Category: World

A proposed law in Colombia’s Congress seeks to ban the sale of merchandise that celebrates former drug lord Pablo Escobar. But opinions are divided on it.

On Monday, 27 November 1989, Gonzalo Rojas was at school in the Colombian capital of Bogota when a teacher pulled him out of class to deliver some devastating news.

His father, also called Gonzalo, had died in a plane crash that morning.

“I remember leaving and seeing my mum and grandma waiting for me, crying,” says Mr Rojas, who was just 10-years-old at the time. “It was a very, very sad day.”

Minutes after take off, an explosion on board Avianca flight 203 killed the 107 passengers and crew, as well as three people on the ground who were hit by falling debris.

The blast wasn’t an accident. It was a deliberate bomb attack by Pablo Escobar and his Medellín cartel.

While an era defined by drug wars, bombings, kidnappings and a sky high murder rate has largely been relegated to Colombia’s past, Escobar’s legacy has not.

The notorious criminal, who was killed by security forces in 1993, has achieved a near cult-like status around the world, immortalised in books, music and TV productions like the Netflix series Narcos.

In Colombia itself, his name and face are adorned on mugs, keychains, and t-shirts in tourist shops catering mainly to curious visitors.

But a proposed law in Colombia’s Congress is seeking to change this.

The bill wants to ban Escobar merchandise – and that of other convicted criminals – to help put an end to the glorification of a drug boss who was central in the global cocaine trade and widely held responsible for at least 4,000 killings.

“Difficult issues that are part of the history and memory of our country cannot simply be remembered by a T-shirt, or a sticker sold on a street corner,” says Juan Sebastián Gómez, Congress member and co-author of the bill.

The proposed law would prohibit the selling, as well as the use and carrying of clothing and items promoting criminals, including Escobar. It would mean fines for those who violated the rules, and a temporary suspension of businesses.

Many vendors selling the goods claim a law prohibiting this merchandise would harm their livelihoods.

“This is terrible. We have a right to work, and these Pablo T-shirts especially always sell well,” says Joana Montoya, who owns a stall stocked full of Escobar merchandise in Comuna 13, a popular tourist zone of Medellín.

Medellín, Escobar’s hometown, was known as “the most dangerous city in the world” in the late 80s and early 90s due to violence associated with drug wars and Colombia’s armed conflict.

Today it’s been revitalised into a hub of innovation and tourism, with vendors eager to cash in on the influx of visitors wanting to take home souvenirs – some related to Escobar.

“This Escobar merchandise benefits many families here – it sustains us. It helps us pay our rent, buy food, look after our kids,” says Ms Montaya, who supports herself and her young daughter.

Ms Montoya says at least 15% of her sales come from Escobar products, but some sellers tell the BBC that for them it’s as much as 60%.

If the bill is approved there would be a defined time period for sellers to familiarise themselves with the new rules and phase out their Escobar stock.

“We’d need a transition phase so that people could stop selling these products and replace them with other ones,” explains Congressman Gómez. He says that Colombia has more interesting things to show than drug lords, and that the association with Escobar has stigmatised the country abroad.

Some of the T-shirts, sold for around £5, bear a catchphrase linked to Escobar – “silver or lead?”. This symbolises the choice the cartel boss gave to those who posed a threat to his criminal operations: accept a bribe or be killed.

Shop assistant María Suarez believes that the profit gained from sales of Escobar merchandise isn’t ethical.

“We need this ban. He did awful things and these souvenirs are things that shouldn’t exist,” she says, explaining that she feels uncomfortable that her boss stocks Escobar items.

Escobar and his Medellín cartel at one point were believed to have controlled 80% of the cocaine entering the US. In 1987, he was named as one of the richest people in the world by Forbes magazine.

He spent some of his fortune developing deprived neighbourhoods, but many people consider this as a tactic to buy loyalty from some segments of the population.

Years on from his father’s death, Mr Rojas remembers him as a calm and responsible man, who loved his family. For him, the bill is a defining moment.

“It’s a milestone in the road about how we reflect on what is happening in terms of the commercialisation of images of Pablo Escobar in order to correct it,” says Mr Rojas.

Yet he does have criticisms about the proposals. He believes the bill doesn’t focus enough on education.

Mr Rojas recalls a day many years ago when he met a man wearing a green T-shirt with a silhouette of Escobar, and the words “Pablo, President”.

“It caused me such confusion that I wasn’t able to say anything to him about it,” he says.

“There needs to be more of an emphasis on how we deliver different messages to new generations, so that there isn’t a positive image of what a cartel boss is.”

Mr Rojas has actively been involved in efforts to reshape narratives around Escobar and the drug trade. Along with some other victims, he launched narcostore.com in 2019, an online shop that appears to sell Escobar-themed items.

But none of the products actually exist and when customers select an item they are shown a video testimony from a victim. Mr Rojas says the site has attracted 180 million visits from around the world.

In Colombia’s Congress, the bill faces four stages it needs to pass before it can become law. Gómez says he’s hoping it sparks reflection both inside and outside of Congress.

“In Germany you don’t sell Hitler T-shirts or swastikas. In Italy you don’t sell Mussolini stickers, and you don’t go to Chile and get a copy of Pinochet’s ID card.

“I think the most important thing the bill can do is to generate a conversation as a country – a conversation that hasn’t happened yet.”

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cednp178dwdo

The U.N. human rights office on Wednesday estimated that up to 1,400 people may have been killed in Bangladesh over three weeks last summer in a crackdown on student-led protests against the now-ousted former prime minister.

In a new report, the Geneva-based office says security and intelligence services “systematically engaged” in rights violations that could amount to crimes against humanity and require further investigation.

Citing “various credible sources,” the rights office said it estimated that as many as 1,400 people may have been killed in the protests between July 15 and Aug. 5 — the day longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India amid the uprising.

Thousands more were injured in the weeks leading up to and after the protests, and the vast majority of those killed and injured “were shot by Bangladesh’s security forces,” the report said.

Over 11,700 people were detained, the report said, citing information from security services. It said that about 12 to 13% of people estimated to have be killed —- or as many as about 180 people — were children.

In some cases, “security forces engaged in summary executions by deliberately shooting unarmed protesters at point blank range,” it said.

U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk cited signs that “extrajudicial killings, extensive arbitrary arrests and detentions, and torture” were conducted with the knowledge and coordination of the political leadership and top security officials as a way to suppress the protests.

The U.N. fact-finding team was deployed to Bangladesh at the invitation of the country’s interim leader, the Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, to look into the uprising and violent crackdown.

The team of investigators said the interim government has reportedly made 100 arrests in connection with attacks on religious and indigenous groups. The report said “many perpetrators of acts of revenge, violence and attacks on distinct groups apparently continue to enjoy impunity.”

The human rights situation in Bangladesh continues to raise concerns, the U.N. office said.

While the government has changed, “the system has not necessarily changed,” Rory Mungoven, head of the rights office’s Asia-Pacific region, told reporters. “Many officials and people who had served or been appointed under the previous regime continue to function,” he said.

Such a situation creates “a potential conflict of interest” and could impede reforms and accountability, Mungoven added.

The investigators issued dozens of recommendations to the government, such as steps to improve the justice system and setting up a witness protection program. It also recommended banning the use of lethal firearms by security forces to disperse crowds unless they are faced with “imminent threat of death or serious injury.”

In a statement after the report was published, Yunus reiterated his government’s commitment to upholding the rule of law and said it was crucial to reform the country’s law enforcement and justice sectors.

“I call on everyone working inside these institutions to side with justice, the law, and the people of Bangladesh in holding to account their own peers and others who have broken the law and violated the human and civil rights of their fellow citizens,” he said.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/bangladesh-human-rights-hasina-yunus-volker-turk-united-nations-951dc40f60d6a798eb5af5ed1d11bbad

A DIRE warning has been issued that Vladimir Putin is looking to start a major war in Europe within five years, according to bombshell spy intel.

Intelligence from Denmark has assessed the Russian despot’s military capacity claiming he could be ready to spark wars with neighbouring regions in months ahead of a full-scale attack on NATO.

It comes amid concerns that a peace deal in Ukraine would freeze the conflict in a way that rewards the Kremlin for its aggression, according to the Danish report.

Perceived fractures across NATO with Donald Trump pulling back from European security guarantees are further pushing Putin to take advantage.

An unclassified assessment from the Danish Defence Intelligence Service [DDIS] says: “Russia perceives itself as being in conflict with the West and is preparing for a war against NATO.

“While no decision to initiate such a war has been made, Russia is building the capacity to make that choice if deemed necessary.”

It added that the threat is greater if Putin sees NATO as “militarily weakened or politically divided”.

Danish intelligence warns the West that Putin has embarked on a “major rebuilding and reform of its armed forces”.

The report says that the expansion has shifted from restoration to “an intensified military buildup aimed at waging war against NATO”.

It suggests that Russia “has already enhanced its military capacity through the modernisation of equipment and a significant increase in military production”.

The spy intel warned that if the conflict in Ukraine is paused or brought to an end, there are three different ways the Russian dictator could redirect military aggression targeting NATO.

He would be able to carry out one option in a matter of months.

In as little as six months time, Russia may be able to wage a local war with a neighbouring country if it can reallocate its military resources currently committed to the Ukraine war.

Georgia and Moldova – both ex-Soviet states – are seen as potentially at risk.

Within two years, the report claims Moscow could post a significant threat to one or more NATO countries in the Baltic states.

Nations at risk are perceived to be Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all ex-USSR.

The threat of a large-scale war with Europe could happen within five years, presuming the U.S. does not intervene, according to the assessment.

As Trump vows to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, the outcome of the conflict is critical since “it is unlikely that Russia could sustain both the war in Ukraine and a simultaneous war with NATO”.

Denmark’s intelligence chief, Anja Dalsgaard Nielsen, told Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that there is no concrete threat to Denmark from Russia.

However Nielsen warned that the situation is rapidly changing and that most NATO countries are failing to arm themselves to recommended levels.

Trump has suggested they should spend five per cent of GDP on defence.

He has also made clear he wants control of the vast territory of Greenland – an autonomous region of Denmark.

Such a move may be seen as a sign of division within NATO.

Nielsen said: “We see an increased willingness on the Russian side to challenge NATO, and we see an American administration that is focused on ending the fighting in Ukraine.”

As Putin continues his military build-up which could be used to target NATO, he is being bolstered by Iran, China, and North Korea, the Danish intelligence service noted.

It said: “The economic and material support from China and the support from North Korea and Iran with troops and weapons systems, respectively, are increasingly contributing to freeing up resources for Russia’s rearmament towards NATO.”

FRACTURED ALLIANCE

The despot is so convinced of NATO’s weakness that one military expert has claimed Putin believes he could scale an attack on the alliance and get away with it.

Anders Puck Nielsen, a military expert from the Danish Defense Academy, told TV2: “If NATO’s deterrence is undermined in Europe, Russia may believe they could launch an attack on NATO and achieve a good result.”

It comes as the US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said Ukraine will not be able to get NATO membership while criticising Europe for not pulling its weight.

During his speech to the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Wednesday, Hegseth reiterated Trump’s calls to end the conflict saying: “The bloodshed must stop and this war must end.”

“We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine, but we must start by recognising that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.

“Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.”

“The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” Hegseth said.

He added that “the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.”

“Any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops,” he said.

“To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine.”

He also joined Trump in casting doubt over whether the US would support NATO countries in Europe that are at war against Russia.

The Defence secretary warned that in the future the US would do more to defend itself due to the “stark strategic realities” of it wanting to compete with China.

Trump’s foreign policy is increasingly unclear which is worrying NATO officials at a time when cooperation within the alliance is paramount.

The president’s interest in Greenland despite the Danish prime minister’s insistence that it is “not for sale” is playing a major role in the division.

Trump has insisted that “we’re going to have it” and that the population of Greenland—57,000 people—”want to be with us.”

This move has signified to Putin that there are “big gaps in NATO cooperation,” senior researcher at the Denmark Institute for International Studies, Flemmings Splidsboel, told TV2.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13527390/bombshell-spy-intel-reveals-putin-arming-for-war/

After Wednesday’s viral circulation of a video of two Australian nurses claiming to have killed Israeli patients and threatening to kill more, the Sydney area medical practitioners have been suspended.

The New South Wales Police Force’s antisemitism task force has taken over the investigation, interviewing staff and seizing CCTV footage. It has identified the likely location within Bankstown Hospital where a male nurse told Israeli English teacher and social-media influencer Max Veifer: “You have no idea how many Israeli s**t dogs have come to this hospital, and I sent them to hell.”

“I won’t treat them, I’ll kill them,” said a female nurse in a hijab, according to a post of a random video chat interaction Veifer posted on his social media account. The video had been temporarily suspended on Instagram.

The female nurse expressed her hope that he would remember her face when he died the “most disgusting death,” trailing off into expletives.

Antisemitism contiues to rise in Australia

“It’s Palestine’s country, not your country, you piece of shit,” said the nurse.

The male nurse, claiming to be a doctor, said at the outset of the conversation: “You have beautiful eyes, but I’m upset that you’re Israeli. Eventually, when you’re killed, you’re going to go to hell.”

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There needs to be an investigation immediately into these two Australian medical professionals who are saying they will kill Israeli patients – and suggesting that they already have. They are expressing criminal intent towards Jewish people, this must be stopped.
Antisemitism is… pic.twitter.com/YCX3w9YVcY

— Sharren Haskel השכל שרן (@SharrenHaskel) February 11, 2025

As Australian and Israeli officials and Jewish citizens expressed outrage, NSW Police Force Commissioner Karen Webb said Strike Force Pearl was investigating the matter.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the Australian Federal Police had offered “whatever assistance” to the state police, Reuters reported.

“This is a sad day for our country,” Webb said. “It is unthinkable that we are confronted with and forced to investigate such an appalling incident.”

New South Wales Health Minister Ryan Park said in a post on Facebook: If the “investigation concludes that this behavior has occurred, these individuals will no longer be working for NSW Health.”

In a post on X, Albanese said NSW authorities have suspended the suspects.

NSW Health Secretary Susan Pearce said state authorities had immediately contacted the police and launched its own investigation.

“Please be aware that our hospitals are safe,” she said. “They are safe places, and we have already taken steps to review the safety of the hospital concerned in this matter, and we have identified nothing that indicates the hospital is unsafe. You should be confident that you’ll receive safe care in our hospitals from our dedicated and caring staff.”

Jewish organization reacts

Nevertheless, Australian Jewish Association (AJA) CEO Robert Gregory said his organization was aware of Jewish patients who have decided to hide their identity while visiting the hospital.

“Patients in hospitals are vulnerable, and it is understandable that Jewish patients would have concerns,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “We are hopeful that Jewish and Israeli patients will be treated like everyone else at Australian medical facilities. But nowhere in Australia is immune to the recent surge of antisemitism.”

AJA was concerned about how widespread such views might be, Gregory said, adding that while in this situation the staff members were exposed, but in other cases, staff members might have acted on such views.

Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler said the incident had exposed a harsh reality about how much antisemitism has been normalized in Australian society.

“For more than a year, we have watched as violent rhetoric on our streets has turned into violent attacks, labeled domestic terrorism by law enforcement,” he said. “That two nurses could openly discuss harming Israeli patients is a chilling reminder of how far this has gone.

“While we welcome the swift response from authorities and political leaders who have rightly called this antisemitism for what it is, we must also confront the deeper issue: This did not happen in a vacuum. This is the cost of tolerating hate and demonization of Israel in this country,” Leibler said.

The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies said in a post on Facebook it was sickening that the nurses had felt comfortable making the comments while wearing state-branded scrubs.

“The rhetoric captured in this video is deplorable and has no place in our healthcare system,” it said.

Macarthur MP Mike Freelander, himself a doctor, said the incident had “shaken me to my very core as a Jewish Australian.”

“The fact that they come from the area health service that I work in, and live in our society, is disgusting,” he said in an address to Parliament.

Israeli MKs expressed anger and called for an immediate investigation into what Likud MK Dan Illouz called “incitement to murder.”

Religious Zionist Party MK Ohad Tal said the nurses had betrayed their Hippocratic Oaths to “uphold a Nazi-fascist ideology.”

“As chairman of the Israel-Australia Friendship Association, I will be reaching out to my counterpart in Australia today to demand swift action on this matter,” he said.

On Wednesday, Israeli Ambassador to Australia Amir Maimon spoke with New South Wales Premier Chris Minns, who assured him that all necessary measures were being taken.

The Democrats MK Gilad Kariv said the trend of rising antisemitism in Australia was indicative that Jews were not safe in many places in the world.

“The State of Israel has a moral and historical obligation to the security of Jews living in the Diaspora,” he said, promising to prioritize fighting against antisemitism if he assumes leadership of the Immigration and Diaspora Committee.

New Hope-United Right MK Sharren Haskel said the incident had occurred as antisemitism surged in Australia at “an alarming rate, increasing by hundreds of percent.”

Source : https://www.jpost.com/international/article-841895

 

A petition calling for Denmark to buy the most populous US state had gathered more than 200,000 signatures on Wednesday, promising to “Make California Great Again.”

The spoof web campaign comes amid renewed interest from Donald Trump in buying Greenland — or even taking the vast Arctic island by force.

What does the petition call for?

The jokey web campaign posits the vision of a California ruled from Copenhagen, with all the advantages of a Nordic welfare state — plus the glorious sunshine of the Golden State.

“Have you ever looked at a map and thought, ‘You know what Denmark needs? More sunshine, palm trees, and roller skates.’ Well, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make that dream a reality,” it says.

“Let’s buy California from Donald Trump! Yes, you heard that right. California could be ours.”

The website lists the possibilities that such an acquisition might bring, including the renaming of Disneyland as “Hans Christian Andersenland.”

It envisages “Avocado Toast Forever,” with almost 90% of US-grown avocados coming from California.

The petition’s authors also envision an expanded frontier for the Danish concept of coziness (hygge) and environmentally-friendly Scandinavian buttered rye bread.

“We’ll bring hygge to Hollywood, bike lanes to Beverly Hills, and organic smørrebrød to every street corner.”

Could it prove successful?

No. But, while the petition is a clear parody — “100% real… in our dreams” — it cites reasons that property mogul Trump might agree to sell the state.

Trump last year called California “Paradise Lost” and he regularly insults its Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom with the nickname “Newscum.”

“Let’s be honest – Trump isn’t exactly California’s biggest fan,” the website says. “He’s called it ‘the most ruined state in the Union’ and has feuded with its leaders for years. We’re pretty sure he’d be willing to part with it for the right price.”

It sets a mock crowdfunding goal of “$1 trillion (give or take a few billion).”

“And hey, we’ll even throw in a lifetime supply of Danish pastries to sweeten the deal.”

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/thousands-sign-petition-for-denmark-to-buy-california/a-71583221

Japan has asked to be exempt from the 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum after President Donald Trump revoked its duty-free quota.

The request was made through Japan’s embassy in Washington, according to the Associated Press.

Trump removed the exemptions and exceptions on steel imports to a minimum of 25% from his 2018 tariffs and increased the aluminum tariffs from 10% to 25%.

“Japan will firmly take necessary steps as we fully examine details of the new measures and their possible impact on the Japanese economy,” Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said.

Trump’s move comes from his belief that tariffs on foreign goods will strengthen domestic manufacturing.

After Trump’s tariffs were announced earlier this month, auto stocks like Tesla, General Motors, Ford, and Volkswagen plummeted.

Source : https://www.ibtimes.com/japan-trump-steel-tariffs-3763446

Elon Musk’s bid to buy OpenAI for $97.4bn (£78.7bn) came unsolicited on Monday night and was quickly rejected by his former friend and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman.

“The company is not for sale, neither is the mission,” Mr Altman said to Sky News this morning.

“We’ll happily buy Twitter though.”

It’s the latest in a long-running spat between the former tech buddies.

Back in 2015, Mr Musk and Mr Altman founded OpenAI along with nine other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to ensure “artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity”.

But the idealistic partnership wasn’t to last. Three years later, Mr Musk left after a power struggle.

“Elon wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control,” the company wrote in a blog post about the split in 2024.

When Mr Altman and the others refused to hand over control, Mr Musk left acrimoniously, taking a promised $1bn donation with him, according to OpenAI.

However, he had been right about one thing. When he’d offered to let OpenAI treat Tesla as a “cash cow”, he’d said it was the only way to compete with Google’s DeepMind project, which was developing quickly.

OpenAI wasn’t bringing in enough cash and everyone agreed the company would need more resources if it wanted to reach the AI holy grail: artificial general intelligence (AGI).

AGI is a hypothetical AI system that can perform any intellectual task that a human can.

So, after rejecting Mr Musk’s offer, Mr Altman set up a “capped-profit” subsidiary of the company and got investments from Microsoft and others.

Elon Musk was not happy. He founded his own company, xAI, and then took OpenAI to court, suing for a breach of contract.

He accused the ChatGPT developer of transforming into “a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company, Microsoft”, according to a court filing.

“It is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI [artificial general intelligence] to maximise profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity”, the filing said.

OpenAI denied this and also said it never promised to open-source its technology, just to spread the benefits of it.

“The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after it’s built, but it’s totally OK to not share the science…”, wrote former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever in an email to Elon Musk in 2016.

“Yup,” he replied, according to OpenAI.

But the subsidiary still wasn’t bringing in enough money and rumours began swirling in 2024 that Mr Altman would turn OpenAI into a for-profit company.

Despite Mr Musk asking a judge to block this from happening, in December, Mr Altman officially released his plans for OpenAI’s for-profit arm to take control and “raise the necessary capital” to reach general artificial intelligence.

The non-profit side of the company would still exist to work on AI for the public good, the company reassured people.

In order to make the switch from non-profit to for-profit, OpenAI’s board is currently going through a complex process to value parts of the company.

Sam Altman will then have to essentially buy the company from the non-profit, which is currently thought to be worth around $40 billion.

Musk throws a ‘wrench’ into Altman’s profit-making plans

But Elon Musk has now “thrown a wrench” into those proceedings with his $97.4bn (£78.7bn) offer, according to Yale professor Jonathan Macey, who specialises in corporate governance.

“The non-profit is supposed to take money to do whatever good deeds, and if OpenAI prefers to sell it to somebody else for less money, it’s a concern for protecting the interests of the beneficiaries of the not-for-profit.”

OpenAI “may not be able to ignore” the bid, according to analyst Gil Luria, because it has credible investors backing it, including Ari Emanuel, chief executive of entertainment company Endeavour, and multiple other investment groups.

However, others think this could just be another dig from Elon Musk to his former friend.

“It’s partially a troll, and partially setting a price that may cause Sam to pay more than he might want to,” wrote Dan Primack, Axios’s business editor, on X.

However, when Sam Altman spoke to Sky News from an AI summit in Paris on Tuesday morning, he sounded confident.

“The company is not for sale, neither is the mission.”

He was asked whether he can still afford to keep control of OpenAI after Mr Musk’s bid.

“The board will decide what to do there… the mission is really important and we’re totally focused on making sure we preserve that,” he told Sky’s science and technology editor Tom Clarke.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/musk-v-altman-the-battle-to-become-king-of-ai-13307145

The U.S. Coast Guard has released a new audio recording of what it believes to be the final moments of the Titan submersible that imploded underwater in the Atlantic in 2023.

The chilling audio was captured by an acoustic recorder from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), situated around 900 miles away from the submersible’s implosion site on June 18, 2023.

The device captured what the Coast Guard suspects is the vessel’s “acoustic signature,” a combination of sound emissions coming from the ship and the subsequent implosion.

In the recording, silence is heard before a sudden loud bang, presumably the submersible exploding.

While on an expedition to see the Titanic shipwreck, the Titan submersible from tourism company OceanGate imploded on June 18, 2023.

