start of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza that a crew had to abandon their ship because of the Houthis.

Initial reports stated that there were no casualties in the incident, and military officials who were in the area provided the crew with assistance. A report by the Al-Jazeera network, which is based on a source in the field of shipping in Yemen, stated that Ansar Allah forces, or the Houthis in Yemen, attacked a British ship near Bab al-Mandab. The source added that the ship was significantly damaged, which caused it to stop in the water, and that the crew called for help.

After the initial reports, the spokesman of the Houthi army, Yahya Saree, claimed responsibility for the incident. According to him, the Houthi forces attacked the British ship Rubymar in the Gulf of Adenwith several missiles. According to him, the ship was badly damaged, its crew got out safely and it is in danger of sinking. Sky News in Arabic reported that the ship had sunk.

Sources gave the Lebanese al-Mayadeen channel, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, more details about the events. According to them, the ship was carrying ammonia and, after it was attacked, attempts were made to save it, but it caught fire and began to sink. The sources said that the ship “was attacked with a precise and new weapon that has not been revealed until now.”

The Houthis, who are supported by Iran, have been boasting for many weeks about their ability to attack “Israeli” ships or those that are sailing to Israel, as part of their support for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

In every official statement they say that their attacks will continue until “the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip stops, and medicine and food enter the Strip.” With the entry of the international coalition to fight against Yemen, the Houthis announced that American and British targets in the Red Sea also were legitimate targets.

Source : https://www.ynetnews.com/article/ryhilb11na

A senior administration told Reuters they didn’t believe ‘a rush to a vote is necessary or constructive’

The Biden administration is reportedly taking its goal of a temporary cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war to the U.N. Security Council as early as Tuesday.

The administration is said to have proposed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution which in part would call for a temporary cease-fire and call on Israel not to go into Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

According to Reuters, the U.S. text states in part that it “determines that under current circumstances a major ground offensive into Rafah would result in further harm to civilians and their further displacement including potentially into neighboring countries.”

Richard Goldberg, a former NSC official during the Trump administration, told Fox News Digital, “The United States should be vetoing pro-Hamas resolutions, not proposing them. By putting forward a resolution calling for a ceasefire and opposing Israeli military action in Rafah, the White House is effectively pushing for Hamas to survive to massacre another day. This is a complete betrayal of U.S. interests and values.”

A senior administration official speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity said, “We don’t believe a rush to a vote is necessary or constructive and intend on allowing time for negotiations.”

The Jewish state has hitherto opposed President Biden’s attempts to torpedo its slated seizure of Rafah where one of the last bastions of Hamas terrorists and hostages, including Americans, are believed to be located.

On Friday, President Biden made clear his feelings about Israel going into Rafah, telling reporters, “I’m hoping that the Israelis will not make a massive land invasion.”

Biden added during the same press conference that he had engaged with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the situation and that he had made the case in calling for a temporary cease-fire so that hostage negotiations can continue.

“The world must know and Hamas leaders must know if our hostages are not home by Ramadan, the fighting will continue and expand to Rafah,” said Benny Gantz, an Israeli security cabinet member and leader of the opposition party. Ramadan starts on March 11.

On Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the decision was one Israel would take on its own: “Hamas is left with marginal [forces] in the central camps and with the Rafah Brigade, and what stands between them and a complete collapse as a military system is a decision by the IDF.”

Commentators have noted that the hostage release talks in Cairo are stagnate and Israeli forces have managed to free two hostages via limited incursions into Rafah last week.

Gallant fired back at the international voices opposed to an invasion into Rafah: “There is no one here to come to their aid, no Iranians, no international aid.”

He continued, “There were 24 regional battalions in Gaza – we have dismantled 18 of them,” Gallant said during a media briefing last week. “Now, Rafah is the next Hamas center of gravity.”

A U.S. State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital, “We have also been clear that a full-scale Israel military operation in Rafah should not proceed until there is a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the more than 1 million people sheltering there.”

According to the State Department spokesperson, “The best way to achieve an enduring end to the crisis in Gaza that provides lasting peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians alike, is our strong commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state. As such, the United States continues to support the two-state solution and to oppose policies that endanger its viability or contradict our mutual interests and values.”

Source : https://www.foxnews.com/world/biden-to-go-to-un-security-council-to-force-temporary-cease-fire-on-israel-halt-rafah-offensive

Christopher Wray warns that pre-positioned malware could be triggered to disrupt critical systems in the U.S.