Five passengers were aboard the vessel, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, businessman Shahzada Dawood and his teenage son Suleman Dawood, businessman and pilot Hamish Harding, and deep sea explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

All five passengers were confirmed to be deceased after an extensive rescue and search operation.

Source : https://www.thedailybeast.com/doomed-titan-submersibles-final-moments-captured-on-haunting-audio/

 

Elon Musk humiliated President Donald Trump during Tuesday’s joint press conference in the Oval Office, which left Trump looking like the “most powerless” U.S. president ever caught on camera, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said on The Last Word.

During a press conference in the Oval Office in which they claimed—without providing a single piece of evidence—to have uncovered billions of dollars of government waste and fraud, Musk spoke 3,666 words to Trump’s 2,487, O’Donnell said.

Musk brought his 4-year-old son X to the press conference, wore a T-shirt and baseball cap, and even interrupted Trump.

He stood over Trump while the president sat behind the Resolute Desk, “delivering a picture of presidential subservience the likes of which we have never seen—the most powerless image of a president of the United States ever created by a camera,” O’Donnell said.

“[Former Vice President] Mike Pence never had a day like that in the Oval Office with Donald Trump. [Vice President] JD Vance will never a day like that in the Oval Office with Donald Trump, because Donald Trump is the boss of JD Vance,” he said.

Trump, he continued, has always craved the attention of the “truly rich, virtually all of whom ignored Donald Trump as phony rich and vulgar rich.”

Now he has the attention of the world’s richest man, who can literally bail him out of the $82.5 million he currently owes writer E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued Trump for defamation, and the $500 million judgment levied against him in a civil fraud case in New York.

“We have no idea how dependent Donald Trump is on Elon Musk. There will probably never be a way of knowing,” he said.

During Tuesday’s press conference the pair proved their “comfort with public lying,” he added, since they accused the government of billions of dollars of waste, fraud and abuse without producing a single fraudulent contract or recipient of abusive spending.

Source : https://www.thedailybeast.com/lawrence-odonnell-musk-humiliates-trump-in-most-powerless-image-ever/

U.S. inflation accelerated last month as the cost of groceries, gasoline and rents rose, a disappointment for families and businesses struggling with higher costs and likely underscoring the Federal Reserve’s resolve to delay further interest rate cuts.

The consumer price index increased 3% in January from a year ago, Wednesday’s report from the Labor Department showed, up from 2.9% the previous month. It has increased from a 3 1/2 year low of 2.4% in September.

The new data shows that inflation has remained stubbornly above the Fed’s 2% target for roughly the past six months after it fell steadily for about a year and a half. Elevated prices turned into a major political hurdle for former President Joe Biden. President Donald Trump pledged to reduce prices on “Day 1″ if elected, though most economists worry that his many proposed tariffs could at least temporarily increase costs.

The unexpected boost in inflation could dampen some of the business enthusiasm that arose after Trump’s election on promises to reduce regulation and cut taxes. The Dow fell 400 points in mid-day trading Wednesday. Bond yields rose, a sign traders expect inflation and interest rates to remain high.

“We’re really not making progress on inflation right now,” Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo. “This just extends the Fed’s hold.”

Inflation often jumps in January as many companies raise their prices at the beginning of the year, though the government’s seasonal adjustment process is supposed to filter out those effects.

Yet House said inflation’s stubbornness wasn’t just a one-month blip. Consumers — particularly wealthier ones — are still spending at a robust pace, giving many companies less reason to hold down prices. And much of the decline in inflation in 2023 and early last year stemmed from supply-chain improvements, but that trend has mostly played out.

Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core consumer prices rose 3.3% in January compared with a year ago, up from 3.2% in December. Economists closely watch core prices because they can provide a better read of inflation’s future path.

Inflation picked up in January

U.S. inflation accelerated last month as prices rose for gasoline, used cars and groceries, which includes a 15% jump in the price of eggs. Inflation’s recent uptick is a major reason the Federal Reserve has paused its interest rate cuts.

Inflation also worsened on a monthly basis, with prices jumping 0.5% in January from December, the largest increase since August 2023. Core prices climbed 0.4% last month, the most since March 2024.

Grocery prices climbed 0.5% just in January, pushed higher by a 15.2% surge in egg prices, the biggest monthly increase since June of 2015. Egg prices have soared 53% compared with a year ago.

An avian flu epidemic has forced egg producers to cull from their flocks about 40 million birds in December and January. Stores have imposed limits on egg purchases and restaurants have placed surcharges on egg dishes.

The cost of car insurance continues to rise, and picked up 2% just from December to January. Hotel prices rose 1.4% last month, while the cost of a gallon of gas moved up 1.8%.

Trump’s tariffs are making life more complicated for Phil Hannon, vice president of operations at Abt, a consumer electronics store in Glenview, Illinois. Roughly 60% of Abt’s sales are appliances, big and small. The rest are in consumer electronics like TVs and computers, and furniture.

Hannon expects to raise prices between 3% and 15% as soon as March to offset the impact of tariffs, including the steel and aluminum duties.

He’s received notices from vendors over the past two weeks warning about eventual price increases, though they’re not specific. To get ahead of the cost increases, Hannon has been locking in orders from suppliers for up to 90 days.

Hannon said that many customers are already asking about price increases and when the tariffs are coming. He started seeing a noticeable pickup of customers ordering products like washing machines this month to get ahead of the tariffs.

Separately, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee that the Fed “has made great progress” on inflation “but we’re not quite there yet.”

“Today’s inflation print … says the same thing,” he added. As a result, the Fed wants to keep rates “restrictive for now,” he said. At its current level, the Fed’s key rate is restricting borrowing and spending by consumers and businesses, Powell has said.

With inflation down significantly from its 9.1% peak in June 2022, the Fed cut its rate to about 4.3% in its final three meetings last year. It raised its benchmark rate in 2022 and 2023 to a two-decade high of 5.3% to combat inflation.

The Fed’s rate typically influences other borrowing costs for everything from mortgages to credit cards.

Early Wednesday, Trump said on social media that interest rates should be lowered, “something which would go hand in hand with upcoming Tariffs!!!” Yet the tick up in consumer prices makes it less likely the Fed will cut rates anytime soon.

One sign of concern for economists is that goods prices, excluding food and energy, rose 0.3% in January from the previous month. Prices for cars, furniture, and appliances had been flat or falling after supply-chain kinks stemming from the pandemic were resolved. Yet now those prices have ticked up even before tariffs have been launched.

Trump has imposed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum, which could push the cost of cars, appliances, and industrial machinery higher. He also said earlier this week he would impose “reciprocal tariffs” on countries that have high duties on U.S. goods.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/inflation-economy-federal-reserve-48e77a855078b37bf3ccd58c9db94c82

A bitcoin money launderer, who prosecutors connected to the 2016 Russian interference in the U.S. election, has been released by Donald Trump in exchange for American school teacher Marc Fogel.

Alexander Vinnik, 42, a Russian citizen, was charged in a 21-count superseding indictment in January 2017 and taken into custody in Greece. He was later extradited to the U.S. On Wednesday, he was returned to Russia.

Vinnik was accused of running digital currency exchange BTC-e and committing money laundering through the site, which allegedly did business with drug dealers and identity thieves. Authorities said that the company had laundered more than $4 billion of criminal proceeds.

Prosecutors previously alleged that Vinnik may also have laundered money for Russian nation-state hackers, including the group Fancy Bear – which was found to have interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election by hacking computers of top Democrats.

Prosecutors said that Vinnik ran the exchange where funds were used to finance the break-ins. He was not charged with election interference. Fancy Bear appeared to have laundered cryptocurrency through BTC-e, according to an investigation by digital forensics company Elliptic and the BBC.

After the alleged links were reported, Russia pushed harder for Vinnik to be returned to Russia, prompting some to suspect ties between his company and Russian state espionage.

According to the 2017 indictment, BTC-e was “a significant cybercrime and online money laundering entity that allowed its users to trade in bitcoin with high levels of anonymity and developed a customer base heavily reliant on criminal activity.”

Owned and operated by Vinnik and his co-conspirators, the company “facilitated transactions for cybercriminals worldwide and received criminal proceeds from numerous computer intrusions and hacking incidents, ransomware scams, identity theft schemes, corrupt public officials, and narcotics distribution rings.”

It was also used “to facilitate crimes ranging from computer hacking, to fraud, identity theft, tax refund fraud schemes, public corruption, and drug trafficking,” prosecutors alleged.

Before being brought to the U.S., Vinnik was extradited from Greece to France, where he was sentenced to five years in prison in 2020 for money laundering. He was extradited from France to the United States in 2022.

According to CNN, Vinnik had to forfeit money seized by the U.S. government as part of the exchange.

On Tuesday evening, Fogel, who had been held in Russian prison for three years on drug-related charges, returned to the U.S. After touching down he hailed the president as a “hero” and said he would be “forever indebted to him.”

The school teacher was arrested in August 2021, after he was caught traveling with 11 grams of medically prescribed marijuana, according to his family and friends. Eight grams of hash oil was reportedly also found in his luggage.

Source : https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/russia-prisoner-exchange-bitcoin-teacher-b2696993.html

NASA on Tuesday announced that it swapped out the astronaut capsule it was planning to use with a previously flown SpaceX Crew Dragon for its Crew-10 mission, a scheduling move that will allow Starliner astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore to return to Earth sooner than expected.

The US space agency announced that it was accelerating the target launch and return dates for the upcoming crew rotation missions to and from the International Space Station.

The launch, which was previously scheduled for March 25, has now been moved up to March 12, Wednesday. However, this is “pending mission readiness and completion of the agency’s certification of flight readiness process,” NASA said in its announcement.

The Crew-9 mission will return after completing a handover procedure with the newly arrived Crew-10 expedition team, the space agency said.

NASA said that the mission management teams decided to use an already flown SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule instead of a new one as its production has apparently been delayed.

The capsule, which will now be used, is called ‘Endurance’. “Teams will work to complete Dragon’s refurbishment and ready the spacecraft for flight, which includes trunk stack, propellant load, and transportation to SpaceX’s hangar at 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to be mated with the mission’s Falcon 9 rocket,” NASA’s statement said.

Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore had flown off to the ISS on Boeing’s Starliner capsule in June 2024, following which the aircraft hit multiple snags, including a helium leak. Since the two NASA astronauts have been at the space station, with Sunita taking charge of the ISS.

The two astronauts’ return is dependent on the arrival of the Crew-10 mission’s four-member expedition crew, who will keep the space station staffed at normal levels.

The Crew-10 mission comprises of NASA astronauts Anne McClain, commander and Nichole Ayers, pilot. JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, mission specialist; and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, mission specialist.

‘Human spaceflight full of unexpected challenges’

Notably, the latest development follows the abrupt demand US President Donald Trump made to SpaceX CEO and close ally Elon Musk last month, asking him to bring back Sunita and Butch back to Earth “as soon as possible” and pleading for an end to their mission. Of this, the larger part of the two astronauts’ return had already been discussed and decided by NASA.

After Trump’s demand to Musk, NASA had reaffirmed its plans to bring home Sunita and Butch, saying that it would do so “as soon as practical”.

In its Tuesday’s statement, the space agency did not the specifically mention that its decision to change the Crew-10 capsule was made with an intention to bring home the Starliner crew early.

Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, said, “Human spaceflight is full of unexpected challenges.”

“Our operational flexibility is enabled by the tremendous partnership between NASA and SpaceX and the agility SpaceX continues to demonstrate to safely meet the agency’s emerging needs,” he added.

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/sunita-williams-butch-wilmore-to-return-to-earth-early-nasa-moves-up-crew-10-launch-date-spacex-starliner-iss-101739339560583.html

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Tuesday the ceasefire in Gaza would end and the military would resume fighting Hamas until it was defeated if the Palestinian militant group did not release hostages by midday Saturday.
Following Netanyahu’s ultimatum, Hamas issued a statement renewing its commitment to the ceasefire and accusing Israel of jeopardizing the ceasefire.
The Israeli announcement came after Netanyahu met with several key ministers, including defence, foreign affairs and national security, who he said gave the ultimatum their full support.

After nearly 16 months of war, Hamas has gradually been releasing hostages since the first phase of a ceasefire began on January 19, but on Monday said it would not free any more until further notice over accusations Israel was violating the deal.
“If Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon – the ceasefire will end and the IDF (military) will return to intense fighting until Hamas is finally defeated,” Netanyahu said.

It was not immediately clear if Netanyahu meant Hamas should release all hostages held in Gaza or just the three who had been expected to be released on Saturday under the ceasefire.
His office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request seeking comment on the prime minister’s remarks.
U.S. President Donald Trump, a close ally of Israel, has said that Hamas should release all of the hostages by Saturday.

The prime minister also said he had ordered the military to gather forces inside and around Gaza, with the military announcing shortly after it was deploying additional forces to Israel’s south including the mobilization of reservists.
A Hamas official earlier said that Israeli hostages could only be brought home if the ceasefire was respected, dismissing the “language of threats” after Trump said he would “let hell break out” if they were not freed.
“Trump must remember there is an agreement that must be respected by both parties, and this is the only way to bring back the (Israeli) prisoners,” senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.
Hamas has said Israel has violated the ceasefire with several deadly shootings as well as by holding up some aid deliveries and impeding the return of Gazans to the strip’s north.
Israel denies holding back aid and says it has fired on people who disregarded warnings not to approach Israeli troops.
So far, 16 of 33 hostages have been freed as part of the ceasefire deal’s first phase due to last 42 days. Five Thai hostages were also let go in an unscheduled release.
In exchange, Israel has released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, including prisoners serving life sentences for deadly attacks and others detained during the war and held without charge.
An Israeli group representing families of hostages urged Netanyahu to stick to the ceasefire agreement.
“We must not go backwards. We cannot allow the hostages to waste away in captivity,” the hostages forum said.

There are 76 hostages still held in Gaza, more than 35 of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli media.

TRUMP’S PLAN FOR GAZA

Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated areas, has been devastated by Israel’s military offensive. The enclave is short of food, water and shelter, and in need of billions of dollars in foreign aid.
More than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, the Gaza health ministry says, and nearly all of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million has been internally displaced by the conflict.
Some 1,200 people were killed in the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israeli communities and about 250 were taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Trump said last week the U.S. should take over Gaza and move out more than 2 million Palestinian residents so the enclave can be developed into the “Riviera of the Middle East”. Netanyahu praised the plan and said on Tuesday the security cabinet endorsed it.
Trump’s plan has enraged Palestinians and Arab leaders and upended decades of U.S. policy that endorsed a two-state solution in which Israel and a Palestinian state would coexist.
The forcible displacement of a population under military occupation is a war crime banned by the 1949 Geneva conventions.
Trump restated his position as he met Jordan’s King Abdullah on Tuesday at the White House amid widespread opposition to his plan among Washington’s Arab allies, including Jordan.
Trump said on Tuesday that he believed there would be a parcel of land in Jordan, Egypt and someplace else where Palestinians can be resettled.
Egypt rejected any proposal to allocate land to Gaza residents, the state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV reported on Tuesday, citing Egyptian sources.
North Korean state media on Wednesday denounced Trump’s Gaza proposal and accused Washington of extortion.
“The world is now boiling like a porridge pot over the U.S.’ bombshell declaration,” KCNA said.
Palestinians fear a repeat of what they call the Nakba, or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven out during the 1948 war that accompanied Israel’s creation. Israel denies they were forced out.
For Jordan, Trump’s talk of resettlement comes dangerously close to its nightmare of a mass expulsion of Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank, echoing an idea long promoted by ultra-nationalist Israelis of Jordan becoming an alternative Palestinian home.
Gazans interviewed by Reuters criticised Trump for saying he would be prepared for “hell” to break out if all the Israeli hostages were not released by noon on Saturday.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/ceasefire-is-only-way-bring-israeli-prisoners-home-hamas-official-says-2025-02-11/

Donald Trump on Tuesday pressed Jordan’s King Abdullah to take in Palestinians who would be permanently displaced under the president’s plan for the U.S. to take over the Gaza Strip, even as the king said his country was firmly opposed to the move.
Speaking alongside the Arab country’s ruler in the White House, Trump signaled he would not budge on his idea that involves moving the Gaza Strip’s shell-shocked residents and transforming the war-ravaged territory into what he billed a “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Trump has infuriated the Arab world by saying that Palestinians would not be able to return to their homes under his proposal to redevelop the enclave, which has been devastated by an Israeli offensive.
“We’re going to take it. We’re going to hold it, we’re going to cherish it. We’re going to get it going eventually, where a lot of jobs are going to be created for the people in the Middle East,” Trump said in the Oval Office, saying his plan would “bring peace” to the region.

King Abdullah said later that he reiterated to Trump Jordan’s “steadfast position” against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as in the occupied West Bank that borders his country.
“This is the unified Arab position,” he said in a post on X. “Rebuilding Gaza without displacing the Palestinians and addressing the dire humanitarian situation should be the priority for all.”
Despite the views of his Jordanian counterpart, Trump said Jordan, as well as Egypt, would ultimately agree to house displaced residents of Gaza. Both countries rely on Washington for economic and military aid.

“I believe we’ll have a parcel of land in Jordan. I believe we’ll have a parcel of land in Egypt,” said Trump. “We may have someplace else, but I think when we finish our talks, we’ll have a place where they’re going to live very happily and very safely.”

U.S. ASSISTANCE IN QUESTION

Trump, who has suggested he could consider withholding aid to Jordan, said he was not using support as a threat.
“We contribute a lot of money to Jordan, and to Egypt by the way – a lot to both. But I don’t have to threaten that. I think we’re above that,” Trump said.
King Abdullah has previously said he rejects any moves to annex land and displace Palestinians. He is the first Arab leader to meet Trump since the Gaza plan was floated.
While the two leaders were cordial with each other, Trump’s comments about Gaza put King Abdullah in an awkward position, given the sensitivity in Jordan of the Palestinians’ claim of a right to return to the lands that many fled during the war that surrounded the creation of Israel in 1948.

Trump at one point appeared to prompt King Abdullah to say he would take in Palestinians from Gaza. The king said he would do what is best for his country, but said Jordan would take in 2,000 sick children from Gaza for treatment, an offer that Trump praised.
Arab nations would come to Washington with a counterproposal, he said.
“The point is how to make this work in a way that is good for everybody,” he said, appearing uncomfortable, without explicitly supporting or opposing Trump’s plan.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi later told state-owned al-Mamlaka TV that there is an Egyptian-led Arab plan to rebuild Gaza without displacing its people.
Jordanian officials ahead of the talks said they wanted to avoid a public engagement where Trump would put the king on the spot, and the remarks inside the Oval Office were not planned.
The two spoke in front of reporters with the king’s son, Crown Prince Hussein, Safadi, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials also present. The king later met a bipartisan group of U.S. senators including John Thune, the Republican majority leader.
Sandwiched between Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel and the occupied West Bank, Jordan is already home to more than 2 million Palestinian refugees in its population of 11 million, their status and number long providing a source of anxiety for the country’s leadership.
Amman is also reeling from Trump’s 90-day aid pause. Israel and Egypt have been granted waivers, but the $1.45 billion Jordan gets each year remains frozen pending a Trump administration review of all foreign aid.

FRAGILE CEASEFIRE

Trump’s proposal has introduced new complexity into a sensitive regional dynamic, including a fragile ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Hamas on Monday said it would stop releasing Israeli hostages from Gaza until further notice, saying Israel was violating the agreement to end strikes that have pummeled Gaza. Trump later proposed canceling the ceasefire if Hamas doesn’t release all remaining hostages it took on October 7, 2023, by Saturday.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-jordans-king-set-tense-meeting-gazas-future-2025-02-11/

Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University joined forces to produce a study that looked into the effects of AI tools in the workplace. What they found was unsurprising and is the reason people get such a sick thrill from chanting “I told you so.”

It turns out that AI tools can improve a worker’s efficiency, yes, but AI tools also hinder critical thinking abilities. To put it bluntly, AI makes you dumber and worse at your job… but only if you let it.

AI Is Making the World a Dumber Place

The research focused on 319 “knowledge workers,” a person whose job deals with the handling of information or data. The participants were told to log their interactions with generative AI tools and describe how they use them, what kinds of work they used AI for, and, maybe most importantly, how confident they were in AI to produce high-quality work.

The researchers found that the more confident a person was in AI’s ability to instantly churn out solid work, the more they disengaged from the critical thinking process. They have so much faith that AI has it all figured out that people literally stop thinking for themselves and just assume the algorithm is right, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Putting your trust in AI to handle a task leads to long-term atrophy of independent problem-solving skills. AI tricks you into thinking you’re doing a good job when you’re not even doing a job at all. You’re just there, existing, making a thing do a thing for you, and then you pat yourself on the back and tell yourself you did a good job.

Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that people were more willing to use their critical thinking skills when they didn’t fully trust the AI tool to get the job done. Across the board, though, participants were more confident in AI’s ability to produce passable work when it involved lower stakes tasks that the person could have done themselves but didn’t think it was worth their time.

AI creates a cycle of dependency that could be easily remedied by double-checking whatever a generative AI algorithm spits out, though even that might be too much effort for some people. On top of all that, the researchers found that employees who use generative AI tools produce less original work with less diversity of thought and creativity than those who work without AI.

Source : https://www.vice.com/en/article/ai-is-making-us-dumber-shocker/

 

The feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman has become one of the bitterest rivalries in business history, with the Tesla tycoon bidding to buy Altman’s OpenAI in an apparent attempt to derail the ChatGPT maker’s ascent to becoming one of the world’s most important companies.

Musk and Altman were among the 11-person team that founded OpenAI in 2015. Created as a counterweight to Google’s dominance in artificial intelligence, the project got its initial funding from Musk, who invested $45 million to get it started.

Three years later, Musk departed OpenAI. The company initially cited “a potential future conflict for Elon…as Tesla continues to become more focused on AI,” noting the electric vehicle company’s ambitions in autonomous driving.

However, subsequent lawsuits revealed a more contentious story: OpenAI claimed Musk left after his attempts to become CEO or to merge the company with Tesla were rejected.

The situation remained relatively quiet until November 2022, when OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT created a global technology sensation — one that didn’t feature Musk at its center and which made Altman a star.

Musk quickly began criticizing the company, trolling it on social media for keeping its source code private and signing a widely publicized manifesto calling for a pause in AI development, even as he pursued his own AI projects.

The conflict escalated in August 2024 when Musk refiled a lawsuit against OpenAI and its backer Microsoft, claiming the ChatGPT maker had betrayed its founding mission of benefiting the public good in favor of pursuing profits.

Musk later updated the lawsuit to prevent OpenAI’s conversion to a for-profit company — a change Altman considers crucial for the company’s development.

OpenAI’s unusual structure — a non-profit with a money-making subsidiary — reflected its idealistic origins as a counter to Google.

However, the massive costs of designing, training, and deploying AI models have forced the company to seek a new corporate structure that would give investors equity and provide more stable governance.

This need for stability became particularly evident after a 2023 boardroom coup briefly saw Altman fired, only to be reinstated days later following Microsoft’s intervention.

The transition to a traditional for-profit company requires approval from California and Delaware authorities, who will scrutinize how the non-profit arm of OpenAI is valued when it becomes a shareholder in the new company.

The conflict escalated in August 2024 when Musk refiled a lawsuit against OpenAI and its backer Microsoft, claiming the ChatGPT maker had betrayed its founding mission of benefiting the public good in favor of pursuing profits.

Musk later updated the lawsuit to prevent OpenAI’s conversion to a for-profit company — a change Altman considers crucial for the company’s development.

OpenAI’s unusual structure — a non-profit with a money-making subsidiary — reflected its idealistic origins as a counter to Google.