MUNICH—As intelligence chiefs and policymakers gathered for this city’s annual security conference focused on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation urged them not to lose sight of another threat: China.

Christopher Wray on Sunday said Beijing’s efforts to covertly plant offensive malware inside U.S. critical infrastructure networks is now at “a scale greater than we’d seen before,” an issue he has deemed a defining national security threat.

Citing Volt Typhoon, the name given to the Chinese hacking network that was revealed last year to be lying dormant inside U.S. critical infrastructure, Wray said Beijing-backed actors were pre-positioning malware that could be triggered at any moment to disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure.

“It’s the tip of the iceberg…it’s one of many such efforts by the Chinese,” he said on the sidelines of the security conference that has been dominated by questions over Ukraine and the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. China, he had earlier told delegates, is increasingly inserting “offensive weapons within our critical infrastructure poised to attack whenever Beijing decides the time is right.”

The FBI chief declined to elaborate on what other critical infrastructure had been targeted, stressing that the Bureau had “a lot of work under way.”

Source: https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/fbi-director-says-china-cyberattacks-on-u-s-infrastructure-now-at-unprecedented-scale-c8de5983

Over 300 people were detained in Russia while paying tribute to opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died at a remote Arctic penal colony, a prominent rights group reported Sunday.

The sudden death of Navalny, 47, was a crushing blow to many Russians, who had pinned their hopes for the future on President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe. Navalny remained vocal in his unrelenting criticism of the Kremlin even after surviving a nerve agent poisoning and receiving multiple prison terms.

The news reverberated across the globe, with many world leaders blaming the death on Putin and his government. In an exchange with reporters shortly after leaving a Saturday church service, President Joe Biden reiterated his stance that Putin was ultimately to blame for Navalny’s death. “The fact of the matter is, Putin is responsible. Whether he ordered it, he’s responsible for the circumstance,” Biden said. “It’s a reflection of who he is. It cannot be tolerated.”

Source: https://apnews.com/article/russia-alexei-navalny-death-prison-putin-d0121f49840ee1cd6fbf94f6d7249e1b

Billionaire maintains his companies are doing the most to undermine the Kremlin

Absurd.

That’s what Elon Musk calls accusations these days that he is an apologist for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But it is easy to see why some are calling him Moscow Musk.

Frankly, when Putin is praising Musk, as he did earlier this month, and when the Musketeer Tucker Carlson is airing videos on the X social-media platform praising life under that authoritarian government as superior to the U.S., it is unnerving. When X is seeing a surge in Russian state-backed activity, as researchers say, and Musk’s satellite internet service, Starlink, is said to be used by Russian forces in the war against Ukraine, it is unnerving.

This past week, Musk called on his echoverse to lobby the Senate not to pass an aid package for Ukraine, in the latest example of the billionaire’s speaking out about the conflict that is dragging toward its second full year.

“There is no way in hell that Putin is going to lose,” Musk said this past Monday during an audio event on X.

Explanations have been offered, and unknowns persist. What’s especially jarring perhaps is the totality of the Musk-Russia touchpoints lately. It’s a lot of Russia, Russia, Russia for an extremely powerful man at the center of U.S. industry and increasingly key to strategic actions in space and communications.

And it’s ahead of the U.S. November elections, where debate will play out over X.

Reaction has been swift.

“Why is @elonmusk shilling for Russia now? Why is he still a US govt contractor?” Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, tweeted among those condemning Musk.

Some on X tried to make a thing of #MoscowMusk and #ElonMuskIsATraitor.

“Why is a US defense contractor (Elon) who gets $Billions in DoD contracts criticizing US security policy, in favor of our enemy, Russia?” asked Terry Virts, former commander of the International Space Station.

To Musk, airing his opinions freely is exactly what should be occurring on X and why, he has said, he acquired the platform in late 2022. He has said it had become too politically correct, too infected with liberal biases, to allow true public debate.

Some of what he was so critical about at then-Twitter, now X, was an apparatus expanded within the company after the 2016 presidential election and the late conclusion that Russian-backed actors had gamed it and other social-media platforms in an attempt to help Donald Trump become president. (Russia denied such activity.)

As X’s new boss, Musk slashed the company’s safety team along with other cuts throughout the organization. In January, the company said it would hire 100 new content moderators, a fraction of the more than 1,700 people it lost. That announcement came after some embarrassing blunders saw content go viral, such as AI-generated pornography of the pop star Taylor Swift’s likeness.

The European Commission has opened a formal investigation into whether the platform is living up to obligations to police harmful content. About the time the European Union’s new online-content law went into effect last year, the commission chastised X as being the platform with the largest ratio of “mis/disinformation.”

The commission is especially worried about Russia’s influence. “The Russian state has engaged in the war of ideas to pollute our information space with half-truth and lies to create a false image that democracy is no better than autocracy,” Vera Jourova, a European Commission vice president, said at the time as she urged X and other big tech companies to prepare for this year’s large lineup of elections around the world.

While Musk has bristled at the commission, the company has said it is focused on following the law and protecting freedom of expression.

Other changes by Musk have been more subtle. In April, X did away with state-affiliated labels on accounts such as RT, formerly Russia Today, which are often seen as propaganda arms of their governments. The move allowed them to have a bigger audience, experts say.

“Thanks to Elon Musk and the changes he has made to Twitter’s policies, Russian government and propaganda accounts have seen a surge of new followers and increased engagement, meaning that any Kremlin disinformation campaigns will reach a larger number of people, with little chance of being acted upon by Twitter,” Caroline Orr Bueno, a disinformation researcher at the University of Maryland, wrote recently in her newsletter.

Russian accounts have been amplifying calls for a U.S. civil war stemming from controversies over illegal migration, according to her research.

The tactics, including “amplifying extremes on both sides of a divisive issue,” were similar to those used in the run-up to the 2016 election, she added, and suggested the “civil war” push “represents a sort of trial run designed to see how much they can get away with in this new environment.”

Source : https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musk-x-twitter-russia-putin-b53f1891?st=dj6x7pbrkzjvfj0

Street protests and activism tolerated by Putin before the war in Ukraine have largely vanished

Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny’s death Friday at a Russian prison camp in the Arctic silenced a man who was arguably the most influential remaining critic of President Vladimir Putin and the authoritarian state the former spy has methodically built on the wreckage of the Soviet Union.

Putin, who has effectively run Russia for 24 years and is seeking to extend his time in office for another six years in elections set for next month, now strides the Russian political stage with almost no visible challengers. Many of those who have opposed him have ended up in prison, or dead.

Since Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin has introduced laws to punish critics of its military campaign, muzzled independent media, branded pro-peace authors and artists as “foreign agents” and denied Russians the ability to publicly express opinions about the war.

Authorities have unleashed a wave of repression to ensure compliance. Many ordinary citizens have been swept up in a crackdown and handed fines and lengthy jail times for what authorities view as discrediting the army or spreading misinformation about Russia’s stalled military campaign. A 72-year-old woman who questioned Russia’s conduct in the war in Ukraine online was sentenced recently to 5½ years in jail.

Navalny and the network of political offices he established in 2017 were once able to assemble protests in major Russian cities, rattling the Kremlin and prompting the deployment of riot police to quell them. There hasn’t been a significant wave of demonstrations since the days just after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Hundreds of anti-Kremlin activists have fled the country, many of them continuing from abroad their efforts to shed light on government corruption and the crackdown on opposition within Russia, despite being declared foreign agents by the state and facing prosecution if they return home.

Russia’s parliament recently passed a bill allowing authorities to confiscate the assets of people convicted of discrediting the Russian military, including those living abroad. Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the parliament’s lower house, said such people “publicly throw dirt at Russia, insult our soldiers and officers” and “feel their impunity, believing that justice cannot reach them.”

Even lawyers who served government critics as a last line of defense against a legal system that is being reshaped to punish dissent have either been jailed or fled the country. Three of the lawyers who have represented Navalny are now in jail on charges of involvement in an extremist group. Two have been arrested in absentia.

“It’s not even clear how any doubt in what Putin says can be voiced in Russia, what kind of disagreement can be raised,” said Konstantin Sonin, an expert on Russian politics at the University of Chicago who personally knew Navalny.

Faced with punishment for criticizing the war, which the Russian government refers to euphemistically as a “special military operation,” ordinary Russians are also starved of access to information that questions the Kremlin narrative.