However, the massive costs of designing, training, and deploying AI models have forced the company to seek a new corporate structure that would give investors equity and provide more stable governance.

This need for stability became particularly evident after a 2023 boardroom coup briefly saw Altman fired, only to be reinstated days later following Microsoft’s intervention.

The transition to a traditional for-profit company requires approval from California and Delaware authorities, who will scrutinize how the non-profit arm of OpenAI is valued when it becomes a shareholder in the new company.

Current investors prefer a lower valuation to maximize their share of the new company.

Musk’s bid, valuing the OpenAI non-profit at $97.4 billion — approximately $30 billion above current negotiations according to The Information — appears designed to disrupt the company’s fundraising efforts.

“Overall this is Musk’s attempt to hurt OpenAI’s conversion into a non-profit to slow them down. I doubt Musk’s business rationale for the bid will play out in his favor,” said Lutz Finger , visiting senior lecturer at Cornell University.

Musk’s latest move to undermine his former ally came shortly after Altman made an appearance at the White House, announcing his involvement in Stargate, a Donald Trump-sponsored AI infrastructure project partnering with Japan’s SoftBank.

Musk, who plays a central role in the Trump White House, immediately criticized the $500 billion AI project claiming the funding wasn’t secured in an apparent dissension with the president.

Facing the barrage of hostility from the Tesla billionaire, Altman has increasingly suggested that Musk’s actions stem from regret over leaving OpenAI in 2018, particularly as Musk’s competing venture, xAI, struggles to gain traction despite massive investments.

“He’s just trying to slow us down. He obviously is a competitor,” Altman told Bloomberg TV.

Source : https://www.ibtimes.com/ai-feud-how-musk-altmans-partnership-turned-toxic-3763313

 

When news broke Monday that Elon Musk is leading an investment group to acquire Open AI for $97.4 billion, CEO Sam Altman used Musk’s X platform to deliver a scathing response.

“No thank you,” Altman posted, “but we will buy Twitter (X) for $9.74 billion if you want.”

See more

no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want

— Sam Altman (@sama) February 10, 2025

The reference to Musk’s 2022 purchase of the social media platform for $44 billion drew a reaction from the world’s wealthiest person: “Swindler,” was Musk’s one-word response.

The war of words is the latest in a long rivalry between the two tech billionaires. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but left to form his own artificial intelligence company (xAI) in 2023.

Musk has filed numerous lawsuits against OpenAI, which owns the revolutionary startup ChatGPT. Musk has recently gained favor with President Donald Trump as director of DOGE.

Source : https://www.ibtimes.com/altman-counters-musks-bid-buy-openai-offer-purchase-x-no-thank-you-3763199

Goldman Sachs’ international boss has said the bank ditched an internal diversity rule that barred it from advising all male, all white boards on company flotations because it was no longer needed.

The investment bank had pledged that it would only help a business sell its shares on a stock exchange if it had two diverse board members, one of which had to be a woman.

But Richard Gnodde told the BBC: “That policy was put in place to try and drive a change in behaviour and I think that’s happened.”

In a wide-ranging interview, he also said the UK government needed to get on and start infrastructure projects now and warned that uncertainty over US policy was dampening firms’ “animal spirit”.

Goldman Sachs introduced its diversity policy on boards in 2020, initially mandating that companies who wanted to float had to have one diverse member, before increasing it to two people.

Mr Gnodde said: “I think what is important is that you have a diversity of views on that board and if you look at these companies they’ve all embraced diversity, it’s moved along.

“This was a policy from a decade or so ago, I think it has served its purpose.”

Last December, a US federal appeals court ruled that Nasdaq, the stock market index, could not impose rules requiring companies to have women and minorities on their boards or explain why they did not.

A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs said: “As a result of legal developments related to board diversity requirements, we ended our formal board diversity policy.”

In one of his first acts after being sworn in, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to end “radical and wasteful government DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion ] programs”.

A number of companies have since rowed back on diverse hiring programs, including Google and Meta, the firm that owns Instagram and Facebook.

Asked whether firms were stepping back from policies around diversity because of the Trump White House, Mr Gnodde said: “I can only speak for ourselves, I don’t think that’s the case.

“Our ambitions are to continue to take things forward and frankly to go much further than we have been.”

A BBC investigation has uncovered allegations that energy giant Shell has ignored repeated warnings that a controversial clean-up operation of oil-polluted areas of southern Nigeria has been beset by problems and corruption.

The multinational headquartered in London, along with the Nigerian government, has repeatedly stated that work to clean up oil-contaminated sites of Ogoniland, which kicked off around eight years ago, is going well.

But the BBC has discovered evidence that they were warned repeatedly over several years that the scheme, set up by the government and funded by various oil firms to the tune of $1bn (£805m), has been suffering from a string of issues.

One close observer has described the clean-up project as a “con” and a “scam” that has wasted money and left the people of Ogonliland in the Niger Delta region continuing to live with the devastating impact of oil pollution – 13 years after a ground-breaking UN report lifted the lid on the seriousness of their situation.

Shell told the BBC: “The operating environment in the Niger Delta remains challenging because of the huge scale of illegal activities such as oil theft.

“When spills do happen from our facilities we clean up and remediate, regardless of the cause. If it’s an operational spill, we also compensate people and communities.”

The allegations come as a civil trial is expected to begin on Thursday at the High Court in London, where lawyers representing two Ogoniland communities of around 50,000 inhabitants will say Shell must take responsibility for oil pollution that occurred between 1989 and 2020, allegedly from its infrastructure.

The communities say the spills have left them without clean water, unable to farm and fish, and created serious risks to public health.

Shell, which has been pushing to sell its assets in the West African country to focus on offshore drilling and onshore gas, has indicated it will defend the claims.

It denies wrongdoing and says spills in the region have been caused by sabotage, theft and illegal refining for which the company says it is not liable.

The BBC has visited the affected areas in the Niger Delta, where Shell, the largest private oil and gas company in the country, discovered the existence of crude oil 68 years ago.

The UN says at least 13 million barrels – or 1.5 million tonnes – of crude oil have been spilled since 1958 in at least 7,000 incidents in the Niger Delta region.

The spills have left many families worried for their health and livelihoods.

Grace Audi, 37, lives with her partner and two-year-old in Ogale, where there have been at least 40 oil spills from Shell’s infrastructure, according to Leigh Day, the UK-law firm representing the communities in this case.

Her family and neighbours only have access to a contaminated borehole, forcing them to buy clean water to use for drinking, cooking, washing and, once a day, flushing, at a cost of 4,500 Nigerian naira ($3, £2.40) – in an area where the average daily wage is less than $8.

It is a familiar story to many in Ogoniland.

Paulina Agbekpekpe told the BBC that lush greenery once surrounded thriving mangroves of her community in Bodo – which is not one of those going to court on Thursday. She said the rivers and ponds used to brim with all kinds of animals and fish, particularly periwinkle.

“The place was greener, not only mangroves, but all by the shoreline – there were pawpaw trees, palm trees and more. But during the spills, the destruction has polluted everywhere,” the 50-year-old mother of six said.

Her family had for generations survived on fishing, until a devastating spill 10 years ago.

“Most of the children – from the drinking water – have got diseases. Many have died. I’ve lost eight kids. My husband is sick.

“Because our livelihoods have been taken away, people in Bodo are hungry and suffering.”

In 2011, the UN’s Environment Programme (UNEP) published a major study into the impact of pollution on the oil-rich area.

It found members of one community in Ogoniland were drinking water contaminated with a known carcinogen at levels more than 900 times above the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline. The same chemical, benzene, was detected in all their air samples.

It also found that sites that Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), claimed to have remediated, were still polluted and the techniques they used did not reach regulatory requirements.

The report concluded that a comprehensive clean-up of the area would take 25-30 years – and it led to the formation of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (Hyprep).

This was initially established by the Nigerian government in 2012, but no clean-up was started – until it was relaunched by a new government in December 2016.

Hyprep was part-funded by oil companies including the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) and Shell, which gave $350m.

However, the BBC has seen internal documents that suggest representatives of Shell and of the Nigerian government were warned numerous times of the agency’s alleged fraudulent practices.

One person aware of the project spoke to the BBC about their concerns – and asked to remain anonymous out of a fear of reprisals.

“It’s common knowledge that really what we’re doing is a scam. Most of it is to fool the Ogoni people,” the whistle-blower said.

“It’s a con perpetuated so that more money can be put into the pot and end up in the pockets of politicians and other people in power.”

The allegations about failings at Hyprep include:

Contracts being awarded to companies that had no relevant experience
Laboratory results being falsified – sometimes labelling contaminated soil and water as clean
Project costs being inflated
External auditors on occasion being blocked from checking the clean-up on sites had been done properly.
In the minutes of one meeting in 2023, attended by representatives from Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary, the UNEP and Hyprep, it was pointed out that “incompetent” contractors were “being engaged again” and that they should “not be allowed to further degrade the environment”.

In a separate leaked report seen by the BBC from the same year, it was pointed out that laboratory results were “regularly reported with deviations”.

In 2022, the UN wrote to the Nigeria’s environment ministry, warning that if nothing changed, the “extremely poor standards” of the clean-up would continue.

The BBC has asked Hyprep and the Nigerian government to comment on the allegations but has received no response.

But our investigation has revealed evidence that Shell was aware of the problems.

In a meeting with the British high commissioner to Nigeria in January last year, minutes of which were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Shell representatives acknowledged the “institutional challenges” of the clean-up agency and the chance of the refusal of “future funding” towards it.

Shell told the BBC: “Hyprep is an agency established and overseen by the federal government of Nigeria, with its governing council largely made up of senior ministers and government officials, along with five representatives of communities and NGOs and a single Shell representative.”

This is not the only remediation project in Ogoniland that is alleged to have been botched.

In 2015, Shell agreed to a £55m settlement for a clean-up after two catastrophic spills in 2008 from its infrastructure in the area Bodo.

The company said the clean-up, conducted by the Bodo Mediation Initiative (BMI), which is meant to serve as a mediator between oil companies, including Shell, and the Bodo community (and is part-funded by the oil giant and Nigerian regulators) has been certified as 98% complete.

However, the BBC visited sites within the area and found crude oil oozing from the soil and floating on waters.

Shell and the BMI insist any occurrences of oil spills in the region are because of theft – known in the industry as “oil bunkering”.

“There is a plan to call back the contractors to clean those areas to specification, to standard,” Boniface Dumpe, a director at the BMI, told the BBC.

“It is the responsibility of all stakeholders, Shell, yes, to take care of their facilities, to ensure that re-oiling does not come from their facilities.

“But for the areas that have been cleaned. I would think that some responsibility is also for the community to ensure that some illegal activities does not also cause re-pollution.”

Shell said it takes active measures to prevent oil spills caused by oil bunkering.

The company said: “We take extensive steps to prevent this activity and the spills it causes including aerial surveillance, removing illegal connections on pipelines, and by building steel cages to protect wellheads.”

The alleged failings in the oil clean-up come as Shell prepares to sell its Nigerian subsidiary, the SPDC, to Renaissance Africa, a consortium of local and international companies.

Some locals in Ogoniland have accused the oil giant of “running away” from properly cleaning up the land and waters it is alleged to have polluted.

They also fear Shell may still profit from the area by simply trading the oil extracted from the region in future.

“The operations of whichever oil operator takes over the relevant pipelines will have an enormous impact on their day-to-day life,” Joe Snape, a lawyer at Leigh Day, told the BBC.

“There’s incredibly little detail about what these deals will lead to.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0rqe85q1jno

Italian police have arrested 181 people in a crackdown on the Sicilian mafia.

Authorities launched a series of raids early on Tuesday, detaining suspected members of the mafia for alleged crimes including attempted murder, extortion, drug trafficking and more.

A total of 1,200 officers were involved in the operation aimed at dismantling mafia clans in several districts of the capital Palermo.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said several alleged mafia bosses were among those arrested and described the sting as a “very hard blow to Cosa Nostra”. Over 50kg of drugs were also seized.

Palermo mayor Roberto Lagalla also praised the operation, said the arrests “dealt a historic blow to the mafia”.

The large-scale sting suggests the organisation, an association of a number of groups, remains a significant criminal force despite setbacks in recent decades.

Police said Palermo’s mafia families were still coordinating their activities across the city and its province like they used to in the heyday of Cosa Nostra.

They added that inner city families had regained authority compared to the years in which a faction from Corleone – a town outside Palermo – dominated, that was the birthplace of notorious bosses Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano.

But the Carabinieri police said the group had recently modernised, turning to encrypted smartphones.

This allowed the most influential mafia bosses to communicate with one another while avoiding police attention, officers said in a statement.

Such was the level of secrecy the method allowed, that one individual on the run for almost two years continued to “govern the district” – continue criminal activities in his area – communicating only using the mobiles.

The Carabinieri said the use of such devices was “systematic”.

“We move forward with determination, because the mafia can and must be defeated,” minister of defence Guido Crosetto said, congratulating police on the arrests.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/historic-blow-to-sicilian-mafia-after-more-than-180-arrests-13307249

A NUMBER of “hugely influential” names in politics and industry have been plotting “behind the scenes” in a bid to take down Kanye West’s business interests in the US following his shocking hate-filled X rants.

Tech mogul Daniel Starr told The U.S. Sun that secret WhatsApp groups had been set up by high-profile people across entertainment, fashion, tech and politics who were outraged by the rapper’s vile anti-Semitic posts in which he proclaimed “I LOVE HITLER.”

The groups were working together to ensure the shamed Yeezy founder would no longer be able to conduct business in the States, Starr said.

The multi-millionaire entrepreneur alleges that manufacturing companies will no longer produce clothing products for his brand and that his music will “disappear” from streaming platforms.

He says that outrage over Ye’s three-day X rampage—in which he also claimed he had “dominion” over his wife Bianca Censori, that rape victims were liars, and that accused sex trafficker Sean “Diddy” Combs should be freed—had reached the “very top of government.”

Starr also claimed he had spoken to White House insiders who told him President Donald Trump has taken Kanye’s comments “very seriously” and was “not playing around” when it came to anti-Semitism.

In an exclusive interview Starr, 45, said: “A number of WhatsApp groups have been set up that I’m part of, with people that are very significant in tech, in Hollywood, in real estate, people who are super influential in government, people who work at the big streaming platforms, people from all of the major U.S. companies and I can assure you the right thing is happening.

“Kanye is done.

“He just will not be able to conduct business in this country in the way he used to. There is a lot happening behind the scenes to ensure this.

“I work with a number of people in the manufacturing and production of clothing for Kanye and they are not going to be doing production for him any longer. I’ve spoken directly to them.

“And I’m involved in a bunch of different fashion companies and other companies that do manufacturing and production here in the States. And the only way that he will be able to continue doing anything in fashion is if he takes it overseas.

“And there will be tremendous tariffs on that. So he’ll have an extremely difficult time conducting any sort of real business. He’s going to need to go outside the US to do that. And the pressure from the US government is going to make it nearly impossible for him to do what he does.

“And by creating and selling merchandise with anti-Semitic logos on it and things of that nature, he can be sure that the Trump administration is not going to let that slide 100%.

“Donald Trump signed an executive order against anti-Semitism last week. He’s going out there and saying, if you’re in America and you’re on a Visa of any kind and you make anti-Semitic statements, if you’re involved in anti-Semitic protests, we’re going to send you back to wherever you came from.

KANYE WILL ‘FEEL REPERCUSSIONS’

“He’s basically putting it out there that businesses that engage with anti-Semites, like Kanye West, are going to feel the repercussions. So he’s taking it seriously. As we know, his daughter and son-in-law Jared Kushner are Orthodox Jews,” Starr added.

“So it hits home all the way at the top of the US – Donald Trump – down to the people that were manufacturing his merchandise.

“I’m in constant contact with people in Trump’s administration and he is not playing around with stuff like this. He’s very, very, very serious.

“Trump is not going to let people go out and spew anti-Semitic hate without doing anything about it. We will see very quickly that our government is going to stand up and do the right thing.”

Kanye was widely condemned for his misogynistic, racist and anti-Semitic tirade, which began on Friday.

The rapper proclaimed: “I AM A NAZI”, “I LOVE HITLER” and wrote: “I DONT EVEN KNOW WHAT THE F*** ANTI SEMETIC MEANS.”

He later boasted about his wife’s naked Grammys look, claimed rape victims were liars and declared he was “God”.

Ye also posted a picture of a swastika t shirt and called it his “greatest art”.

Fans took to social media threatening to cancel their Yeezy orders and boycott his upcoming album Bully over the crazed rants.

Starr claimed he was also in touch with senior employees of streaming platforms and believed Kanye’s ability to use them to promote his music would soon be limited.

“I’m on WhatsApp groups with people who are high up at the major streaming platforms, and Kanye will not be able to use those platforms to distribute his music,” he said.

“I don’t think there’ll be a big announcement, I think it just disappears. I think there’s going to be broken links.

‘BEYOND CANCELING’

“They don’t even want to give Kanye the mention of ‘we’re removing you’, which is the only thing he wants, because obviously he’s doing all of this for attention and to get people p****d off. But the net result of that is going to be he just disappears.

“This has gone beyond cancelling, you’re not even worth our time.”

The U.S. Sun reached out to Spotify and Apple Music for comment on the claims but received no response.

Starr, who is Jewish, offered up $2 million after reading the hateful comment to have five minutes in a boxing ring with Kanye, who he branded an “idiot Nazi”.

He said he stood by his original comments and had received praise for them.

“While obviously the method of my outrage was not the most graceful way of going about it—saying I’ll fight him for money—might be seen as a little bit lowbrow, but it called attention to the issue,” he said.

“I’ve heard from a lot of people after the first article, and they told me they appreciated what I did. It’s bold. Some people have told me I’m crazy, and he’s going to have people come after me, but Kanye is not a gangster; he’s just some wacko behind his iPhone talking trash. I’m not worried about my safety at all.”

‘DELUSIONAL’

Starr added that Kanye’s pleas to free Diddy, who is currently in jail in New York awaiting trial, were “delusional.”

“Kanye asking Trump to free Diddy and to have meetings with him just shows how detached from reality he is,” he said.

“And if Kanye thinks that President Trump would do anything or associate with anyone who is an anti-Semite, he’s more delusional than he already appears. Trump freeing Diddy is not something that’s ever going to happen.”

Kanye’s X account was given a “sensitive content” warning on Sunday night, with boss Elon Musk posting: “Given what he has posted, his account is now classified as NSFW. You should not be seeing that anymore.”

Ye later addressed the disclaimer on X and urged Musk to let him keep his account before “logging out” and appearing to deactivate it.

In a video posted before his account was taken offline he claimed he was of sound mind and had found his Twitter rant “cathartic”.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/13516494/kanye-west-business-downfall-plotted-donald-trump/

ELON Musk took his young son into the Oval Office alongside President Donald Trump as he hit back at DOGE critics.

The Tesla chief was seen playing around with X Æ A-Xii, known as X, inside The White House as Trump signed an executive order helping out the new government department.

DOGE – which stands for Department of Government Efficiency – is being headed up by the eccentric billionaire as part of his pal Trump’s new-look cabinet.

Musk and X joined the President in his famous office ahead of the Republican leaders latest string of executive orders.

The main talking point revolved around a DOGE-related order which is reportedly intended to “significantly” scale back the federal workforce.

This will push agencies to hire “no more than one employee for every four employees” that leave in a bid to downsize, according to Semafor.

The exact details around the order are yet to be released by the White House with Trump not even officially signing it today in front of the cameras.

Instead, he allowed Musk and his son to take centre stage and bask in the limelight for over half an hour.

The world’s richest man was dressed in a black “Make America Great Again” cap, black t-shirt and overcoat.

X went for a smarter look in a tan coat, blue shirt and navy jumper.

The four-year-old also went for a thick gold chain that hung across his chest.

The SpaceX and Tesla mogul spoke to reporters about DOGE and the criticisms it has faced so far.

Some have blasted Musk for ordering waves of cuts to workforce’s across the country as they dubbed the moves as an unconstitutional concentration of power within The White House.

Trump set up DOGE with Musk at the helm to ensure federal cost-cutting measures were taken after Musk warned the US would go “bankrupt” without his help.

The tech whizz was quizzed over these claims as well as possible conflicts of interest.

He swiftly rejected all of the criticisms and disagreed with the idea that DOGE uses a lack of transparency.

Musk admitted “mistakes” will happen within his department during the first few months but he vowed to root out the highest-paid D.C. bureaucrats.

He described the process as whittling out an “unelected” bureaucracy.

“We do find it sort of odd that, you know, there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position,” Musk said.

“Which is what happened in USAID. We’re just curious as to where it came from.

“Maybe they’re very good at investing, in which case we should take their investment advice perhaps.”

He later joked that his critics are expecting a “daily proctology exam” over his dealings with the President.

As Musk boldly defended himself, Trump sat behind his historic Resolute Desk often glancing over at little X.

The toddler spent much of his time in the Oval Office catching the eye of everyone in the room.

At one point he sat on his dad’s shoulders and played with his face and hat.

On other occasions he grabbed at Musk’s clothes, took on a very wide-legged stance and even picked his nose next to Trump.

Towards the end of the meeting, X sat on his knees appearing to signal to his dad to wrap things up.

All throughout Musk’s chat, Trump was seen peering over at X and looking both bewildered and amused at the young boy.

Trump has been busy signing executive orders in the past month since entering office.

He signed an executive order on inauguration day to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13519669/elon-musk-son-x-trump-doge/

 

THE FBI has discovered thousands of new top-secret JFK assassination files after Trump’s order bust open all the remaining documents.

The 2,400 unseen records contain 14,000 pages of material not known to exist – which could shed new light on the mysterious murder.

This huge bundle was withheld from a board set up in the ’90s to review all documents related to the case, and was also kept from the National Archive.

Conspiracy theories about the assassination have swirled for over 60 years as the public speculated that unreleased top-secret files might show Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.

President Trump signed an executive order to declassify all remaining records about the 1963 shooting on his second day in office.

With the same ink, he also ordered all records related to the deaths of President Kennedy’s brother, Robert F Kennedy, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

A review board was set up in 1992, and government agencies were supposed to turn over all evidence they had related to JFK’s assassination.

The White House was on Friday informed that – in fact – not all of the documents had been submitted, and there remained a trove of unscrutinised intel, as reported by Axios.

Jefferson Morley, an expert on the assassination, told the news site: “This is huge. It shows the FBI is taking this seriously.”

He added: “The FBI is finally saying: ‘Let’s respond to the president’s order,’ instead of keeping the secrecy going.”

The existence of the documents came to light when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence submitted its plan for carrying out Trump’s order.

It isn’t yet known what they contain, but the fact they were for years held back – against orders – will raise questions about government transparency.

Gerald Leo Posner, an expert author on the assassination, said the newly-disclosed FBI files arouse suspicions that that other agencies are withholding documents.

He said: “It’s another reason why you will never get a consensus on this case because no one will ever agree that all of the information has been released.”

President John F Kennedy was shot in the head and neck by a 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald whilst travelling in an open-top car parade in Dallas, Texas.

The President John F Kenney Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 said that all government files relating to the event must be made public by October 2017.

However, there was a loophole built in that allowed their release to be delayed for national security and privacy reasons.

Trump’s order on January 23 read: “More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F Kennedy, Senator Robert F Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Federal Government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events.”

“Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth.

It added: “It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.”

John F Kennedy’s grandson, however, blasted Trump’s order to release the secret assassination files.

Jack Schlossberg to responded to the announcement by saying: “The truth is sadder than myth”.

Trump had promised to first term, but was persuaded the CIA and FBI that some documents should remain private to avoid the possibility of revealing national security secrets.