Source : https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/alexei-navalnys-death-marks-end-of-political-dissent-in-russia-92cb69b9?st=m1plm8nx4mfsciu

Jaishankar defends India’s balanced diplomacy at Munich Security Conference, addresses complexities and advocates for humanitarian approach to Israel-Hamas conflict

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar defended India’s “all-alignment” approach to diplomacy on Saturday, saying that the country should be admired for its ability to foster relationships globally, including with Russia and the United States. However, he advised against labeling India as an “unsentimentally transactional” nation.

Jaishankar made these remarks at the Munich Security Conference in response to a question about whether India’s Western partners approve of its purchase of Russian oil during the Ukraine conflict. Sitting at the panel beside US State Secretary Antony Blinken and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, he said, “If I’m smart enough to have multiple options, you should be admiring me.”

“No, you shouldn’t be criticising. Is that a problem for other people? I don’t think so. We’ve tried to explain what are the different pulls and pressures, which countries have. It’s very hard to have a uni-dimensional relationship,” Jaishankar said in response to the question if New Delhi can pick and choose alliances with countries like Russia and the US.

Not ‘unsentimentally transactional’

Elaborating on the question of the alliance, Jaishankar said India’s approach is not “unsentimentally transactional”. “We get along with people. We believe in things, we share things and we agree on something. I think it’s very important today, not to reduce the entire complexity of our world into very sweeping propositions. I think that era today is behind us. So I agree very much with what Tony said, which is good partners, provide choices. Smart partners, take some of those choices,” he added.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/jaishankar-munich-security-conference-india-russian-oil-purchase-ukraine-conflict-israel-hamas-war-8783468.html

Yulia Navalnaya was given a standing ovation after urging people to unite to “defeat this terrible regime in Russia”.

Alexei Navalny’s wife has said she does not know whether to believe he is dead – but that President Putin and his regime must be held accountable if it is true.

Yulia Navalnaya was speaking at the Munich Security Conference hours after Russian authorities said the 47-year-old had died in prison.

She said she did not know whether to still speak or fly to her children, but that she asked herself what her husband would have done.

“I’m confident he would be here on this stage,” she told the audience.

Mrs Navalnaya said she was unsure whether Friday afternoon’s statement from the prison service was true.

“I don’t know whether to believe or not this terrible news that we only receive from Russian government sources,” she said.

“For many years we cannot trust Putin and the Putin government. They always lie.”

The prison service said Mr Navalny – for years President Putin’s most outspoken opponent – died after going on a walk and feeling unwell.

He was imprisoned in the Arctic Circle after being convicted of multiple charges – most recently getting another 19-year sentence in August.

Mr Navalny nearly died in 2020 when he was poisoned with novichok and became unwell on a flight.

However, he eventually returned to Russia to continue his campaigning against corruption and authoritarianism.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/alexei-navalnys-wife-says-putin-accountability-will-come-very-soon-as-she-speaks-hours-after-his-death-13073066

The state AG’s office said that when factoring in pre-judgment interest, the amount exceeds $450 million. Trump said on Friday night that he would appeal.

The judge who presided over a civil business fraud trial against Donald Trump on Friday ordered the former president, his sons, business associates and company to pay more than $350 million in damages and temporarily limited their ability to do business in New York.

Judge Arthur Engoron ordered the former president and the Trump Organization to pay over $354 million in damages, and barred Trump “from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York for a period of three years,” including his namesake company.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who’s office brought the case, said that with pre-judgment interest, the judgment totals over $450 million, an amount “which will continue to increase every single day” until the judgment is paid.

“Donald Trump is finally facing accountability for his lying, cheating, and staggering fraud. Because no matter how big, rich, or powerful you think you are, no one is above the law,” James said in a statement, calling the ruling “a tremendous victory for this state, this nation, and for everyone who believes that we all must play by the same rules — even former presidents.”

The ruling also bars Trump and his company from applying for any bank loans for three years.

In his first public remarks after the ruling, Trump said, “We’ll appeal and we’ll be successful.”

Speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night, Trump bashed the ruling as “a fine of 350 million for a doing a perfect job.” He also repeated previous attacks by calling the judge “crooked” and the attorney general “corrupt.”

Trump did not take any questions from reporters after speaking for about six minutes.

The judge’s decision is a potential blow to both Trump’s finances and persona — having built his brand on being a successful businessman that he leveraged in his first run for president. Trump is currently running for the White House for a third time. This case is just one of many he is currently facing, including four separate pending criminal trials, the first of which is scheduled to begin on March 25.