President Biden then ordered the limited release of some records, but government spooks continued to insist that full disclosure of the documents could compromise “sources and methods” of the intelligence spy.

After Biden, the number of outstanding files was thought to stand at 3,500.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13508219/fbi-discovers-thousands-secret-jfk-files/

DONALD Trump has been pushed to rename Greenland to Red, White and Blueland and enter negotiations to seize the ice island.

The Republican congressman who proposed the idea added that the Danish territory was vital as a “national security priority.”

Georgia Republican Buddy Carter, 67, unveiled a new legislation to encourage Trump to start negotiations to “purchase or otherwise acquire” Greenland.

“America is back and will soon be bigger than ever with the addition of Red, White, and Blueland,” Carter told the New York Post.

The Red, White, and Blueland Act of 2025 would require the secretary of the interior’s team to update federal paperwork with the new name for Greenland.

This department would have just six months to complete the drastic update.

“President Trump has correctly identified the purchase of what is now Greenland as a national security priority, and we will proudly welcome its people to join the freest nation to ever exist when our Negotiator-in-Chief inks this monumental deal,” Carter added.

The commander-in-chief has long set his sights on the frozen island and even sent his son there for an unofficial visit before his second inauguration.

Denmark, which owns Greenland, has strongly insisted the island is not for sale, but this has not stopped Trump from eyeing the land.

Trump refused to rule out using military force to seize the island.

He previously boasted that the people of Greenland wanted to be part of the US.

“I think the people want to be with us,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on January 25.

Trump had been putting pressure on PM Mette Frederiksen despite reportedly being told to “f**k off” by the Danes.

Greenland is a vital strategic asset bursting with natural resources and sits in the middle of the main Arctic trade routes.

The Arctic is increasingly the object of a struggle between international superpowers.

Russia and China have both ramped up efforts to take control of the region, and concerns exist that America has been caught off guard.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also defended Trump’s goals with the island as he highlighted a 1951 treaty that promised to defend the island in the event of an attack.

“If we’re already on the hook for having to do that, then we might as well have more control over what happens there,” Rubio said on The Megyn Kelly Show.

“This is not a joke,” he added.

“This is not about acquiring land for the purpose of acquiring land. This is in our national interest and it needs to be solved.”

RENAMING JOB

This has not been Trump’s only shock international land grab idea.

The president declared February 9 Gulf of America Day after he signed a proclamation to rename to basin.

He confirmed the change while flying over the waters, while on his way to the Super Bowl.

The president signed an executive order on his inauguration day that renamed the basin.

As Trump signed the document on Sunday, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum explained what the proclamation was.

“The button was pushed, it became official with this proclamation to call today Gulf of America Day, but now it’s going out as we’re sitting here right now,” Burgum said.

Google Maps has since caved into the President’s wishes and renamed the basin on its site.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13516617/trump-rename-greenland-red-white-blueland-national-security-priority/

US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff has secured the release of an American detained in Russia during a trip to the country, the White House said on Tuesday.

Marc Fogel was released on Tuesday and flew back to the US with Witkoff, arriving several hours later, according to a post by the White House on social media.

Why was Marc Fogel arrested in Russia?

Fogel, a history teacher from Pennsylvania, was detained in August 2021 at a Russian airport, for possession of what he and his family said was medically prescribed marijuana.

“President Trump, Steve Witkoff and the president’s advisors negotiated an exchange that serves as a show of good faith from the Russians and a sign that we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine,” White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said.

Witkoff and Fogel had left Russian airspace together earlier on Tuesday, following an unannounced visit by the envoy, and he was expected to be reunited with his family later in the day, Waltz said.

Family ‘beyond grateful’ after ‘most painful period of our lives’

Soon after the announcement, Fogel’s relatives said they were “beyond grateful, relieved and overwhelmed” that he was coming home.

“This has been the darkest and most painful period of our lives, but today, we begin to heal,” they said. “For the first time in years, our family can look forward to the future with hope.”

No word on terms of exchange yet

Waltz did not describe what the exchange entailed. Previous exchanges have often involved the reciprocal release of Russian detainees imprisoned by the US or its allies.

The most notable recent deal of this kind took place in August 2024, when three prominent Russian dissidents and US reporter Evan Gershkovic were released in exchange for eight Russian citizens including an intelligence agent who had been jailed for a 2019 murder in a Berlin park.

When and why was Fogel imprisoned and convicted?

Fogel was detained in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport in August 2021 with 17 grams of marijuana — which he said he uses for medical reasons — in his luggage.

Fogel’s was sentenced in June 2022, following the sharp downturn in US-Russian relations amid Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, to 14 years in prison on drug smuggling charges.

A few months later he had been transferred from a Moscow jail to a penal colony where he was set to serve the remainder of his sentence.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/russia-frees-us-history-teacher-marc-fogel-white-house-says/a-71577680

Acclaimed novelist Salman Rushdie took the stand in the attempted murder trial of the man charged with of stabbing him repeatedly at a literary gathering in August 2022.

Rushdie wore a dark suit, white shirt and grey tie, together with tinted glasses masking his eye injured in the attack.

What did Rushdie say?

He told jurors that he only saw the man “at the last minute” as he described the frenzied knife attack that left him partially blind in one eye and with permanent damage to one hand.

“I was aware of someone wearing black clothes, or dark clothes and a black face mask. I was very struck by his eyes, which were dark and seemed very ferocious to me,” Rushdie told jurors.

“He hit me very hard,” Rushdie said.

“Initially, I thought he had punched me. I thought he was hitting me with his fist. But very soon afterwards I saw really quite a very large quantity of blood pouring out onto my clothes, and by that time he was hitting me repeatedly; stabbing, slashing.”

At one point during his testimony, Rushdie told jurors they could see for themselves what’s “left of his” right eye.

He removed his glasses and turned to the jury, saying: “There’s no vision in the eye at all.”

Rushdie was too shaken to fight back, says prosecutor

The accused attacker, Hadi M. has been charged with second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault for stabbing. He has pleaded not guilty.

A prosecutor said during opening statements delivered Monday that Hadi M. had “forcefully and efficiently and with speed plunged the knife into Mr Rushdie over and over and over again.”

District Attorney Jason Schmidt told jurors on the opening day of the trial that the attack was swift and sudden.

He said the attacker bounded up a staircase to the stage and ran about 30 feet toward Rushdie.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/salman-rushdie-testimony-describes-attack-in-graphic-detail/a-71576173

 

Dozens of countries signed a declaration in Paris on Tuesday calling for AI development to be “open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy, taking into account international frameworks for all” and “making AI sustainable for people and the planet.”

But the US and UK were notable absentees from the list of signatories of the “Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence,” even as China’s support was secured by co-hosts France and India.

Why did the US decline to sign?

Visiting US Vice President JD Vance laid out several US reservations in a speech at the summit at the Grand Palais.

“We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry,” he told the gathering of world and industry leaders.

“We feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship.”

Vance alleged that the EU regulations such as the Digital Services Act and the GDPR rules on online privacy led to unacceptable compliance costs for smaller companies.

“Of course, we want to ensure the internet is a safe place, but it is one thing to prevent a predator from preying on a child on the internet, and it is something quite different to prevent a grown man or woman from accessing an opinion that the government thinks is misinformation,” he said.

Veiled China warning from Vance, and possibly the UK

To the surprise of some observers, China did sign up to Tuesday’s declaration. And while Vance did not mention the government in Beijing by name, he appeared to refer to it at times on Tuesday.

“From CCTV to 5G equipment, we’re all familiar with cheap tech in the marketplace that’s been heavily subsidized and exported by authoritarian regimes,” Vance said.

Chinese startup DeepSeek last month made its new AI reasoning model freely available, leading to a sharp 17% decline in the price of Nvidia shares. The tech company’s stock price had risen more than tenfold over the past two years amid the emergence of AI models like ChatGPT.

Vance argued that partnering with these cheap options “means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure.”

The British government was less forthcoming when explaining its reasons not to sign up. But a spokesman for Prime Minister Keir Starmer did say the UK government felt the declaration lacked “practical clarity” on issues like global governance, and ducked some “harder questions” on national security.

Macron also calls to cut red tape, but lobbies for ‘trustworthy AI’

French President Emmanuel Macron told the summit — but not Vance, who left after giving his speech — in his closing address that he also favored cutting red tape.

However, he added that regulation was needed to ensure trust in AI, and to prevent people from rejecting it as unreliable.

“We need a trustworthy AI,” Macron said, after spending the previous day touting France’s efforts to accelerate development in the sector.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, whose office drafted the GPDR and Digital Services Act, similarly said the EU planned to reduce bureaucratic hurdles, as Europe risks falling behind the US and China in the nascent industry.

OpenAI’s Altman rebuffs supposed buyout offer from fierce critic Musk

Meanwhile, back in the US, business mogul Elon Musk leaked news of an apparent bid to buy the company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, to the Wall Street Journal newspaper.

Musk, who has been promoting his own chatbot Grok on the X platform, has been openly feuding with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for months, including as recently as Monday.

Altman responded to the publication by the WSJ with a curt “no thank you” online, while a company official spoke about it at more length in Paris.

“OpenAI is not for sale and any such suggestion is really disingenuous,” the company’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane said on the sidelines of the summit, dismissing the offer as coming from a competitor “who has struggled to keep up with the technology and compete with us in the marketplace.”

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/us-uk-decline-to-sign-paris-ai-summit-declaration/a-71575536

Six US Congressmen on Monday wrote to new Attorney General Pam Bondi and demanded a probe into the previous Department of Justice’s (DoJ) indictment of Adani Group officials. In November last year, the Adani Group had rejected as baseless the move by the DoJ under the Biden administration to name the conglomerate in a case of alleged wrongdoing.

In a strongly worded letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, the six US lawmakers – Lance Gooden, Pat Fallon, Mike Haridopolos, Brandon Gill, William R Timmons and Brian Babin – said the previous DoJ’s action was a “misguided crusade” that came at the “risk of harming” America’s relationship with a “strategic geopolitical partner” like India.

They called it one of the “unwise decisions” by the Biden administration.

“This case rests on the allegation that preparations were made by members of this company in India to bribe Indian officials, also exclusively located in India. Instead of deferring the case to the appropriate Indian authorities, the Biden DoJ decided to push forward and indict the company’s executives without any real injury to US interests being present,” the Congressmen said.

There was “no compelling reason” to pursue a case in a manner that could complicate relations with an ally like India unless some external factors were at play, they said.

“This misguided crusade came at the risk of harming our relationship with a strategic geopolitical partner like India immediately preceding President Trump’s return to the Oval Office,” they added.

They said that considering Donald Trump’s commitment to revive America’s economic prosperity, their economic relationship with “valuable partners” from India is an “important factor” in achieving that goal.

“Needless pursuits against those who have contributed tens of billions and created thousands of jobs deter and discourage investors from contributing to our economy. Considering these factors and the lack of any real injury to U.S. interests, the decision to pursue this indictment demonstrates more harm for America’s interests than good, if any,” they said.

The Congressmen said that the US and India share a sense of mutual respect and appreciation – a sentiment emulated by President Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“President Trump has always recognized the true potential of a strong and beneficial relationship between two economic and military superpowers like the US and India,” they wrote in a two-page letter.

“Conversely, politically motivated decisions by agencies steered by left-wing megadonors could quickly erode years of hard work and diplomacy forged by our leaders. A fallout in relations not only harms our longstanding partnership with a key ally but greatly benefits adversaries like China in their goal to eliminate the American economy and achieve total global economic control through their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI),” they said.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-lawmakers-demand-probe-against-joe-biden-administration-over-adani-group-action-7682492

A street performance by Ed Sheeran in India’s tech capital of Bengaluru was stopped abruptly by police on Sunday, outraging fans and prompting the British singer to issue a clarification.
Sheeran, dressed in a white t-shirt and shorts was seen singing and playing his guitar on a pavement in the centre of Bengaluru ahead of his concert on Sunday night.
Local channels showed a policeman walking up to Sheeran as he was singing the hit single “Shape of You” and unplugging the microphone, as onlookers jeered. Sheeran left soon after.

Police said event organisers had refused permission for the street performance, which was on one of the city’s busiest streets.

“I refused to give permission because Church Street gets very crowded. That is the reason he was asked to vacate the place,” Bengaluru police official Shekar T Tekkannanavar was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
Sheeran, who began his career as a busker in the UK, said later on his Instagram account that he did have permission to perform.

“It wasn’t just us randomly turning up. All good though,” he wrote.
Sheeran is in India for a series of concerts, and performed in front of thousands of people at an open ground in the city later that night, accompanied by Indian singer Shilpa Rao.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/india/police-india-pull-plug-british-singer-ed-sheerans-impromptu-street-concert-2025-02-10/

A bus veered off a highway bridge into a polluted ravine in Guatemala City early on Monday, killing at least 51 people and trapping survivors, a spokesperson for the city’s fire department said.
The densely packed bus was traveling into the capital from the town of San Agustin Acasaguastlan on a busy route into the city from when it plunged approximately 20 meters from Puente Belice, a highway bridge that crosses over a road and creek.

The spokesman, Carlos Hernandez, said the bodies of 36 men and 15 women had been sent to a provincial morgue set up for the accident.

Images shared by the fire department on social media showed the bus partially submerged in wastewater surrounded by victims’ bodies.
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo declared three days of national mourning and deployed the country’s army and disaster agency to assist response efforts.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/least-30-people-dead-guatemala-bus-accident-authorities-say-2025-02-10/

At least one person was killed on Monday after a midsize business jet skidded off the runway while landing at the Scottsdale, Arizona, municipal airport and collided with another jet that was parked, authorities said.
Dave Folio, a spokesperson with the Scottsdale Fire Department, said at a press conference that at least four other people were injured in the crash.
One person remains trapped inside one of the planes and first responders were working to free them, he said, while three other people were taken to area hospitals.

Folio provided no other details and it was not immediately clear what caused the jet to skid off the runway.
The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that it was investigating the crash, which it said involved a Learjet 35A that skidded off the runway, which then collided with a Gulfstream 200 jet.
The incident comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of U.S. air safety.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/1-dead-after-plane-crash-arizona-airport-abc15-reports-2025-02-10/

The Philadelphia Eagles dominated the Chiefs 40-22 in Sunday’s Super Bowl in New Orleans to deny Kansas City in their bid for a third consecutive title and exact brutal revenge for their loss to the team in the NFL title game two years ago.
The Eagles bullied the Chiefs behind a defensive effort that overwhelmed Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, culminating with a strip sack with less than 10 minutes to play that ended any hopes of a comeback.

In the city where jazz was born, versatile Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts was a masterful conductor, making music with his legs and his arm to score three total touchdowns en route to earning Super Bowl MVP honors.
“It’s been a long journey, a journey with ups and downs, highs and lows,” first-time Super Bowl champion Hurts told reporters.
“You’ve got to be able to use these experiences that you’ve had in the past because they’re all formative for the future.”

Hurts finished 17-of-22 for 221 passing yards and rushed for 72 more on 11 carries, his only misstep a first half interception that ultimately proved harmless.
It was the Eagles’ second Super Bowl title after they beat the New England Patriots in 2018 and it played out before a sold-out crowd that included U.S. President Donald Trump, pop superstar Taylor Swift and a bevy of other A-list celebrities.

It marked the first time a sitting president had attended a Super Bowl and Trump watched the first half of the game at the Superdome before leaving.
The win spelled sweet revenge for the Eagles after their heartbreaking 38-35 defeat to the Chiefs in Phoenix two years ago.
“In the end, things come right on time,” Hurts said.
“Last time around, it wasn’t our time. It wasn’t my time. Sometimes you have to wait your turn.”
Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni shed tears of joy on the field while embracing his family after the victory.
“You can’t be great without the greatness of others,” he said.
“This is the best team sport there is. It took everybody, I’m so happy.”
Mahomes, who was sacked six times and turned the ball over three times, took ownership for the painful loss that cost his team a chance at completing an unprecedented Super Bowl “three-peat.”
“I threw two interceptions in their end, I mean, I threw a pick six, and I threw a pick that they returned to the five-yard line, and they scored immediately after,” Mahomes told reporters.

“So, you give the team 14 points, especially a really good football team, a Super Bowl football team, and not a lot of good things happen.
“That’s why I take ownership of this loss more than probably any loss in my entire career, because I put us in a bad spot there.”

EAGLES FLYING START

The Eagles got the scoring started with their signature play – a goal line move they call the “brotherly shove” in reference to Philadelphia’s “City of Brotherly Love” nickname – with Hurts plowing into the end zone behind his powerful offensive line as his teammates forced him forward.
Eagles’ rookie defensive back Cooper DeJean picked off a poor pass from Mahomes in the second quarter and scampered 38 yards to score Philadelphia’s second touchdown on the rookie’s 22nd birthday.
Mahomes was intercepted again late in the first half and two plays later the Eagles found the end zone once more as Hurts connected with receiver A.J. Brown.
The Eagles led 24-0 going into halftime and continued to roll after the break, as Avonte Maddox broke up Mahomes’ pass on an attempted fourth down conversion in the third quarter.
On the next play Hurts delivered a 46-yard strike to DeVonta Smith to build a 34-0 lead and the celebration was on for the thousands of vocal Eagles fans in attendance.
The Chiefs finally got on the board in the waning moments of the third quarter with a touchdown pass from Mahomes to rookie Xavier Worthy.
Eagles kicker Jake Elliott completed two of his four successful field goal attempts in the second half to extend the lead to 40-6.
The Chiefs would tack on two more touchdowns after the game was well out of reach, with Sirianni receiving a Gatorade bath long before the two-minute warning, as receivers Brown and Smith poured the yellow sports drink over his head, utterly soaking the 43-year-old play caller.
Eagles’ dazzling running back Saquon Barkley grabbed 57 rushing yards and broke the all-time NFL record for most rushing yards in a regular season plus playoffs to add icing to their championship cake.
Barkley joined the Eagles in the offseason and transformed the team’s offense with his explosive playmaking.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/sports/nfl/sunshine-tight-security-greet-fans-arriving-super-bowl-2025-02-09/

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that Hamas should release all hostages held by the militant group in Gaza by midday Saturday or he would propose canceling the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and “let hell break out.”
Trump cautioned that Israel might want to override him on the issue and said he might speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But in a wide-ranging session with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump expressed frustration with the condition of the last group of hostages freed by Hamas and by the announcement by the militant group that it would halt further releases.

“As far as I’m concerned, if all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o’clock, I think it’s an appropriate time. I would say, cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out. I’d say they ought to be returned by 12 o’clock on Saturday,” Trump said.
He said he wanted the hostages released en masse, instead of a few at a time. “We want ’em all back.”
Trump also said he might withhold aid to Jordan and Egypt if they don’t take Palestinian refugees being relocated from Gaza. He is to meet Jordan’s King Abdullah on Tuesday.

The comments came on a day of some confusion over Trump’s proposal for a U.S. takeover of Gaza once the fighting stops.
He said Palestinians would not have the right of return to the Gaza Strip under his proposal to redevelop the enclave, contradicting his own officials who had suggested Gazans would only be relocated temporarily.
In an excerpt of an interview with Fox News channel’s Bret Baier broadcast on Monday, Trump added that he thought he could make a deal with Jordan and Egypt to take the displaced Palestinians, saying the U.S. gives the two countries “billions and billions of dollars a year.”

Asked if Palestinians would have the right to return to Gaza, Trump said: “No, they wouldn’t because they’re going to have much better housing.”
“I’m talking about building a permanent place for them,” he said, adding it would take years for Gaza to be habitable again.
In a shock announcement on Feb. 4 after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, Trump proposed resettling Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinians and the U.S. taking control of the seaside enclave, redeveloping it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

IGNITE THE REGION

Trump’s suggestion of Palestinian displacement has been repeatedly rejected by Gaza residents and Arab states, and labeled by rights advocates and the United Nations as a proposal of ethnic cleansing.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Trump’s statement that Palestinians would not be able to return to Gaza was “irresponsible.”
“We affirm that such plans are capable of igniting the region,” he told Reuters on Monday.
Netanyahu, who praised the proposal, suggested Palestinians would be allowed to return. “They can leave, they can then come back, they can relocate and come back. But you have to rebuild Gaza,” he said the day after Trump’s announcement.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who will depart later this week for his first visit to the Middle East in the office, said on Thursday that Palestinians would have to “live somewhere else in the interim,” during reconstruction, although he declined to explicitly rule out their permanent displacement.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the disparity between Rubio and Trump’s most recent remarks on the plan.
Trump’s comments come as a fragile ceasefire reached last month between Israel and Hamas is at risk of collapse after Hamas announced on Monday it would stop releasing Israeli hostages over alleged Israeli violations of the agreement.
Israel’s Arab neighbors, including Egypt and Jordan, have said any plan to transfer Palestinians from their land would destabilize the region.
Rubio met Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty in Washington on Monday. Egypt’s foreign ministry said Abdelatty told Rubio that Arab countries support Palestinians in rejecting Trump’s plan. Cairo fears Palestinians could be forced across Egypt’s border with Gaza.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-says-palestinians-would-not-have-right-return-gaza-2025-02-10/

Antiques expert Charles Hanson, known for TV shows including Flog It! and Bargain Hunt, violently attacked and restrained his wife over a 10-year period, in some cases leaving her with physical marks, a court has heard.

Hanson, 46, is charged with controlling or coercive behaviour, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and assault by beating. The auctioneer denies all the charges.

The jury at Derby Crown Court was told Hanson began using “sufficient force” against his wife Rebecca Hanson to leave visible marks on some occasions in 2012, about two years after they married.

Opening the prosecution case, Stephen Kemp said that during the first incident, Hanson had “put his arm around her [Mrs Hanson’s] neck and then put her into a headlock” during an argument after she threw an empty box on the floor.

Mr Kemp added: “Rebecca does not say she lost consciousness, but she was understandably scared and shocked by what her husband had just done to her. When she spoke to him afterwards, he told her he felt he had to restrain her.

“That is not accepted by either Rebecca Hanson or the prosecution. There was no need for that, and certainly not by means of a headlock… it was the first of many occasions when Mr Hanson would grab hold of his wife, we say, in anger.”

The antiques expert, who owns Hansons Auctioneers, was seen shaking his head in court as the jury heard that – over the next 10 years – he would become violent towards his wife “every six months or so”.

In 2015, it is alleged that Hanson, from Mackworth, Derby, “gripped her so hard that it left three fingertip bruises on her arm” which “caused her to cry”. She took a photograph of bruising to her arm.

On another occasion, the jury was told that during a COVID lockdown in March 2020, Hanson was in a “bad mood” and “threw the landline telephone” at his wife, which hit her leg.

Mrs Hanson wrote in a message to her mother at the time: “Just to let you know that Charles is being pretty nasty to me at the moment.”

In May 2022, the couple also had an argument, the court heard. It is alleged Hanson grabbed his wife on this occasion “so forcefully that he left a red mark on her shoulder”.

In the same month, the prosecution say he pushed her twice.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/bargain-hunt-expert-put-wife-in-headlock-and-assaulted-her-over-10-year-period-court-hears-13306839

A man who believes he accidentally lost a Bitcoin fortune in a council rubbish tip is exploring the possibility of buying the landfill site before it is shut.

James Howells, from Newport in South Wales, claimed his ex-girlfriend mistakenly threw out a hard drive containing thousands of Bitcoins in 2013.

According to the 39-year-old IT worker, they are worth more than £600m and he has been trying to recover them ever since.

Now he is considering buying the site so he can hunt for the missing fortune himself, multiple outlets reported on Monday.

Newport City Council is planning to close and cap the site in the 2025-26 financial year, which would almost certainly spell the end of any lingering hopes of recovering them.

Mr Howells said in widely reported comments on Monday it had been “quite a surprise” to hear of the council’s closure plan.