Engoron also ordered the continued “appointment of an Independent Monitor” and the “the installation of an Independent Director of Compliance” for the company.

In posts on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump called the ruling “an illegal, unAmerican judgment against me, my family, and my tremendous business.”

“This ‘decision’ is a complete and total sham,” he wrote.

During the trial, Trump and executives at his company, including his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, attempted to blame exaggerated financial statements that were the heart of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ fraud case on the accountants who compiled them. Engoron disagreed.

Source  : https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/ny-fraud-case-damages-pay-millions-judge-engoron-rcna135283

The U.S. special counsel leading a criminal probe into President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, said a former FBI informant was charged with lying about the pair’s alleged involvement in business dealings with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.
In a statement on Thursday, Special Counsel David Weiss, opens new tab said a federal grand jury had indicted Alexander Smirnov, 43, on charges of making a “false statement” and “creating a false and fictitious record” in relation to an FBI probe. Smirnov faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison if convicted.

Burisma and Hunter Biden’s role at the company have been heavily scrutinized, opens new tab following unproven claims from Republican former President Donald Trump and others that Democrat Joe Biden improperly tried to help his son’s business interests in Ukraine. The White House has denied the claims.
Smirnov was arrested on Wednesday at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada, after his arrival in the U.S. from overseas, Weiss said.

It was not immediately clear whether Smirnov had an attorney.
The indictment unsealed on Thursday appeared to deal a blow to the Republican accusations that the U.S. president profited from his son’s business in Ukraine.
“For months we have warned that Republicans have built their conspiracies about Hunter and his family on lies told by people with political agendas, not facts,” Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement. “We were right and the air is out of their balloon.”

In December, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted to formally authorize, opens new tab an ongoing impeachment inquiry into the U.S. president. Some Republicans at the time referenced Hunter Biden’s prior role at Burisma to say they were “mighty suspicious of folks from the president’s family making tens of millions of dollars in professions in which they had no experience.”

Source: https://www.reuters.com/legal/ex-fbi-informant-charged-with-lying-about-biden-his-son-special-counsel-says-2024-02-15/

Donald Trump’s hush-money trial will go ahead as scheduled with jury selection starting March 25, a New York judge ruled Thursday, turning aside demands for delay from the former president’s defense lawyers, who argued it would interfere with his campaign to retake the White House.

The decision means that the first of Trump’s four criminal prosecutions to proceed to trial is a case centered on years-old accusations that he sought to bury stories about extramarital affairs that arose during his 2016 presidential run. Other cases charge him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election and illegally hoarding classified documents at his Florida estate.

In leaving the trial date intact, Judge Juan Manuel Merchan pointed to the recent delay in the separate prosecution in Washington related to efforts to undo the 2020 election. That case, originally set for trial on March 4, has been effectively frozen pending the outcome of Trump’s appeal on the legally untested question of whether a former president enjoys immunity from prosecution for actions taken while in office.

Noting that he had resisted defense lawyer urgings from months ago to postpone the trial, Merchan said, “In hindsight, frankly, I’m glad that I took that position, because here we are and the D.C. case did not go forward.” He said he decided to stick with the trial date after speaking last week with the judge in the Washington case, Tanya Chutkan.

The hush-money trial is expected to last six weeks, Merchan said.

Assuming the New York case remains on schedule, it will open just weeks after the Super Tuesday primaries, colliding on the political calendar with a time period in which Trump will be looking to sew up the Republican race and emerge as the presumptive nominee in this year’s presidential contest. His attorneys cited that schedule in urging the judge to reconsider the March trial date.

“We strenuously object to what is happening in this courtroom,” said defense lawyer Todd Blanche, adding that “the fact that we are now going to spend, President Trump is now going to spend, the next two months working on this trial instead of out on the campaign trial running for president is something that should not happen in this country.”

Trump made a similar case after leaving the courtroom, telling reporters that “instead of being in South Carolina and other states campaigning, I’m stuck here.”

“We’ll just have to figure it out,” he added. “I’ll be here during the day and I’ll be campaigning during the night.”

In fact, Trump has repeatedly attended court proceedings where his presence was not required and he went to court Thursday voluntarily. The judge had said he could join remotely by video from Georgia, where he was contemplating attending a simultaneous hearing in his criminal case there.