Last month a judge dismissed a legal case he brought to force the council to allow him to search the landfill site, or award him £495m in compensation.

He said the council had claimed in court that closing the landfill to allow him to search “would have a huge detrimental impact on the people of Newport, whilst at the same time they were planning to close the landfill anyway.

“I expected it would be closed in the coming years because it’s 80-90% full – but didn’t expect its closure so soon.

“If Newport City Council would be willing, I would potentially be interested in purchasing the landfill site ‘as is’ and have discussed this option with investment partners and it is something that is very much on the table.”

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/man-who-lost-600m-bitcoin-fortune-wants-to-buy-landfill-to-search-for-it-13306842

More than 3,000 artists have called for Christie’s to cancel its first-ever AI art auction, calling it “mass theft” of human artists’ work.

The petition urges the New York auction house to call off the event – where pieces range from $10,000 to $250,000 (£8,000 to £202,000) – citing “serious concern” over exploitation of artists.

“Many of the artworks you plan to auction were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a licence,” the petition says.

“These models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment to build commercial AI products that compete with them.”

The petition, directed at Christie’s, reads: “Your support of these models, and the people who use them, rewards and further incentivises AI companies’ mass theft of human artists’ work.

“We ask that, if you have any respect for human artists, you cancel the auction.”

The battleground over training AI models has resulted in a number of lawsuits between companies and creatives alleging copyright was breached in the training process.

Christie’s said the works in the auction used AI to “enhance” the art.

Concerns ‘completely justified’

TWO people have been shot dead in Philadelphia as wild Super Bowl victory celebrations took over the city after the Eagles win.

Police have launched an investigation after the double homicide in the early hours of Monday morning.

A rain of at least 40 bullets was fired in horrific scenes at around 3:50 am.

It happened in the Summerdale area of Northeast Philadelphia, a few miles north of Center City.

That was where tens of thousands of fans were celebrating the Eagles win in the Super Bowl.

Police responded to 911 calls and found a victim shot dead behind the wheel of a vehicle.

They also found a second victim on the ground on the passenger side.

Two men are understood to have been spotted on surveillance footage fleeing the area.

They are believed to have been in a white four-door sedan.

The victim’s vehicle was hit more than 20 times with gunfire.

The suspects have not been identified.

SUPER BOWL CELEBRATIONS MARRED

Tens of thousands of fans have been partying on the streets of Philadelphia throughout the night.

They were jubilant after the Eagles won just their second Super Bowl in their history.

It was carnage in the city, with rioting, clashes with police and numerous fires.

There was also brawling between supporters, who had climbed onto police cars.

This all came despite pleas from the mayor urging calm if the team won in New Orleans.

Nearly 20 people were arrested following the wild scenes in Philadelphia.

Five of those were charged with assaulting police officers, local NBC affiliate WCAU reported.

Market and Broad Street around Philadelphia City Hall were at the center of the carnage.

There are plans for a parade in the city on Friday following the 40-22 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.

The team plans to hold celebrations throughout the streets following their second Super Bowl victory.

The investigation into the homicide continues into Monday morning.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/sport/13500076/two-dead-philadelphia-shots-fired-super-bowl-eagles-chiefs/

Our gender is identical to our sex, written in our genes, can be clearly assigned and does not change over our lifetime. That’s what many people say. The woman on one side, the man on the other ― you’re either a princess or a knight, with nothing in between. And you certainly have no say in the matter. Your sex is what you’re born with. Period.

US President Donald Trump believes this. During his inauguration in January 2025, Trump said it would be US government policy “that there are only two genders, male and female.”

And in a TV debate two weeks ahead of Germany’s general election on February 23, 2025, conservative candidate for chancellor Friedrich Merz said he sided with Trump in the gender debate.

“That is a decision I can understand,” said Merz.

People who support the concept of “only two genders” often point to biology as the basis for their view that there’s only man and woman, unchangeable and with nothing in between.

Yet the broad scientific consensus now looks different: Sex is a spectrum, say some scientists. You can stick with the picture that man and woman are at opposite ends, but there’s a lot going on in between.

Genetics: Clearly ambiguous

XX chromosomes = female, XY chromosomes = male. This is how sex is formed, we learn in school. In people with XX chromosomes, a vagina, uterus and ovaries normally form in the womb. In XY, penis and testicles are formed.

Clearly, the sex chromosomes are important, but it’s not quite so simple.

For example, there are people whose physical traits are female, but they carry the “male” sex chromosomes XY in their cells, and vice versa.

A gene located on the short arm of the Y chromosome, called SRY, determines (along with other players) whether or not testes will form in an embryo. If, for example, this gene is not read due to a mutation or remains silent, so to speak, no testes will develop despite XY chromosomes.

On the other hand, testes can grow in people with XX chromosomes if the gene jumps over to the X chromosome (presumably during cell division) and is read.

So how sensible is it to determine sex after birth, as is mostly done at the moment, solely on the basis of externally visible sexual characteristics?

Nothing is set in stone

Naturally occurring variations in sex chromosomes are many and varied. This can also have an effect on the visible sexual characteristics, the genitals. Here, too, there are several gradations between the fully formed penis and the externally visible part of the clitoris.

Individuals who cannot clearly be assigned one of the binary sexes refer to themselves as intersex or inter*. The United Nations estimates that 1.7% of the world population belongs to this group. The number is comparable to that of red-haired people in the world.

Since 2018, newborns like this can be registered as “diverse” in Germany. Other countries, such as Australia, Bangladesh and India, also recognize a third sex.

Sex can also change over a lifetime ― or more precisely the gonadal sex identity can. Chinese researchers found this out in a study on mice.

The genes responsible for this change are DMRT1 and FOXL2, which normally balance the development of ovaries and testes in a kind of yin-and-yang relationship. When there was a change in these genes, the gonadal sex phenotype could change even in adult animals.

The changing symphony of hormones

Testosterone: The male hormone! Estrogens and progesterone: The female hormones! That’s what they teach you in school, but again, it’s not that simple.

Men and women as well as gender-diverse individuals all have these sex hormones in their bodies. Average progesterone and estradiol (the most potent natural estrogen) levels barely differ between the sexes.

If one is looking for binarity in hormone levels, one should rather distinguish between “pregnant” and “not pregnant,” according to a review study on recognized sex characteristics by American psychologists. This is because only pregnant women are far out of the ordinary in terms of estradiol and progesterone compared to all other people.

In children, there is no significant difference in sex hormones. It is not until puberty that testosterone levels in particular go up, so that males on average have more testosterone than females.

However, according to recent findings, this difference was also overestimated for a long time due to a failure of research since testosterone was stereotypically studied only in men and estrogens only in women.

Today, targeted research is being conducted on the hormonal overlap between the sexes. It has also been discovered that hormone levels depend to a remarkable extent on external factors and are not, as previously assumed, purely genetically predetermined.

Expectant fathers, for example, have less testosterone over the period of their partner’s pregnancy. The supposedly female hormones estradiol and progesterone, on the other hand, are produced more when individuals compete for dominance ― a behavior that is stereotypically considered masculine.

What gender is your brain?

There are some differences between the brains of men and women. Men’s brains are larger on average. Individual brain regions also differ in average size, density of connections and type and number of receptors.

However, again, researchers cannot pinpoint the male or female brain. Each brain is quite unique and rather resembles a mosaic with different “male” and “female” parts.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/even-the-science-agrees-there-are-more-than-two-genders/a-57062033

Kanye West‘s Yeezy.com advertisement during Sunday night’s Super Bowl stunned viewers with its bizarre vibe. But then what happened next shocked the station execs who ran it and media buyers who approved the spot even more: West immediately flipped the website after the ad aired, replacing its previous content with just one item: A swastika T-shirt for sale, at $20 each.

Up until the ad actually ran, the Yeezy.com website featured a Shopify-powered store selection of various non-branded articles of clothing like shirts, pants and jackets — nothing that would have been deemed a content issue. And Variety can confirm — because this reporter immediately checked the site after the spot aired in Los Angeles — that when the ad first ran, the swastika T-shirt wasn’t there. Here’s an example of the before and after:

Within the hour of the ad airing in Los Angeles and other markets, West made the switch and users saw just that $20 white t-shirt with a swastika on it. At that point, the on-air ad had already run and it was too late.

According to insiders, the Yeezy.com ad went through legal approval, and moved forward because there was no standards issue with the 30-second spot itself. It’s simply a low-budget ad, shot on an iPhone, with West sitting in what appears to be a dentist’s chair while stammering, “So what’s up, guys, I spent, like all the money for the commercial on these new teeth. So once again, I had to shoot it on the iPhone. Um… um… go to yeezy.com.”

The ad ran on three Fox-owned stations, including KTTV Los Angeles, and may have been seen in a few more local markets. It’s not the first time West had purchased a local spot during the Super Bowl, as one was seen on at least one small market CBS affiliate in 2024. But that one aired without any incident.

There had been plenty of red flags that selling an ad to West might be a problem. The hip-hop star has proclaimed himself to be a Nazi, and his X account has been deactivated after spending several days posting racist and antisemitic comments, from declaring “I’m a Nazi” to calling Hitler “so fresh.”

Despite those recent outbursts on social media, the Yeezy spot moved forward by perhaps falling a bit through the cracks since it was a one-off spot sold to a handful of local markets. Most of those ads are for local businesses like law firms and car dealerships (in LA, the ad that ran right after the Yeezy spot was for the California Lottery) — so if it’s not flagged for standards & practices, it winds up making its way to air.

As a result, West’s spot didn’t get the scrutiny that comes with big national Super Bowl buys. And since the ad didn’t include any questionable content, and at that moment the website didn’t include the swastika t-shirt, once it passed muster with legal it was likely thrown into the local ad rotation without much more thought or visibility.

“It was such a small ad, I don’t think anyone put two and two together,” said one insider. “The copy was clean, the website was clean, and so they did their due diligence with that little part of it.”

Reps for Fox TV Stations and for USIM — the ad agency that placed the Yeezy.com spot — did not respond to requests for comment.

Local ads in major markets during the Super Bowl might cost a few hundred thousand dollars for a spot — much less than the price tag for a national ad, but still expensive. Controversial advertisers often buy local spots, rather than national ones, during the Super Bowl to save money and also fly a bit under the radar.

Source : https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/how-kanye-west-super-bowl-ad-swastika-shirts-1236302946/

Neha Satpute and Akshay Pise felt ready to welcome their first child.

Having worked in the US for more than a decade, the Indian couple who are engineers on H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers, expected their son – due on 26 February – to be born an American citizen.

Employed at a large tech firm with a supportive parental leave policy, they had carefully built their life in San Jose, California.

But President Donald Trump recently threw a wrench in their American dream by announcing a rule that would deny automatic US citizenship to children born to temporary foreign workers. Until now, birthright citizenship had been a given regardless of parents’ immigration status.

A federal judge in Maryland has blocked the order, extending an initial two-week block imposed by a Seattle court. This means the ruling cannot take effect until the case is resolved in court, although there remains a possibility of a higher court overturning any decision.

The looming uncertainty, along with the multiple lawsuits and legal challenges, have left Akshay, Neha and thousands of others in limbo.

“This impacts us directly,” says Akshay. “If the order takes effect, we don’t know what comes next – it’s uncharted territory.” Their biggest question: What nationality will their child have?

Their concern is valid, says New York-based immigration attorney Cyrus Mehta: “US law has no provision for granting non-immigrant status to a person born here.”

With their baby’s due date fast approaching, they consulted their doctor about an early delivery. The advice? If all goes well, they could induce labour in the 40th week, but they’ve chosen to wait.

“I want the natural process to take its course,” says Neha. Akshay adds: “My priority is a safe delivery and my wife’s health. Citizenship comes second.”

Dr Satheesh Kathula, president of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), reached out to obstetricians of Indian origin in the US after media reports of families seeking early C-sections. Except for “a few instances in New Jersey”, most doctors reported no such inquiries.

“In a country with strict medical laws, I strongly advise against preterm C-sections just for citizenship,” said the Ohio-based doctor. “Our physicians are ethical and won’t perform them unless medically necessary.”

US citizenship is highly coveted, especially by skilled H-1B visa holders. Indians are the second-largest immigrant group in the US.

Immigration policy analyst Sneha Puri warns that a birthright citizenship order would hit Indians hard – more than five million Indians in the US hold non-immigrant visas.

“If enforced, none of their future US-born children would get citizenship,” she told the BBC.

South Asian parents-to-be are flooding online groups with concerns about the order’s impact and next steps.

Trump’s executive order says it does not affect the ability of the children of lawful permanent residents to obtain documentation of US citizenship.

But Indians in the US face the longest wait of any foreign nationality to receive a green card conferring lawful permanent residency.

Current US rules mean that the number of green cards given to people of any one country cannot exceed 7% of the total number of green cards awarded.

Indians receive 72% of H-1B visas annually. According to the Cato Institute, Indians made up 62% of the employment-based backlog of people waiting for green cards – that’s 1.1 million – in 2023. Indians receiving employment-based green cards today applied back in 2012.

In his report, Cato’s director of immigration studies David Bier warns: “New Indian applicants face a lifetime wait, with 400,000 likely to die before getting a green card.”

In contrast, most other immigrants get permanent residency within a year, speeding their path to citizenship.

If implemented, Trump’s executive order would also affect undocumented migrants in the US, whose US-born children had previously automatically gained citizenship – and who could then go on to sponsor their parents to apply for a green card when they turn 21.

Pew Research estimates 725,000 undocumented Indian immigrants in the US as of 2022, making them the third-largest group. In contrast, the Migration Policy Institute puts the number at 375,000, ranking India fifth. Unauthorised immigrants make up 3% of the US population and 22% of the foreign-born population.

The main concern for Indians on H-1B or O visas is their children’s quality of life.

Such visa-holders must leave the US periodically to have their visas stamped in a US embassy abroad. Those who return to India for this purpose frequently face delays in getting an appointment for this purpose.

These immigrants don’t want their US-born children to endure the same bureaucratic struggles.

Waiting in the green card queue for several years, Akshay is aware of the ease US citizenship brings.

“We have been here for more than 10 years. As I see my parents getting older, it’s very important for me to have citizenship. Travelling becomes tricky for us with coordinating visa stamping timings, and now with my baby it might be more difficult,” he said.

Many physicians in the US oppose Trump’s decree, highlighting the role foreign skilled workers play in providing vital services.

Dr Kathula says Indian doctors in rural areas such as North and South Dakota are crucial. “Without them, healthcare would collapse. Now, they’re in limbo about starting families,” he said.

He is calling for the process of getting a green card to be sped up and for these workers’ children to be granted birthright citizenship because of their parents’ contributions to America.

Trump’s order has also heightened anxiety among Indians on student and work visas, already aware of their precarious legal status. The one guarantee – their US-born children’s citizenship – is now in doubt.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xq70lw8kvo

Two American tourists were attacked by a shark at a popular Bahamas resort over the weekend, police said.

The female swimmers were in the waters at Bimini Bay, which is part of the westernmost island in the Bahamas and about 50 miles from Miami, about 6:30 p.m. Friday when the attack took place.

“Initial reports indicate that the victims, both U.S.A. residents, sustained injuries while swimming in the waters at Bimini Bay,” the Royal Bahamas Police Force wrote in a press release.

Both victims of the reported shark attack were initially provided with local medical treatment before they were airlifted to New Providence, a separate island in the Bahamas, for further medical care.

“One of the victim’s injuries is listed as serious,” police continued in their statement on Saturday, adding that the investigation is ongoing.

At least two other Americans have suffered from shark attacks in the Bahamas in a little over a year.

Lauren Erickson Van Wart, a 44-year-old newlywed from Massachusetts, was paddleboarding less than a mile off the western end of New Providence Island in early December 2023 when she was bitten by a shark and killed.

Source : https://www.foxnews.com/us/american-tourists-attacked-by-shark-luxe-bahamas-resort-area

Israel placed its military on the “highest level of alert” after Hamas canceled the next phase of its plan to release hostages.

Tensions surged after Hamas accused Israel of breaking the terms of the ceasefire deal on Monday.

Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, said in a post on X that the handover of the prisoners “who were scheduled to be released next Saturday… will be postponed until further notice, and until the occupation commits to and compensates for the entitlements of the past weeks retroactively.”

“We affirm our commitment to the terms of the agreement as long as the occupation commits to them,” he added. In response to that message, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he instructed the country’s military to “prepare at the highest level of alert for any possible scenario in Gaza.”

Katz used the same argument Obeida used as he said the postponement was a “complete violation of the ceasefire agreement and the deal to release the hostages,” CNN reported.

Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s far-right former minister of national security, said in a statement of his own on Monday that Israel should respond with a “massive attack on Gaza.”

The statement reads, “Hamas’ announcement must have one real-life response: a massive attack on Gaza, from the air and land, alongside a complete halt to humanitarian aid to the Strip, including electricity, fuel and water, and including the bombing of aid packages that have already been brought in and are in Hamas’ hands in Gaza.”

Both Israel and Hamas have accused each other of violating the terms of the agreement several times throughout the first phase of it, raising questions about the viability of any sort of ceasefire. This one took 15 months to reach.

Hamas released three hostages this past Saturday as part of the fourth hostage exchange in the ceasefire agreement that went into effect on Jan. 19. But there are reportedly still 79 prisoners taken by the militant group on Oct. 7, 2023, who have yet to be released.

Only about 20 of them are scheduled to be released during the current phase of the ceasefire, and eight are allegedly dead. Israel in exchange released 183 Palestinian prisoners, 18 of whom were serving life sentences. The majority of the others had been detained in Gaza since Oct. 7 without public charges against them.

The agreement, which was signed in Qatar last month, stipulated that negotiations for the second phase of the deal were slated to begin on Monday, but there have been complications with that.

On Monday, Gaza’s Government Media Office, which is run by Hamas, said Israel had refused to allow the entry of shelter supplies specified in the ceasefire agreement and would therefore be postponing negotiations.

Source : https://www.the-express.com/news/world-news/163220/hamas-hostage-release-canceled-idf

Europe is prepared to respond “within an hour” if the United States levies tariffs against the European Union, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a pre-election debate with his conservative challenger Friedrich Merz.
In the first duel ahead of the February 23 election, Merz portrayed Scholz as a ditherer who had led Germany into economic crisis, while the Social Democrat presented himself as an experienced leader in command of the details.

Asked if the EU was ready with a targeted response if the U.S. imposed tariffs, Scholz, well behind Merz in the polls, said, “Yes … We as the European Union can act within an hour.”
U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to enact tariffs against the United States’ largest trading partners, accusing them of free-riding on American prosperity. Trade policy is an EU competence, run by the European Commission in Brussels.

Trump and the far-right Alternative for Germany, endorsed by his confidante Elon Musk, overshadowed the debate.
Merz, far ahead in the polls and the favourite to become Germany’s next chancellor, expressed reluctance to raise taxes or borrow to reach the NATO alliance’s defence spending target of 2% of gross domestic product, far short of the 5% Trump is demanding.
When Scholz said that would not be enough, Merz signalled his openness to discuss scrapping Germany’s totemic spending cap – despite a manifesto pledge to keep the constitutional debt brake.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/europe-can-act-within-an-hour-if-us-levies-tariffs-germanys-scholz-2025-02-09/

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he believed the United States was making progress in its talks to end thewar between Russia and Ukraine, but declined to provide details about any communications he had had with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump indicated that the two men had been in contact; that would mark the first officially acknowledged conversation between Putin and a U.S president since early 2022.

Asked whether he had had his conversation with Putin since he became president on January 20 or before, Trump said: “I’ve had it. Let’s just say I’ve had it…And I expect to have many more conversations. We have to get that war ended.”
“If we are talking, I don’t want to tell you about the conversations,” Trump said. “I do believe we’re making progress. We want to stop the Ukraine-Russia war.”
The president said the United States was in touch with Russia and Ukraine. “We’re talking to both sides,” he said.

Trump has promised to end the war but not set out yet in public how he would do so.
In a Friday interview with the New York Post, Trump said that he had “better not say” how many times he and Putin had spoken and did not disclose when the latest conversation had taken place.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the TASS state news agency that “many different communications are emerging.”
“I personally may not know something, be unaware of something,” Peskov said when asked by TASS to comment. “Therefore, in this case, I can neither confirm nor deny it.”

U.S. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz also declined to elaborate when asked about communications between the two countries.
“There certainly are a lot of sensitive conversations going on,” Waltz said on NBC News.

TRUMP-PUTIN SUMMIT?

Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the war and that he will meet with Putin to discuss it, though the date or venue for such a meeting has not been announced. Trump told reporters on Sunday that he would meet with Putin at an appropriate time.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are seen by Russia as possible venues for a summit, Reuters reported earlier this month.

In the coming days, a flurry of U.S. officials are heading to Europe in part to discuss the war, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and Keith Kellogg, the special envoy for the Ukraine war.
Waltz indicated that Trump would be willing to use sanctions and tariffs to coax Putin to the negotiating table.
Waltz said U.S. and Ukrainian officials would discuss the United States gaining access to Ukraine’s rare earth resources as compensation for U.S. aid to the eastern European ally.
On June 14, Putin set out his opening terms for an immediate end to the war: Ukraine must drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.
Reuters reported in November that Putin is open to discussing a Ukraine peace deal with Trump but rules out making any major territorial concessions and insists that Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO.
The Kremlin has repeatedly urged caution over speculation about contacts with the Trump team over a possible peace deal.
Leonid Slutsky, head of the Russian parliament’s international affairs committee, was cited by the state RIA news agency on Thursday as saying that preparations for such a meeting were at “an advanced stage” and that it could take place in February or March.
Putin last spoke to former U.S. President Joe Biden in February 2022, shortly before Putin ordered thousands of troops into Ukraine.
Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward in his 2024 book “War” reported that Trump had direct conversations as many as seven times with Putin after he left the White House in 2021.
Asked if that were true in an interview to Bloomberg last year, Trump said: “If I did, it’s a smart thing.” The Kremlin denied Woodward’s report.
Reuters, The Washington Post and Axios reported separately that Trump and Putin talked in early November. The Kremlin also denied those reports.
On Friday, Trump said he would probably meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy the following week to discuss ending the war. Zelenskiy told Reuters that he wanted Ukraine to supply the United States with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort.
Putin sent thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022, calling it a “special military operation” to protect Russian speakers and counter what he said was a grave threat to Russia from potential Ukrainian membership of NATO.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-says-he-has-spoken-putin-about-ending-war-ukraine-new-york-post-reports-2025-02-09/

President Trump on Sunday said he was losing patience with the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas after seeing footage of the Palestinian militant group release Israeli hostages over the weekend, whose appearance he compared to Holocaust survivors.
Trump’s reaction to seeing images of the three hostages, who appeared gaunt upon their release on Saturday, brought fresh uncertainty over the deal’s fate before all remaining 76 hostages are freed and came days after the president called for the removal of Palestinians from the enclave and for the U.S. to take control of it.

“They look like Holocaust survivors. They were in horrible condition. They were emaciated,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to New Orleans to attend the Super Bowl. “I don’t know how much longer we can take that … at some point we’re going to lose our patience.”
“I know we have a deal … they dribble in and keep dribbling in … but they are in really bad shape,” Trump said of the Israeli hostages.

Ohad Ben Ami and Eli Sharabi, who were taken hostage from Kibbutz Be’eri during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and Or Levy, who was abducted that day from the Nova music festival, were led onto a Hamas podium by gunmen on Saturday ahead of their release to Israeli authorities.
The three men appeared in worse condition than the 18 other hostages previously freed under the truce, which was agreed to on January 15 months into the war. Many Palestinian prisoners freed by Israel have also appeared thin and emaciated.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday the sight of the frail hostages was shocking and would be addressed. In exchange for the three men, Israel freed 183 Palestinian prisoners on Saturday.
Trump also told reporters he remained committed to having the U.S. buy and take ownership of Gaza after Palestinians leave or are removed from the enclave, a surprise announcement he made February 4 during Netanyahu’s recent visit to Washington. He said other countries may take part in rebuilding sections of Gaza.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-says-us-might-lose-patience-with-ceasefire-deal-over-israeli-hostages-2025-02-10/

The elder brother of the Dalai Lama and former chairman of the Tibetan government-in-exile in India, Gyalo Thondup, who led several rounds of talks with China and worked with foreign governments for the Tibetan cause, has died. He was 97.

Thondup died at his home in Kalimpong, a hill town in the Himalayan foothills of eastern West Bengal state, on Saturday evening, media reports said. No other details were immediately released about his death.

Tibetan media outlets credited Thondup for networking with foreign governments and praised his role in facilitating U.S. support for the Tibetan struggle.

The Dalai Lama led a prayer session for Thondup at a monastery in Bylakuppe town in India’s southern state of Karnataka on Sunday where the spiritual leader is currently staying for the winter months.

He prayed for Thondup’s “swift rebirth,” in accordance with Buddhist traditions, and said “his efforts towards the Tibetan struggle were immense and we are grateful for his contribution.”

Thondup, one of six siblings of the Tibetan spiritual leader and the only brother not groomed for a religious life, made India his home in 1952 and helped develop early contacts with the Indian and U.S. governments to seek support for Tibet. In 1957, Thondup helped recruit Tibetan fighters who were sent to U.S. training camps in subsequent years, a report by the U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia said.

According to RFA, Thondup was primarily responsible for liaising with the Indian government, including with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, when the Dalai Lama escaped to India in 1959. He also played a key role in establishing Tibetan leaders’ relations with U.S. officials.

Thondup began discussions between Tibetans and Chinese leaders in 1979, in a departure from his earlier approach, which sought an armed struggle against Chinese control of Tibet. The meeting laid a basis for a series of formal negotiations between the Dalai Lama’s official envoys and the Chinese leadership that continued until they were halted in 2010.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/dalai-lama-tibet-china-gyalo-thondup-obituary-1459f99b6cf1c342919ad195fd27fa33

Hawaii’s regular sunshine, short rain showers and clean air come together to create some of the planet’s best conditions for viewing rainbows. They’re such a frequent sight that a University of Hawaii professor calls the state the “rainbow capital of the world.”

Right now it’s the winter rainy season in the islands, which means the odds of seeing a rainbow are even higher than usual.

Rainbows emerge so often in Hawaii they’ve become popular symbols of island life. Pictures of them adorn buildings, the sides of public buses and appear on standard vehicle license plates. University of Hawaii sports teams are even named after rainbows.

“For me, rainbows really signify hope and new beginnings,” said Liane Usher, the president of the Children’s Discovery Center in Honolulu, which features rainbows on its exterior wall and in its exploration rooms. “I can’t ever help but smile whenever I see a rainbow after the rain.”

Here are some things to know about rainbows in Hawaii.

Where can I find rainbows?

Rainbows form when raindrops refract sunlight into a spectrum of colors. The brighter the sun, the clearer the rainbow.

Look for them when it is both sunny and raining at the same time. They will appear opposite the sun. They will seem larger and higher in the sky in the early morning and late afternoon, when the sun is lower on the horizon.

Steven Businger, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, says the archipelago’s trade winds bring many small showers with enough blue sky between them for the sun to shine through.

Hawaii’s clean air also helps. Other places tend to have more air particles from dust, pollen and cars. Conditions improve further during Hawaii’s rainy season, which lasts from October through April.

“Hawaii has maybe the best rainbows on the planet,” Businger said.

Businger created an app called RainbowChase to help people find rainbows in Hawaii.

Rainbows are so prevalent that there are about 20 names for them in the Hawaiian language, according to a Manoa website, including distinct words for rainbow fragments and those that sit low on the horizon.

What role do rainbows play in Native Hawaiian culture?

Rainbows represent divine or supernatural power in Native Hawaiian tradition.

Sam ‘Ohu Gon III, senior scientist and cultural adviser at The Nature Conservancy in Hawaii, said rainbows are considered a symbol of Kāne, one of the four main gods in Hawaiian tradition. Traditionally, the closer one got to a rainbow, the more likely they were to encounter a supernatural force, or an extremely powerful or chiefly person, he said.

In one centuries-old story, a rainbow appears over the secluded home of a Hawaiian princess for four straight days. Another emerges above the ocean when her suitor arrives, a man so strong his punch pierces an opponent’s chest like a spear.

To Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, a teacher and Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner, a rainbow signals an “aumakua,” which is a deified ancestor or a family or personal god.

“When those of our loved ones go before us, they precede us in life and they leave us in this realm. They are able sometimes to show their presence,” Wong-Kalu said. “The rainbow is one of those ways.”

Rainbows let her know spiritual protection is present and that she is loved and watched over, said Wong-Kalu, who is also known as Kumu Hina.

When did rainbows become symbols of island life?

Rainbow imagery decorates everything from buildings and restaurant facades to athletic uniforms.

The Hawaii men’s athletic teams are called Rainbow Warriors and the women’s teams are Rainbow Wahine, using the Hawaiian word for women. The teams are called ‘Bows’ for short.

The origin of the rainbow mascot dates to New Year’s Day in 1924. Hawaii was locked in a scoreless tie against the visiting Oregon Aggies when a rainbow appeared over the field. Hawaii scored soon after and reporters began calling the team the Rainbows, according to the book “Hawai’i Sports: History, Facts and Statistics.”

The Hawaii football team in 2000 dropped “Rainbow” from its nickname when a coach expressed concern it carried a “stigma” because of its association with the LGBTQ+ community. The school restored the name in 2013.

Will climate change affect rainbows?

One of the biggest sporting events in the world took place in New Orleans as the Philadelphia Eagles clinched this year’s Super Bowl with an emphatic 40-22 victory over defending champions the Kansas City Chiefs.

The event did not just bring out the best the NFL has had to offer this season – but plenty of Hollywood A-listers, musicians and US President Donald Trump were spotted in the stands of the Superdome.

Before the match started, actor Jon Hamm introduced the Chiefs while Bradley Cooper brought the hype for the Eagles.

Below are a selection of images of celebrities at this year’s Super Bowl.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c75zgwpv06no

 

China’s tit-for-tat import taxes on some American goods came into effect on Monday, as the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies escalates and US President Donald Trump threatens to hit more countries with tariffs.

Beijing announced the plan on 4 February, minutes after new US levies of 10% on all Chinese products came into effect.

On Sunday, Trump said he would impose a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminium imports into the US, with a full announcement to come on Monday.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One en route to the Super Bowl, he also said he was planning reciprocal tariffs on other nations – but did not specify which ones would be targeted.

China’s latest tariffs on US goods include a 15% border tax on imports of US coal and liquefied natural gas products. There is also a 10% tariff on American crude oil, agricultural machinery and large-engine cars.

Last week, Chinese authorities launched an anti-monopoly probe into technology giant Google, while PVH, the US owner of designer brands Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, was added to Beijing’s so-called “unreliable entity” list.

China has also imposed export controls on 25 rare metals, some of which are key components for many electrical products and military equipment.

Trump’s announcement over the weekend of plans to impose a 25% tax on the US’s steel and aluminium imports comes days after he reached deals with Canada and Mexico to avoid 25% tariffs that he had threatened on all goods from the countries.

He introduced similar measures during his first term as president, imposing 25% tariffs on steel and 10% on aluminium, but later granted several trading partners duty-free quotas – including Canada, Mexico and Brazil.

The EU import taxes were not resolved until the Biden administration took over the White House.

There was no mention on Sunday of which countries, if any, would be granted similar exemptions if these new tariffs are implemented in the following days.

His intention to implement reciprocal tariffs would fulfil an election campaign pledge to levy tariffs at the same rates that are imposed on US goods.

He also said import taxes for vehicles remained on the table after reports he was considering exemptions to universal tariffs.

Trump has repeatedly complained that European Union (EU) tariffs on imports of American cars are much higher than US levies.

Last week, Trump told the BBC tariffs on EU goods could happen “pretty soon” – but suggested a deal could be “worked out” with the UK.

The day after the latest US tariffs came into effect, Beijing accused Washington of making “unfounded and false allegations” about its role in the trade of the synthetic opioid fentanyl to justify the move.

In a complaint lodged with the World Trade Organization (WTO), China said the US import taxes were “discriminatory and protectionist” and violated trade rules.

But experts have warned China is unlikely to secure a ruling in its favour as the WTO panel that settles disputes remains unable to function.

Trump had been expected to speak to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in recent days but the US president has said he was in no hurry to hold talks.

Some of the many measures brought in by Trump since he took office on 20 January have been subject to change.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg8zg7ll09o

It was a warm February night when an ominous message popped into Hannah Grundy’s inbox in Sydney.

“I will just keep emailing because I think this is worthy of your attention,” the anonymous sender wrote.

Inside was a link, and a warning in bold: “[This] contains disturbing material.”

She hesitated for a moment, fearing it was a scam.

The reality was so much worse. The link contained pages and pages of fake pornography featuring Hannah, alongside detailed rape fantasies and violent threats.

“You’re tied up in them,” she recalls. “You look afraid. You’ve got tears in your eyes. You’re in a cage.”

Written in kitschy word art on some images was Hannah’s full name. Her Instagram handle was posted, as was the suburb she lived in. She would later learn her phone number had also been given out.

That email kicked off a saga Hannah likens to a movie. She was left to become her own detective, uncovering a sickening betrayal by someone close to her, and building a case which changed her life – and Australian legal standards.

It’s a chilly mid-winter afternoon in Segovia, in central Spain, and tourists are gathered at the foot of the city’s Roman aqueduct, gazing up at its famous arches and taking selfies.

Many of the visitors are Spanish, but there are also people from other European countries, Asians and Latin Americans, all drawn by Segovia’s historic charm, gastronomy and dramatic location just beyond the mountains north of Madrid.

“There was a moment during Covid when I thought ‘maybe tourism will never, ever be like it was before’,” says Elena Mirón, a local guide dressed in a fuchsia-coloured beret who is about to lead a group across the city.

“But now things are very good and I feel this year is going to be a good year, like 2023 and 2024. I’m happy, because I can live off this job I love.”

Spain received a record 94 million visitors in 2024 and is now vying with France, which saw 100 million, to be the world’s biggest foreign tourist hub.

And the tourism industry’s post-Covid expansion is a major reason why the eurozone’s fourth-biggest economy has been easily outgrowing the likes of Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, posting an increase in GDP of 3.2% last year.

By contrast, the German economy contracted by 0.2% in 2024, while France grew by 1.1%, Italy by 0.5%, and the UK by an expected 0.9%.

This all helps explain why the Economist magazine has ranked Spain as the world’s best-performing economy.

“The Spanish model is successful because it is a balanced model, and this is what guarantees the sustainability of growth,” says Carlos Cuerpo, the business minister in the Socialist-led coalition government. He points out that Spain was responsible for 40% of eurozone growth last year.

Although he underlined the importance of tourism, Mr Cuerpo also pointed to financial services, technology, and investment as factors which have helped Spain bounce back from the depths of the pandemic, when GDP shrank by 11% in one year.

“We are getting out of Covid without scars and by modernising our economy and therefore lifting our potential GDP growth,” he adds.

That modernisation process is being aided by post-pandemic recovery funds from the EU’s Next Generation programme. Spain is due to receive up to €163bn by 2026 ($169bn; £136bn), making it the biggest recipient of these funds alongside Italy.

Spain is investing the money in the national rail system, low-emissions zones in towns and cities, as well as in the electric vehicle industry and subsidies for small businesses.

“Public spending has been high, and is responsible for approximately half our growth since the pandemic,” says María Jesús Valdemoros, lecturer in economics at Spain’s IESE Business School.

Other major European economies have seen their growth stymied by their greater reliance than Spain on industry, which, she says, “is suffering a lot at the moment due to factors such as the high cost of energy, competition from China and other Asian countries, the cost of the transition to a more sustainable environmental model and trade protectionism”.

Since Covid, the other major economic challenge for Spain has been the cost-of-living crisis triggered by supply-chain bottlenecks and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Inflation peaked at an annual rate of 11% in July of that year, with energy prices hitting Spaniards particularly hard, but by the end of 2024 it had fallen back to 2.8%.

Madrid believes that subsidies it introduced to cut the cost of fuel consumption and encourage public transport use were key in mitigating the impact of the energy price rises, as well as several increases to the minimum wage.

At the height of the European energy crisis, Spain and Portugal also negotiated with Brussels a so-called “Iberian exception”, allowing them to cap the price of gas used to generate electricity in order to reduce consumers’ bills.

Mr Cuerpo argues that such measures have helped counter Spain’s traditional vulnerability to economic turmoil.

“Spain is proving to be more resilient to successive shocks – including the inflation shock that came with the war in Ukraine,” he said. “And I think this is part of the overall protective shield that we have put in place for our consumers and for our firms.”

Spain’s economy outperforms its major European neighbours

The country’s green energy output is seen as another favourable factor, not just in guaranteeing electricity, but also spurring investment. Spain has the second-largest renewable energy infrastructure in the EU.

The latter is a boon for a country that is Europe’s second-biggest car producer, according to Wayne Griffiths, the British-born CEO of Seat and Cupra. Although Spanish electric vehicle production is lagging behind the rest of Europe, he sees enormous potential in that area.

“[In Spain] we have all the factors you need to be successful: competitive, well-trained people and also an energy policy behind that,” he says. “There’s no point in making zero-emission cars if you’re using dirty energy.”

Despite these positives, a longstanding weakness of Spain’s economy has been a chronically high jobless rate, which is the biggest in the EU and almost double the block’s average. However, the situation did improve in the last quarter of 2024, when the Spanish jobless unemployment rate declined to 10.6%, its lowest level since 2008.

Meanwhile the number of people in employment in Spain now stands at 22 million, a record high. A labour reform, encouraging job stability, is seen as a key reason for this.

This reform increased restrictions on the use of temporary contracts by companies, favouring greater flexibility in the use of permanent contracts. It has reduced the number of workers in temporary employment without hindering job creation.

Also, although the arrival of immigrants has driven a fierce political debate, their absorption into the labour market is seen by many as crucial for a country with a rapidly ageing population.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y7jmlyx02o

A nationwide blackout in Sri Lanka has been blamed on a monkey that intruded into a power station south of Colombo.

Power is gradually being restored across the island nation of 22 million people, with medical facilities and water purification plants being given priority.

“A monkey has come in contact with our grid transformer, causing an imbalance in the system,” Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody told reporters.

The blackout started at about 11:00 local time (05:30 GMT) Sunday, forcing many to rely on generators. Officials say it may take a few hours to get power back.

On social media, people criticised the authorities while making fun of the incident.

“A rogue monkey knocked out Sri Lanka’s entire power grid after triggering a total failure at a substation in Colombo,” X user Mario Nawfal wrote.

“One monkey = total chaos. Time to rethink infrastructure?” he added.

Another X user, Sreeni R, posted an illustration of Hanuman, a Hindu god with the face of a monkey.

“Sri Lanka tasted monkey business in the past,” he wrote.

“Only in Sri Lanka can a group of monkeys fighting inside a power station cause an islandwide power outage,” wrote Jamila Husain, editor-in-chief of local newspaper Daily Mirror.

In a report published on Monday, the newspaper said engineers have been warning consecutive governments “for years” to upgrade its power grid or face frequent blackouts.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8d92n28pqjo

Kendrick Lamar showed out during his performance during the Super Bowl Halftime Show, enlisting SZA, Samuel L. Jackson, Serena Williams and Mustard for an ode to Compton on the biggest stage in the world.

The set, with its American flag color palette, largely consisted of tracks from his freshly released album “GNX” as well as a few loosies from his deeper catalog. With Jackson serving as a master of ceremonies (dressed as Uncle Sam, naturally), Lamar led a robust team of backup dancers who slipped in and out of formation as he toured his discography, giving renditions of “DNA,” “Peekaboo,” “Squabble Up” and “Humble.”

The million-dollar question leading into the Super Bowl: Would he, or wouldn’t he, perform “Not Like Us,” the song where he accuses his foe Drake of pedophilia, on the biggest stage in the world? Counterpoint: Why wouldn’t he? “Not Like Us” was the most culturally important song of 2024, with continued dominance into this year after winning five Grammys including song and record of the year.

And thus, he did, and then some. Prior to ripping through “Not Like Us,” the massive hit from last year’s back-and-forth with Drake, he stood in an X on the field and stated, “I want to perform their favorite song, but you know they love to sue,” gesturing towards the legal action that Drake took against Universal Music Group over releasing and promoting “Not Like Us.”

Which led to the victory lap, the moment to solidify the conclusive winner in the ongoing war of words with Drake, turning the Super Bowl field into a block party as scores of dancers — plus Serena Williams — moved to the tune. (The implication, of course, being that Williams was rumored to have dated Drake in the past.) Though he left out the word “pedophile” during the track, Lamar let the crowd ring out as they shouted “A minor,” adding insult to injury. To conclude? Lamar signed off with “TV Off,” grinning into the camera as “Game Over” illuminated the crowd behind him.

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GAME OVER. @kendricklamar #AppleMusicHalftime pic.twitter.com/VpDfnZ6Cjk

— NFL (@NFL) February 10, 2025

Though the beef has largely dominated much of the cultural conversation over the last year, it was only a piece of the larger pie of Lamar’s Halftime Show, a ceaseless, finely executed performance. The focus largely stayed on Lamar — in the past, musicians have turned the Super Bowl stage into a parade of surprise guests — as he set off the show with an unreleased song featured in a teaser posted to YouTube just hours before “GNX” dropped.

Lamar continued by holding steady in the center of dancers to form the American flag during “Humble.” He made his way across the stage, a long rectangular block dotted with lamposts, for “Man at the Garden” and “Peekaboo,” rapping in front of a group of men perched around one of the posts. SZA soon emerged for “Luther” and “All the Stars” before Lamar hit his slide toward the end zone.

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Kendrick Lamar’s Full Super Bowl Halftime Show performance #SuperBowl pic.twitter.com/OxZED0YXDn

— popculture (@notgwendalupe) February 10, 2025

This isn’t Lamar’s first Super Bowl rodeo, as he appeared during the 2022 Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show alongside a coterie of hip-hop and R&B legends. During the 15-minute performance, he graced the stage alongside Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent and Anderson Paak, making for a widescreen spectacle that bridged generations.

Lamar’s performance at the Super Bowl comes on the heels of a year-long hot streak that started after his culture-shifting verse on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That,” which released last March. On the track, he took Drake and J. Cole to task for including him in the “big three” of hip-hop, a designation that he rebuffed and in turn set off a war of words between the trio.

While J. Cole swiftly bowed out of the line of fire, Lamar and Drake went tit-for-tat in the months that followed, releasing increasingly scathing diss tracks that lobbed accusations of infidelity and pedophilia. It all cumulated in May with the release of Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” the Mustard-produced track that swiftly became both a West Coast anthem.

With the sole hit from his tussle with Drake, Lamar became the arguable victor of the spar as “Not Like Us” was an immediate smash, breaking streaming records and earning his first solo record to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Earlier this month, he took a victory lap at the Grammy Awards where he took home both song and record of the year for “Not Like Us,” as well as three other wins in genre categories.

Source : https://variety.com/2025/music/news/kendrick-lamar-super-bowl-halftime-show-drake-1236301990/

 

Taylor Swift‘s Super Bowl appearance to cheer on her boyfriend Travis Kelce was met with some boos when she was shown on the jumbotron. Watch the moment below.

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Taylor Swift laughed off being booed at the Super Bowl 😅 pic.twitter.com/Zdc5fHKc0A

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) February 10, 2025

Swift laughed away the booing, perhaps thinking to herself, “Why you gotta be so mean?” (Get it?!)

Serena Williams also came to her rescue, writing on X, “I love you @taylorswift13 dont listen to those booo!!”

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I love you @taylorswift13 dont listen to those booo!!

— Serena Williams (@serenawilliams) February 9, 2025

Williams was later seen in the game dancing in Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show. The tennis icon was once rumored to be an ex-girlfriend of Drake, which, considering Lamar’s current feud with the rap star, would be seen as another diss.

Despite the boos, Swift has been good for NFL business. Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt recently spoke to CNBC about how she has lifted the league.

“Well, I think indirectly, the NFL has seen an impact,” he said. “Certainly, our fan base took a big leap forward last year — particularly with female, specifically young female fans. I think we had something like a 30% growth in our fan base, which is pretty significant even for a team that won the Super Bowl. So you have to definitely give Taylor a little bit of credit for that… We still get a lot of eyeballs — this year, we’ve had several games and broken records, and I think Taylor is a little bit a part of that.”

Source : https://variety.com/2025/music/news/taylor-swift-booed-super-bowl-1236302140/

Sir Keir Starmer has taken an HIV test in an effort to help destigmatise checking for the sexually transmitted virus.

The prime minister took the home test at 10 Downing Street to mark the start of HIV Testing Week, and did so alongside soul singer Beverley Knight, who is a strong advocate for HIV awareness.

Sir Keir said: “It’s really important to do it and I’m really pleased to be able to do it. It’s very easy, very quick.”

Richard Angell, chief executive of HIV charity The Terrence Higgins Trust, said he believes Sir Keir is the first prime minister of a G7, European or NATO nation to take an HIV test.

After saying he was “surprised”, the PM added: “Let’s try to encourage other leaders to do the same thing because it’s really important, it’s easy, it’s convenient and it is much better to know.”

Mr Angell said: “It’s an important symbol for people who live with HIV, for fighting the stigma, and to let the public know that tests are free, confidential and easy and available for everyone during this week, and it will make a big difference.”

Around 107,000 people live with HIV in the UK, with approximately 4,700 thought to be unaware of their status.

There is no cure for HIV, which damages the cells in your immune system and weakens your ability to fight everyday infections and disease. But there are very effective drug treatments that enable most people with the virus to live a long and healthy life.

As part of HIV Testing Week, which goes on until Sunday, people can order one of 20,000 free and confidential at-home tests, which provide a result in 15 minutes.

Sir Keir has pledged to end new transmissions of HIV in England by 2030, and on World Aids Day last year announced £27m for an expanded testing programme in NHS emergency departments.

Knight became a campaigner for the movement after her friend Tyrone Jamison died of an AIDS-related illness in 2003.

She said: “Living with HIV today is a world away from the experience that my late best friend Tyrone endured in the early 2000s.

“People living with HIV can now easily know their status, can access effective treatment and live a long, healthy life.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/sir-keir-starmer-takes-at-home-hiv-test-13306370

Protesters blocked roads across Serbia on Sunday, marking 100 days since the collapse of a canopy at a train station in the northern city of Novi Sad.

Hundreds of students blocked a major highway and bridge in the capital, Belgrade, for seven hours.

The protest was accompanied by 15 minutes of silence for the victims, with protesters throwing 15 white roses that had been painted red into the Sava river that runs through Belgrade.

Also on Sunday, demonstrators blocked three major roundabouts in Novi Sad and threw roses into the Danube.

The protests are part of a campaign led by striking students who blame the November 1 collapse, in which 15 people were killed, on government corruption. The train station building had been recently renovated under unclear circumstances, with the involvement of Chinese companies and businesses believed to be close to the ruling Progressive Party.

Initially, Serbian officials claimed no work had been done on the canopy, but later admitted this part of the building was also altered during the reconstruction.

Near-daily protests challenge Vucic government

Tens of thousands have joined near-daily protests over the past weeks.

President Aleksandar Vucic has described the protests as an attempted “color revolution” and accused demonstrators of being supported from abroad.

Last week, Prime Minister Milos Vucevic submitted his resignation, saying he did not want to ” further raise tensions in society.” Novi Sad mayor Milan Djuric also resigned.

The resignations came a day after student protesters were attacked by young men coming out of the building that houses the offices of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) in Novi Sad.

On Saturday, Vucic’s car suffered a blown tire in an incident which has been described by officials and pro-government media as an assassination attempt against him.

The president was traveling in a motorcade as he visited various towns and villages in order to rally his own supporters.

German lawmaker calls for ‘stability’ in Serbia

On Saturday, German lawmaker Peter Bajer of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) told DW that he had spoken with Serbian Finance Minister Sinisa Mali about the protests.

Bajer said that Berlin wanted to see “stability” and “democracy” in the southeastern European country. He said German firms were interested in investing in the Western Balkans, adding that instability in Serbia could affect the whole region.

CDU leader Friedrich Merz is currently the favorite to become Germany’s next chancellor in February 23 elections, according to polls.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/serbia-students-mark-100-days-since-deadly-canopy-collapse/a-71554521

Two weeks before national elections in Germany, the struggling Left Party (die Linke) has laid out a new tax plan targeting the superrich. The declared goal is to cut the wealth of billionaires in half within a decade.

“We believe there should not be any billionaires,” the paper from party co-chair Jan van Aken states, before going on to outline a five-point plan designed to make this position a reality.

Germany is due to hold a parliamentary election on February 23.

The Left is currently hovering around the 5% support which is legally required to enter the parliament. Even if they clear this obstacle, the larger parliamentary faction usually avoid working with the post-communist party, so the Left’s chances of actually implementing these policies seem slim.

What are the Left’s new tax plans?

The party proposes reintroducing Germany’s “wealth tax” which was abolished after the Constitutional Court deemed it unconstitutional in 1995.

This tax was not focusing on income, but on people’s accrued wealth.

The party proposes a sliding scale, 1% for fortunes in excess of €1 million ($1.03 million), 5% for those higher than €50 million, and 12% for those higher than €1 billion.

Next, the party calls for a one-off fee for the richest 0.7% of citizens, starting at 10% for those with more than €2 million, and rising as high as 30% for larger sums.

The party also aims for a higher inheritance tax for larger estates, and higher rates of income tax for top earners. This would include a 60% income tax on salaries above €250,000 and 75% for those over €1 million.

Finally, capital gains taxes should no longer be a flat 25% fee, but rather should operate on a sliding scale like income tax depending on the extent of the gains on assets.

Party co-leader van Aken draws parallels to new ‘super-rich’ US government

When launching the new proposal, van Aken alluded to Donald Trump’s new administration in the US.

“The new government is made up of the super-rich and the right, who are doing everything to secure their fortune and their power,” he said.

In Germany, too, van Aken argued, the very wealthy used their fortunes to secure unreasonable political influence.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-left-party-wants-to-halve-billionaires-wealth/a-71550347

Elon Musk demanded the impeachment of a federal judge after a ruling blocked his spending task force, DOGE, from accessing Treasury payment systems.

U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer issued the decision on Saturday, ruling that only designated Treasury officials should access sensitive information to prevent hacking and data breaches, reported The Daily Beast.

The ruling, part of a lawsuit filed by 19 Democrat state attorneys general, prevented Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team from receiving more than “read-only” access previously granted by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

At least one DOGE staffer, Marko Elez, was given access through a tech agreement to write code, reported Wired. Elez later resigned after racist social media posts resurfaced, but Musk vowed to rehire him.

Multiple sources claimed DOGE employees dumped sensitive data into AI and asked the software to slash the Education Department’s budget.

In a post published on X, Musk referred to Engelmayer as a “corrupt judge.”

“A corrupt judge protecting corruption. He needs to be impeached now,” Musk wrote.

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A corrupt judge protecting corruption.

He needs to be impeached NOW! https://t.co/zgnwZuOz2Y

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2025

Source : https://www.latintimes.com/elon-musk-demands-judge-who-blocked-doge-accessing-treasury-payment-systems-impeached-now-575123

Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has answered the question multiple times this week, just as he did in his previous two Super Bowls: When will his playing days come to an end?

And while the star player has spoken glowingly about his situation and how much football he no doubt still has in him, sources say Kelce still hasn’t made up his mind about whether or not he’ll play in 2025.

It is, in fact, possible that Super Bowl LIX on Sunday is the final game of Kelce’s 12-year professional career.

Kelce, who is in the conversation for greatest tight end to ever play in the NFL, is expected to take time after the Super Bowl, consider his future and make a decision before free agency, which officially begins March 12.

Sources informed of his thinking say Kelce’s decision could hinge on the results of Sunday’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles.

During Super Bowl LIX Opening Night on Feb. 3, Kelce was asked where he’ll be in three years and said, “Hopefully still playing football. I love doing this. I love coming into work every day. I feel like I still got a lot of good football left in me.”

In the next breath, the 35-year-old noted, “We’ll see what happens. I know I’ve been setting myself up for other opportunities in my life. That’s always been the goal, knowing that football only lasts for so long.”

He concluded one of his answers this week with, “For the most part, I’m planning on being a Kansas City Chief and playing football.”

Consider the door open.

For most players, the kind of year Kelce had in 2024 would be a career goal. But for the 10-time Pro Bowler, it was a bit of a down campaign. He posted his lowest yardage total (823) and fewest touchdown catches (three) since his rookie season in 2013. Of course, he also had 117 yards and a TD against the Houston Texans in the Divisional Round, so when the lights get bright, he’s still Kelce.

If he did retire, he’d do so with a lot of game left in the tank. But unlike most players, Kelce, who carries a base salary of $4.5 million for 2025 and has an $11.5 million roster bonus due on March 14, would almost certainly make more money off the field after retirement than he would on the field playing.

His wildly popular New Heights podcast with his brother, Jason, has been beyond lucrative. In 2024, Kelce starred in the FX horror series, Grotesquerie. He hosted Saturday Night Live in 2023 and also hosts Are you Smarter Than a Celebrity?, a Prime Video game show.

Source : https://www.nfl.com/news/chiefs-star-te-travis-kelce-undecided-about-returning-for-2025-nfl-season

President Donald Trump said he is serious about wanting Canada to become the 51st state in an interview that aired Sunday during the Super Bowl preshow.

“Yeah it is,” Trump told Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier when asked whether his talk of annexing Canada is “a real thing” — as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently warned.

“I think Canada would be much better off being the 51st state because we lose $200 billion a year with Canada. And I’m not going to let that happen,” he said. “Why are we paying $200 billion a year, essentially a subsidy to Canada?”

The U.S. is not subsidizing Canada. The U.S. buys products from the natural resource-rich nation, including commodities like oil. While the trade gap in goods has ballooned in recent years to $72 billion in 2023, the deficit largely reflects America’s imports of Canadian energy.

Trump has repeatedly suggested that Canada would be better off if it agreed to become the 51st U.S. state — a prospect that is deeply unpopular among Canadians.

Trudeau said Friday during a closed-door session with business and labor leaders that Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st U.S. state was “a real thing” and tied to desire for access to the country’s natural resources.

“Mr. Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing. In my conversations with him on …,” Trudeau said, according to CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster. “They’re very aware of our resources of what we have, and they very much want to be able to benefit from those.”

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday as he traveled to the Super Bowl game in New Orleans, Trump continued to threaten a country that has long been one of the U.S.’s closest allies. He claimed that Canada is “not viable as a country” without U.S. trade, and warned that the founding NATO member can no longer depend on the U.S. for military protection.

“You know, they don’t pay very much for military. And the reason they don’t pay much is they assume that we’re going to protect them,” he said. “That’s not an assumption they can make because — why are we protecting another country?”

In the Fox interview, which was pre-taped this weekend in Florida, Trump also said that he has not seen enough action from Canada and Mexico to stave off the tariffs he has threatened to impose on the country’s two largest trading partners once a 30-day extension is up.

“No, it’s not good enough,” he said. “Something has to happen. It’s not sustainable. And I’m changing it.”

Trump last week agreed to a 30-day pause on his plan to slap Mexico and Canada with a 25% tariff on all imports except for Canadian oil, natural gas and electricity, which would be taxed at 10%, after the countries took steps to appease his concerns about border security and drug trafficking.

Aboard Air Force One, Trump said that he would on Monday announce a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminum imports into the U.S., including from Canada and Mexico, and unveil a plan for reciprocal tariffs later in the week.

“Very simply it’s if they charge us, we charge them,” he said.

Trump’s participation in the Super Bowl interview marked a return to tradition. Presidents have typically granted a sit-down to the network broadcasting the game, the most-watched television event of the year. But both Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, were inconsistent in their participation.

Biden declined to participate last year — turning down a massive audience in an election year — and also skipped an appearance in 2023, when efforts by his team to have Biden speak with a Fox Corp. streaming service instead of the main network failed. During his first term, Trump participated three out of four years.

Trump was the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl in person — something he told Baier he was surprised to learn.

“I thought it would be a good thing for the country to have the president at the game,” he said.

During his flight to New Orleans, Trump signed a proclamation declaring Feb. 9 “the first ever Gulf of America Day” as Air Force One flew over the body of water that he renamed by proclamation from the Gulf of Mexico.

Trump in the interview, also defended the work of billionaire Elon Musk, whose so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has been drawing deep concern from Democrats as he moves to shut down whole government agencies and fire large swaths of the federal workforce in the name of rooting out waste and inefficiency.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/canada-gulf-america-super-bowl-bret-baier-musk-7e1959c7d430899b01629c800db6f17b

Donald Trump filed an amended lawsuit against CBS late Friday, adding a series of new claims over the network’s edits in a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.

Among other things, Trump is now claiming that CBS engaged in unfair competition, alleging that it deceptively edited the interview in a way that cost traffic and viewership to his own media company, Trump Media and Technology Group, which includes his social media platform Truth Social.

“As an owner of a significant interest in a media enterprise in competition with Defendants, President Trump was damaged by Defendants’ false advertising of the Interview and Election Special. As a direct and proximate result of Defendants’ misconduct, significant viewership was improperly diverted to Defendants’ media platforms, resulting in lower consumer engagement, advertising revenues, and profits by TMTG and President Trump’s other media holdings,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in the new complaint, filed in federal court in Amarillo, TX.

His attorneys added, “The damages suffered by President Trump stem in substantial part from consumers’ withholding of trade by reduced engagement with content distributed by Truth Social and President Trump’s other media holdings, and was exacerbated by increased expenses associated with clarifying the true nature of the Interview and its content.”

Trump also upped the amount of claimed damages, with him now doubling the size of his claim to $20 billion, which exceeds the cost of all spending in the 2024 election.

Trump also added another plaintiff to the lawsuit: Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), the former White House physician, a move to try to address CBS’ argument that his filing of the case in Texas was an attempt at forum shopping.

Trump sued CBS in October, after it aired a 60 Minutes election special featuring an interview with Harris. At one point in the interview, correspondent Bill Whitaker asked Harris why Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not listening to the Biden administration.

Harris said, “Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region. And we’re not going to stop doing that. We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

In a Face the Nation promo for the interview, Harris was shown giving the first sentence in her answer. On 60 Minutes, she was shown answering with the last sentence. Trump pounced on the differences, claiming that it was an effort by the network to make Harris look better and tip the electoral scales in her favor.

The network released the unedited transcript this week and said that it showed that the interview was “not doctored or deceitful,” but an edit made because of time constraints. In fact, Fox News edited its interview with Trump from the previous June.

CBS has moved to dismiss the case, which it says is an effort to punish them for their editorial judgments, something that is barred by the First Amendment. It also argued that Trump’s lawsuit was merely “generalized grievance.”

Trump has targeted media outlets with numerous lawsuits, most of which have been dismissed. Many legal experts see his CBS lawsuit as frivolous, but it has landed just as CBS parent Paramount Global is seeking regulatory approval for its acquisition by Skydance. Sources say that Paramount Global and Trump’s team have engaged in settlement talks.

The FCC, which has to greenlight the transaction, also has opened an inquiry into the 60 Minutes edit, even though the current chairman, Brendan Carr, has previously warned against government officials targeting newsroom decision making.

Source : https://deadline.com/2025/02/trump-cbs-60-minutes-lawsuit-1236282589/

On a chilly January evening, Samira Shamoon, a 44-year-old health and beauty publicist, walked into an Italian restaurant to meet friends. They were stunned by the incandescence of her skin. Her cheekbones appeared more defined. After a flurry of questions about which dermatologist or plastic surgeon she had visited, she said, beaming, “I’m microdosing!”

Shamoon has joined the wave of people who are taking limited amounts not of psychedelics — to which the microdosing trend usually applies — but of the diabetes drug Ozempic (semaglutide), and other GLP-1 receptor agonists like Mounjaro. They are doing it not primarily for weight loss — the effect that has made Ozempic a Hollywood staple and a reliable awards-show punchline — but for the surprising and widely touted side benefits, particularly its anti-inflammatory properties. Rather than injecting the regular introductory weekly dose, people are only taking half that amount or less. As a runner, Shamoon was always fairly svelte, and though she didn’t mind the side effect of dropping 4 pounds, it was losing the puffiness in her face that drew her to the prescription drug. She also found intriguing the promise of increased mental clarity and a decreased risk of heart disease, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s.

“I no longer wake up feeling like a puffer fish,” she says. And, she believes, the drug is increasing her mental clarity: “I just feel sharper.”

Dr. Caroline Messer, a top Manhattan endocrinologist, reported that many of the people asking her about microdosing have come in because they are genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s. “The key is not decreased blood sugar,” she says, “but decreased inflammation. In patients without diabetes, it doesn’t lower blood sugar but still has an anti-inflammatory effect.” And, it makes sense, she notes, because “Alzheimer’s is sometimes referred to as Type 3 diabetes. The brain in someone with Alzheimer’s exhibits insulin resistance, similar to what is seen in Type 2 diabetes.”

Microdosing can have a lasting effect in achieving a mental edge, says Dr. Anetta Reszko, a Park Avenue dermatologist. “Unlike traditional dosing, which primarily targets appetite suppression and glucose regulation, microdosing semaglutide may provide a more gradual, sustained effect on the brain, immune system and overall cellular health,” she notes. “By modulating these pathways, it may help reduce neuroinflammation, a key factor in cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases.”

Dr. Amanda Kahn, an internist and longevity specialist, says her patients who are microdosing are reporting “more clarity and energy” as well as fewer aches and pains. “I have patients with rheumatoid arthritis that were never pain-free until trying this,” the doctor notes.

Dr. Babak Azizzadeh, a top Beverly Hills facial plastic surgeon and co-founder of a medtech aesthetic concierge service, Persana, says L.A. in particular is seeing a surge in the trend. “Microdosing of GLP-1 receptor agonists is a huge thing in the SoCal community,” he notes. “It reminds me of Botox, which expanded from medical to cosmetic use, then began being used for headaches and depression. Initially people were using this for diabetes, then weight loss, and now are seeing other health benefits.”

The patients of Los Angeles internist and obesity specialist Pooja Gidwani are microdosing GLP-1s as part of a longevity approach. “It’s becoming more and more mainstream in the Hollywood community, and many want to do this in combination with peptides,” says Gidwani, who offers GLP-1s along with IVs of the co-enzyme NAD.

Addiction and obsessive behavior are other targets of microdosers, as the drugs seem to tame cravings for more than just food. Anyone on a GLP-1 inhibitor can tell you downing even one glass of wine can be a challenge, but Kahn says her patients have stopped everything from smoking to compulsive shopping. “It influences the brain’s desire and decreases cravings for substances,” she explains. “It helps dampen unhealthy impulses.”

Apart from enjoying a leaner body and less dependency, users of the decreased level seem more content. “Patients who microdose also report benefits in mood and emotional stability,” reports Reszko. “GLP-1 receptor activation has been linked to reduced anxiety and depression.”

Even for those who merely want to lose a few pounds, microdosing has its advantages, because the regular FDA starting measure can produce unpleasant side effects like burping, nausea and indigestion, along with muscle atrophy and the dreaded saggy or drawn “Ozempic face” that comes from rapid weight loss.

Source : https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/microdosing-ozempic-weight-loss-health-gains-1236126989/

Little Neon Pictures suddenly has the lead in the Oscar race.

Sean Baker’s indie creation, “Anora,” on Saturday night picked up prizes from the Directors Guild and the Producers Guild.

On Friday night, “Anora” won Best Drama at the Critics Choice Awards.

As Oscar ballots go out Tuesday, “Anora” is suddenly in the lead for Best Picture. Baker is in the front of the line for Best Director. Star Mikey Madison — who had the lead in the Best Actress race early in the season – is back in position to surprise everyone.

“Anora” is a wild romp through the wilds of Brooklyn’s strip clubs and the world of Russian oligarchs. It’s a wholly rounded and satisfying film that may overtake “A Complete Unknown,” “Conclave,” “Wicked,” “Emilia Perez,” and the other nominated Best Films.

Usually we would also know the winners of the Screen Actors Guild awards before Oscar voting begins. But this year SAG doesnt come until February 23rd, after Oscar ballots are returned. We may learn something from the SAG winners, but they won’t influence the vote. These three — CCA, DGA, and PGA — are now the bellwethers of this season.

Source : https://www.showbiz411.com/2025/02/09/fave-indie-film-anora-leaps-to-front-of-oscar-race-with-cca-dga-pga-wins

 

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he will introduce new 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the U.S., on top of existing metals duties, in another major escalation of his trade policy overhaul.
Trump, speaking to reporters on Air Force One on his way to the NFL Super Bowl in New Orleans, said he will announce the new metals tariffs on Monday.
He also said he will announce reciprocal tariffs on Tuesday or Wednesday, to take effect almost immediately, applying them to all countries and matching the tariff rates levied by each country.

“And very simply, it’s, if they charge us, we charge them,” Trump said of the reciprocal tariff plan.
The largest sources of U.S. steel imports are Canada, Brazil and Mexico, followed by South Korea and Vietnam, according to government and American Iron and Steel Institute data.
By a large margin, hydropower-rich Canada is the largest supplier of primary aluminum metal to the U.S., accounting for 79% of total imports in the first 11 months of 2024.

“Canadian steel and aluminum support key industries in the U.S. from defence, shipbuilding and auto,” Canadian Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne posted on X.
“We will continue to stand up for Canada, our workers, and our industries.”
Trump also said that while the U.S. government would allow Japan’s Nippon Steel (5401.T), to invest in U.S. Steel (X.N), it would not allow this to become a majority stake.

“Tariffs are going to make it very successful again, and I think it has good management,” Trump said of U.S. Steel.
Nippon Steel declined to comment on the latest announcements from Trump.

QUOTA QUESTIONS

Trump during his first term imposed tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum, but later granted several trading partners duty-free exemptions, including Canada, Mexico and Brazil. Mexico is a major supplier of aluminum scrap and aluminum alloy.

Former President Joe Biden later negotiated duty-free quota arrangements with Britain, the European Union and Japan. It was not immediately clear from Trump’s announcement what will happen to those exemptions and quota arrangements.
“Quebec exports 2.9 million tons of aluminum to (the U.S.), that is, 60% of their needs. Do they prefer to get supplies from China?” Francois Legault, premier of Quebec, said on X.
“All this shows that we must begin to renegotiate our free trade agreement with the United States as soon as possible and not wait for the review planned for 2026. We must put an end to this uncertainty.”
Steel mill capacity usage jumped to levels above 80% in 2019 after Trump’s initial tariffs, but has fallen since then as China’s global dominance of the sector has pushed down steel prices. A Missouri aluminum smelter revived by the tariffs was idled last year by Magnitude 7 Metals.

MATCHING RATES

Trump said he would hold a news conference on Tuesday or Wednesday to provide detailed information on the reciprocal tariff plan, adding that he first revealed on Friday that he was planning reciprocal tariffs to ensure “that we’re treated evenly with other countries.”
The new U.S. president has long complained about the EU’s 10% tariffs on auto imports being much higher than the U.S. car rate of 2.5%. He frequently states that Europe “won’t take our cars” but ships millions west across the Atlantic every year.
he U.S., however, enjoys a 25% tariff on pickup trucks, a vital source of profits for Detroit automakers General Motors (GM.N), Ford (F.N) and Stellantis’ (STLAM.MI) U.S. operations.

The U.S. trade-weighted average tariff rate is about 2.2%, according to World Trade Organization data, compared to 12% for India, 6.7% for Brazil, 5.1% for Vietnam and 2.7% for European Union countries.

BORDER STEPS

In a separate Fox News interview, Trump said Canada’s and Mexico’s actions to secure their U.S. borders and halt the flow of drugs and migrants are insufficient ahead of a March 1 tariff deadline.
Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of 25% on all Mexican and Canadian imports unless America’s two largest trading partners take stronger actions. He paused the tariffs until March 1 after some initial border security concessions from the two countries, with Mexico pledging to add 10,000 National Guard troops to its border and Canada deploying new technology and personnel and taking new anti-fentanyl steps.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/trump-says-he-will-announce-25-steel-aluminum-tariffs-monday-2025-02-09/

The use of AI in best picture contender “The Brutalist” recently grabbed headlines and ignited controversy, but it isn’t the only Oscar contender to use the advancing technology. High-profile films such as “A Complete Unknown,” “Dune: Part 2” and “Emilia Pérez” have also used AI in large or small ways, and the growing popularity has led the Motion Picture Academy to actively explore changing its Oscar submission requirements so that films would have to disclose their use of AI, Variety has learned.

The Academy currently offers an optional disclosure form for AI use, but Governors and Branch executive committees are now investigating how AI is used in each branch with an eye toward making disclosure mandatory in the 2026 Oscars rules, which are expected to be published in April. The Academy’s SciTech Council is working on recommended language, Variety has also learned.

Development of visual effects tools and processes that take advantage of AI (including AI subset machine learning, or ML) isn’t a new concept. But for a look at the state of the art, this year, the Visual Effects Society Awards’ emerging technology category is packed with such nominees including Australia-based Rising Sun Pictures’ Revize machine learning toolset, which according to the company’s website, has been used for “a variety of digital ML augmentation, most notably face replacement, facial performance modification, deaging, body replacements and other likeness adaptations.”

The VES entry details its application in “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and says that it was also used on “A Complete Unknown,” “Deadpool & Wolverine,” “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” and series “Apples Never Fall.”

Jennie Zeiher, president of Rising Sun, acknowledged that “A Complete Unknown,” the best picture nominated Bob Dylan biopic, and “Deadpool & Wolverine” did utilize Revize but declined to offer additional details.

A spokesperson for Searchlight Pictures, which released “A Complete Unknown,” said, “The technology was used to assist in 3 brief wide shots on a motorcycle, not involving performance or creative enhancements. This technology is commonplace for making stunt people resemble their actor in films. The VFX facility implemented this specific methodology as a tool for the artists to use for only these 3 shots – these type of VFX stunt face replacement shots have been used for decades.”

For “Furiosa,” Rising Sun used the process on an estimated 150 shots to steadily transition the character Furiosa from child (actor Alyla Browne) to adult, played by Anya Taylor Joy. “We built controls that the artists could use … to essentially dial in the exact specific look and very quickly iterate,” Rising Sun’s machine learning 2D supervisor Robert Beveridge explains, adding, “It was a real fine balance of not introducing too many of [Taylor Joy’s] sharp adult features when we had this younger actress playing her.”

The toolset’s first use, says Zeiher, was on Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis,” to place Austin Butler into old Elvis footage in select shots. Zeiher notes that overall, the tools aim “to make [the VFX team] more efficient, to put the money on the screen.”

AI startup Metaphysic’s toolset is also nominated in the VES emerging tech category. It was used to age and de-age Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in Robert Zemeckis’ “Here,” and to bring the likeness of late actor Richard Carter, who played the Bullet Farmer in 2015’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” to actor Lee Perry, who played the role in “Furiosa.” Both movies were shortlisted in the VFX race.

Metaphysic tech was additionally used by VFX nominated “Alien: Romulus” to help create the likeness of the late Ian Holmes, who appeared in 1979’s “Alien.”

AI tools can also be found in widely used content creation software such as CopyCat, a feature in compositing system Nuke, which was used on “Dune: Part Two.” In that case, a machine learning model was used to identify and replicate the blue tone in the eyes of actors playing the Fremens, and in doing so saved “hundreds of hours” of work, according to the VES entry.

When “The Brutalist” was identified for having used AI in post, director Brady Corbet issued a statement, a part of which explained that AI audio technology Respeecher “was used in Hungarian language dialogue editing only, specifically to refine certain vowels and letters for accuracy. No English language was changed.” He added of the film’s Oscar nominated Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, “Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own.”

Respeecher is also identified in the “Emilia Pérez” end credits. Another tool involving AI, AudioShake, contributing to isolating opera singer Maria Callas’ vocals in 1960s recordings, which were used in the mix for Callas biopic “Maria.”

Source : https://variety.com/2025/artisans/news/oscars-consider-requiring-films-disclose-ai-use-brutalist-1236299063/

A federal judge early Saturday blocked Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records that contain sensitive personal data such as Social Security and bank account numbers for millions of Americans.

U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued the preliminary injunction after 19 Democratic attorneys general sued President Donald Trump. The case, filed in federal court in New York City, alleges the Trump administration allowed Musk’s team access to the Treasury Department’s central payment system in violation of federal law.

The payment system handles tax refunds, Social Security benefits, veterans’ benefits and much more, sending out trillions of dollars every year while containing an expansive network of Americans’ personal and financial data.

Engelmayer, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, also said anyone prohibited from having access to the sensitive information since Jan. 20 must immediately destroy all copies of material downloaded from Treasury Department systems.

He set a hearing for Feb. 14.

The White House previously did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit being filed.

Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, was created to discover and eliminate what the Trump administration has deemed to be wasteful government spending. DOGE’s access to Treasury records, as well as its inspection of various government agencies, has ignited widespread concern among critics over the increasing power of Musk, while supporters have cheered at the idea of reining in bloated government finances.

Musk has made fun of criticism of DOGE on his X social media platform while saying it is saving taxpayers millions of dollars.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office filed the lawsuit, said DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department’s data raises security problems and the possibility for an illegal freeze in federal funds.

“This unelected group, led by the world’s richest man, is not authorized to have this information, and they explicitly sought this unauthorized access to illegally block payments that millions of Americans rely on, payments for health care, child care and other essential programs,” James said in a video message released by her office Friday.

James, a Democrat who has been one of Trump’s chief antagonists, said the president does not have the power to give away American’s private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress.

Also on the lawsuit are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

The suit alleges that DOGE’s access to the Treasury records could interfere with funding already appropriated by Congress, which would exceed the Treasury Department’s statutory authority. The case also argues that the DOGE access violates federal administrative law and the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine.

It also accuses Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent of changing the department’s longstanding policy for protecting sensitive personally identifiable information and financial information to allow Musk’s DOGE team access to its payment systems.

“This decision failed to account for legal obligations to protect such data and ignored the privacy expectations of federal fund recipients,” including states, veterans, retirees, and taxpayers, the lawsuit says.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said it’s not clear what DOGE is doing with the information in the Treasury systems.

“This is the largest data breach in American history,” Tong said in a statement Friday. “DOGE is an unlawfully constituted band of renegade tech bros combing through confidential records, sensitive data and critical payment systems. What could go wrong?”

The Treasury Department has said the review is about assessing the integrity of the system and that no changes are being made. According to two people familiar with the process, Musk’s team began its inquiry looking for ways to suspend payments made by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Trump and Musk are attempting to dismantle. The two people spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-doge-lawsuit-attorneys-general-5733f8985e4cf7ad5b233fddefef4d01

 

China on Friday lashed out at what it called U.S. “coercion” after Panama declined to renew a key infrastructure agreement with Beijing following Washington’s threat to take back the Panama Canal.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said at a briefing that China “firmly opposes the U.S. smearing and undermining the Belt and Road cooperation through means of pressure and coercion.”

Assistant Foreign Minister Zhao Zhiyuan also met Panama’s ambassador to China and lodged solemn representations on Friday, the Foreign Ministry said Saturday.

The Belt and Road Initiative is President Xi Jinping’s signature foreign police drive to bind China closer to countries in the region and beyond by building roads, railways, airports, power plants and other infrastructure. The program has completed some major projects but also raised concerns about debt and environmental impact.

Panama’s decision to walk away from it was seen as a concession to the U.S. over the canal after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Panamanian leader José Raúl Mulino on Sunday that Panama must immediately reduce what President Donald Trump says is Chinese influence over the canal area or face potential retaliation from the United States.

Mulino has rejected pressure from the new U.S. government to discuss ownership of a waterway that is vital to global trade.

Despite that, some believe Panama may be open to a compromise under which canal operations on both sides are taken away from the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Ports company, which was given a 25-year no-bid extension to run them. An audit into the suitability of that extension is already underway and could lead to a rebidding process.

A drop in water levels in the canal due to drought has slowed transit through the canal, raising further complaints from Trump, although the delays appear to have nothing to do with China.

Lin said the Belt and Road Initiative has brought “active participation” from over 150 countries and that it has brought “fruitful results” to Panama and China, but gave no examples.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/china-us-panama-canal-belt-road-9452852d8e074902d3f2a75fa73f5060

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was captured on a hot-mic telling a gathering of business leaders that President Donald Trump’s comments about taking over Canada is a “real thing.”

Trudeau, who said he will step down after March’s elections, said Trump, who has suggested making Canada the “51st state” because he wants the country’s minerals, must be taken seriously.

“Mr Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing,” Trudeau said, the BBC reported.

Trudeau was speaking behind closed doors at a Canada-U.S. Economic Summit in Toronto but his comments were captured by a microphone, the report said.

Trump this week paused 25% tariffs on millions of dollars of Canadian and Mexican goods after the leaders of those two countries promised to increase border security.

Before slapping the tariffs on America’s top two trading partners, he needled Canada about becoming the 51st state, listing the advantages of doing so.

“We pay hundreds of Billions of Dollars to SUBSIDIZE Canada. Why? There is no reason. We don’t need anything they have,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We have unlimited Energy, should make our own Cars, and have more Lumber than we can ever use.”

Source : https://www.latintimes.com/justin-trudeau-caught-hot-mic-warning-trump-plan-annex-canada-real-thing-575073

President Donald Trump said he has no plans to deport Prince Harry while taking a shot at the British royal’s wife, Meghan Markle.

“I don’t want to do that,” Trump told the New York Post. “I’ll leave him alone. He’s got enough problems with his wife. She’s terrible.”

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex live in Montecito, Calif., with their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, after stepping back from their official royal duties in 2020.

The question about deporting Harry came about because the right-wing Heritage Foundation is in a legal battle with the Department of Homeland Security over his status.

Source : https://www.latintimes.com/trump-wont-deport-prince-harry-enough-problems-wife-575081

 

The parents of a young California tech whistleblower whose 2024 death was ruled a suicide are now suing the City and County of San Francisco, alleging they violated public records laws by refusing to fulfill their requests for information about their son’s death.

Suchir Balaji, 26, was an employee at OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT, at the time of his Nov. 26, 2024, death. A San Francisco County medical examiner concluded the next day he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside his apartment.

“In the two-plus months since their son’s passing, Petitioners and their counsel have been stymied at every turn as they have sought more information about the cause of and circumstances surrounding Suchir’s tragic death. This petition, they hope, is the beginning of the end of that obstruction,” the lawsuit states.

San Francisco City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Jen Kwart told Fox News Digital that once their office is served, they will review the complaint and respond accordingly.

“Mr. Balaji’s death is a tragedy, and our hearts go out to his family,” Kwart said.

“It’s really been a nightmare for the last three months for them,” one of the family’s attorneys, Kevin Rooney, told Fox News Digital.

Just days before he died, Balaji was “upbeat and happy” during a trip to Catalina Island with his friends for his 26th birthday, the complaint filed Jan. 31 says.

The lawsuit describes Balaji as a “child prodigy with a particular interest in and talent for coding.” He attended the University of California at Berkeley, and, upon graduating, was hired as an AI researcher at OpenAI.

“In that position, he was integral in OpenAI’s efforts to gather and organize data from the internet used to train GPT-4, a language model used by the company’s now-ubiquitous online chatbot, ChatGPT,” the complaint says.

By August 2024, however, Balaji “had become disillusioned with OpenAI’s business practices and decided to leave to pursue his own projects.” In October, he was featured in a New York Times article titled “Former Open AI Researcher Says the Company Broke Copyright Law,” with his photo.

Balaji alleged that “OpenAI violates United States copyright law because ChatGPT trains on copyrighted products of business competitors and then can imitate and substitute those products, running the risk of reducing the commercial viability of OpenAI’s competitors to zero,” according to the lawsuit.

In a Jan. 16 statement, OpenAI described Balaji as a “valued member” of the company’s team, and its employees are “still heartbroken by his passing.”

See more

pic.twitter.com/LBThrROv3W

— OpenAI Newsroom (@OpenAINewsroom) January 16, 2025

Balaji’s parents, Poornima Ramarao and Bajami Ramamurthy, allege their requests for more information about their son’s death were denied unfairly under the California Public Records Act. They further alleged in the lawsuit that investigators did not take their concerns about Balaji’s whistleblower status seriously.

Rooney said there are good reasons for investigators not to disclose certain information about a criminal case to the public.

“But you should at least communicate with them and let them know generally what’s being done to investigate the case,” Rooney said. “And if that hasn’t been done here because they’ve made a conclusion that Suchir died by suicide and that the investigation is closed, well … then we do have a right under the law [to view police records].

“When Ms. Ramarao informed the representative that her son had been a whistleblower against OpenAI and had been featured in the New York Times regarding his whistleblower allegations, the representative declined to follow up or seek any additional information,” the lawsuit alleged.

“Instead, the [medical examiner’s office] representative handed Ms. Ramarao Suchir’s apartment keys and told her she could retrieve her son’s body the following day. The representative also told Ms. Ramarao that she should not be allowed to see Suchir’s body and that his face had been destroyed when a bullet went through his eye.”

Source : https://www.foxnews.com/us/big-tech-whistleblowers-parents-sue-sound-alarm-over-sons-unexpected-death

 

A traffic accident involving a bus in southern Mexico, which took place in the early hours of Saturday morning, killed 41 people, the government of Tabasco state said in a statement, adding that recovery work was still ongoing.
The bus, which was carrying 48 people, collided with a truck, resulting in the deaths of 38 passengers and two of the drivers, the local authorities said, adding that the driver of the truck also died.

Reuters images show the bus completely burned out after it was engulfed by flames following the collision, with just the skeletal remains of the metal frame left standing.
“So far, only 18 skulls have been confirmed, but much more is missing,” sources for the security of Tabasco said on condition of anonymity, adding that recovery work continued.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/more-than-three-dozen-killed-bus-accident-southern-mexico-local-media-says-2025-02-08/

Sri Lanka police said Saturday that they have opened an investigation into the deaths of two female tourists.

A 24-year-old British national, along with a 26-year-old German, were feeling sick at their hostel in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, and then taken to the hospital.

The family of the British woman, Ebony McIntosh, said she had experienced symptoms of vomiting, nausea and difficulty breathing.

McIntosh passed away in the Sri Lankan hospital where she was being treated on February 1. It was the same day she entered the facility for treatment.

The German woman passed away later. She was staying at the hotel with a German man, who is still hospitalized.

What could the cause of their deaths be?

Sri Lankan authorities are seeking to determine whether the deaths of the tourists can be linked to their rooms being cleansed for insects on January 30. The police say toxic pesticides may have been used in the rooms to control bed bugs and other pests.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/sri-lanka-investigates-deaths-of-british-and-german-tourists/a-71546541

Hamas has freed three Israeli hostages in Gaza, while Israel released 183 Palestinian prisoners in the latest exchange as part of an internationally brokered ceasefire deal.

The three hostages – Eli Sharabi, Ohad Ben Ami and Or Levy – were handed over to the Red Cross on Saturday morning before reuniting with their families in Israel.

Concerns have been raised about their wellbeing, with Mr Sharabi’s family – who live in the UK – describing their shock at his “gaunt” appearance.

Returning Palestinian prisoners were greeted with scenes of celebration at Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Representatives claimed they all needed “medical care”, without giving specifics.

So far, 21 hostages and 566 prisoners have been freed since the ceasefire began on 19 January.

By the end of the first stage of the ceasefire in three weeks time, 33 hostages and 1,900 prisoners are expected to have been freed. Israel says eight of the 33 are dead.

As Mr Sharabi, Mr Ben Ami and Mr Levy were handed over to the Red Cross in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, crowds lined up, cordoned off by a row of armed fighters, to watch and film on mobile phones, as Hamas and Palestinian flags flew.

A Hamas official and Red Cross representative signed paperwork on a stage to complete the handover. The hostages were then paraded on stage, flanked by men with guns. The three men posed holding certificates and answered questions into a microphone, before waving as they were ushered into Red Cross vehicles.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog expressed horror at the physical state of the men who he said were “returning after 491 days of hell, starved, emaciated and pained”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also criticised the men’s state, saying “we have seen again what the monsters of Hamas are”.

He also accused Hamas of “repeated violations” of the ceasefire deal, without providing specifics.

Speaking to BBC Arabic on Saturday, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the latest release of Israeli hostages had been carried out in a “civilised manner”.

He also accused Israel of “dragging its feet” on implementing humanitarian relief agreed as part of the ceasefire.

Netanyahu’s co-ordinator of prisoners and missing persons said Israel treated the issues with “great severity” and would raise them with ceasefire mediators and take action.

Mr Sharabi’s brother-in-law, Steve Brisley, told the BBC that having confirmation he is alive is “what we’ve been working toward for the last 16 months”.

It was “incredibly difficult” to see him “thin, gaunt” and being paraded by Hamas, Mr Brisley said. “It’s the light that’s gone from his eyes that’s really struck home for me.”

Eli Sharabi, 52, was taken from Kibbutz Beeri with his brother, Yossi, whose death has since been confirmed. Eli’s British-born wife, Lianne, and two daughters, Noiya and Yahel, were murdered in the attack.

During his release, Mr Sharabi was filmed saying he was “very happy today to return to…my wife and daughters”, adding to concerns he was unaware his family had been killed.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement that “the disturbing images” of the release “serve as yet another stark and painful evidence that leaves no room for doubt – there is no time to waste for the hostages! We must get them all out, down to the very last hostage”.

Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which facilitated the handover, said it was “increasingly concerned about the conditions surrounding release operations”.

“We strongly urge all parties, including the mediators, to take responsibility to ensure that future releases are dignified and private,” it said.

Later on Saturday, Israel released 183 Palestinian prisoners. More than 70 are serving life or long sentences, and 111 are Gazans detained during the war. Seven are due to be deported.

Seven of the released prisoners were admitted to hospital in Ramallah because of poor health, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club told AFP.

“All the prisoners who were released today are in need of medical care, treatment, and examinations as a result of the brutality they were subjected to during the past months,” the group’s Abdullah al-Zaghari said.

One of those released was Jamal al-Tawil, 61, a prominent Hamas politician in the occupied West Bank and former mayor of the village of al-Bireh, who has spent more than 19 years in and out of Israeli prisons.

His daughter Bushra al-Tawil was freed in an earlier prisoner release in January.

Both father and daughter were most recently held without charge, media reported.

Khadra al-Daghma, the mother of another released Palestinian prisoner, described feeling “so happy, overjoyed” having seen her son for the first time in 15 years.

“My heart is filled with happiness,” she told a reporter in Gaza, adding that her son, Ammar Fadel al-Daghma, had “changed a lot” and was “not the same”.

According to the Israeli Prison Service, he was detained for offences including arson, attempted murder and service to an illegal organisation.

Hamas seized 251 hostages and killed about 1,200 people when it attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, triggering the war.

At least 47,500 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry. About two-thirds of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed by Israel’s attacks, the UN says.

Ohad Ben Ami, 56, was also taken from Kibbutz Beeri, along with his wife, Raz. She was later released by Hamas.

Mr Ben Ami, an accountant, is “known for his good judgment and sense of humour”, according to the Hostages Families Forum.

Or Levy, 34, a computer programmer from Rishon LeZion, a city south of Tel Aviv, fled the Nova festival with his wife Eynav, when gunmen attacked the event.

Mr Levy was taken hostage and Eynav’s body was found in a bomb shelter where the couple had been hiding.

In a statement, Mr Levy’s family said: “Our hearts tremble and our minds struggle to comprehend the sight of Or, who has returned to us in such a devastating state. His face bears witness to the hell he endured during 491 days in the hands of Hamas monsters.

“After an unbearable period of darkness, we can finally embrace him again and begin healing his body and spirit,” the statement said.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g9vyz747eo

The four British families suing TikTok for the alleged wrongful deaths of their children have accused the tech giant of having “no compassion”.

In an exclusive group interview for BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the parents said they were taking the company to court to try to find out the truth about what happened to their children and seek accountability.

The parents believe their children died after taking part in a viral trend that circulated on the video-sharing platform in 2022.

TikTok says it prohibits dangerous content and challenges. It has blocked searches for videos and hashtags related to the particular challenge the children’s parents say is linked to their deaths.

The lawsuit, filed in the US on Thursday, claims that Isaac Kenevan, 13, Archie Battersbee, 12, Julian “Jools” Sweeney, 14, and Maia Walsh, 13, died while attempting the so-called “blackout challenge”.

The complaint was filed in the Superior Court of the State of Delaware by the US-based Social Media Victims Law Center on behalf of Archie’s mother Hollie Dance, Isaac’s mum Lisa Kenevan, Jools’ mother Ellen Roome and Maia’s dad Liam Walsh.

In the interview, Ms Kenevan accused TikTok of breaching “their own rules”. In the lawsuit, the families claim that the platform breached the rules in a number of ways, including around not showing or promoting dangerous content that could cause significant physical harm.

Ms Dance said that the bereaved families were brushed off with “the same corporate statement” showing “no compassion at all – there’s no meaning behind that statement for them”.

Ms Roome has been campaigning for legislation that would allow parents to access the social media accounts of their children if they die. She has been trying to obtain data from TikTok that she thinks could provide clarity around his death.

Ms Kenevan said they were going to court to pursue “accountability – they need to look not just at us, but parents around the world, not just in England, it’s the US and everywhere”.

“We want TikTok to be forthcoming, to help us – why hold back on giving us the data?” Ms Kenevan continued. “How can they sleep at night?”

Acrobatic catches and thumping hits are why American football fans watch the Super Bowl but for others the non-sporting spectacle is much more interesting.

We’ve selected a few things to look out for during the contest between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs, which kicks off at 23:30 GMT (18:30 EST) on Sunday, 9 February at the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Kendrick Lamar will be the star turn during the half-time show and the unlikely ties binding David Beckham and Matt Damon will be revealed – oh, and Taylor Swift might be showing off a new ring too.

At least 30 people have been reported missing after a landslide in south-western China, according to Chinese state media.

The landslide struck Jinping village in Sichuan province at 11:50 local time (03:50 GMT) burying 10 houses and trapping several residents. Two people were rescued.

A command centre has been set up at the scene according to a statement by the county’s emergency management bureau.

China’s President Xi Jinping has ordered an “all-out” rescue of those trapped.

Images from state media show a huge collapse of mud and rock from a steep mountainside, cutting through what appears to be a small village.

Hundreds of emergency workers are searching for survivors, according to a statement from China’s Ministry of Emergency Management. Around 200 people have been evacuated.

President Xi has ordered authorities to do “everything possible to search and rescue missing people, minimise casualties and properly handle the aftermath”, according to the official Xinhua state news agency.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang additionally asked for an investigation into potential geological hazard risks in nearby areas.

According to local media reports, villagers have said large rocks had been frequently seen rolling down the mountain over the last six months.

Li also said residents who were under threat should be evacuated to prevent another disaster, the AP news agency reports, citing Xinhua.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czep9d9p8kzo

The parents of two of the girls murdered at a dance class in Southport have spoken of the moment they were told “something awful has happened” to their children.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, the parents of Bebe King and Elsie Dot Stancombe paid tribute to their daughters, while recalling what happened on 29 July 2024.

Describing the moment she dropped her daughter off at the two-hour workshop at Hart Space studio, Jenni Stancombe said she watched Elsie run inside, excited to show her friend her newly pierced ears.

“I watched her sit down and waved her off and I left her,” she said.

Just before midday, Ms Stancombe got a call from another mother, telling her: “Something awful has happened. Somebody’s stabbed the kids.

“I said, ‘What do you mean?'” Ms Stancombe said. “She went, ‘It’s really bad. You need to get here’.

“I just ran. I left the whole house open and got in the car.”

Bebe King’s parents – who cannot be named for legal reasons – had been busily preparing for a wedding the following day.

Her mother remembers being in Marks & Spencer when she received a phone call from her husband, who had arrived early to collect Bebe.

“I was about to put my card in the machine, and he called. ‘I can’t believe I’m telling you this but somebody has gone into the dance class with a knife’,” she said.

She ran outside and jumped into a taxi. The driver dropped her off at the end of the street – “and I just ran”.

Parents’ tributes to children

Bebe’s parents came up with her name after a trip to Hollywood, where they saw the blues guitarist BB King’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Bebe King’s mother said of her daughter: “She would come out with the most random stuff. She would do it and look at you and laugh as if to say, ‘I’m dead funny, aren’t I?’ She would give you this hug and say, ‘I love you, momma’.

“She was the best. She was just … Me and her had our own little language. Sometimes we would just look at each other and know what each other was thinking.”

She said Bebe “had this innate kindness. She had a spark”.

Ms Stancombe said it was an honour to be Elsie’s mother. “Everything she did was pure enthusiasm. It could be the most boring thing – even, like, David taking the bins out – and it was like, ‘I’ll come!’ She was grateful for life.”

She described her daughter as “highly intelligent” but said she struggled with reading and writing. Leanne Lucas, who ran the dance workshop, had been Elsie’s private tutor for 18 months.

She had originally missed out on a spot at the dance workshop, which had quickly sold out. One of her school friends was going to the class and her mother messaged Ms Stancombe saying, “Have you got her a space?”

“And I was like, “Oh no’. I knew it had sold out, so I messaged Leanne saying, ‘Aw, I totally forgot to pay for Elsie’. And she messaged saying: ‘No problem. I’ll always have a place for Elsie.’ And she kept one. I just always think if she’d given it away…”

Rioting in Southport

The families were told to come off their social media accounts after riots broke out in Southport, and Elsie’s father and uncle Chris visited the wreckage of the riots the following day.

Neither wanted to comment on the rioting that followed their children’s deaths. Instead, both families paid tribute to the community that rallied around them in the wake of the tragedy.

“It’s about this community. It has brought light in the darkness, these little moments. And that’s what we’re constantly looking for right now.”

Bebe’s family spent the following week with her in a bereavement suite at Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool. On the last day, her mother and father did a final bedtime routine, reading her Jack and the Beanstalk before they left.

No funeral director would accept money, while donations and support flooded in for the families.

Bebe had a white horse and carriage. “It’s not very us,” her parents told the Sunday Times while laughing, “but it was for her and we knew she would want that.”

Royal Family brought ‘genuine comfort’

The efforts of the Royal Family brought “genuine comfort” to both families, they told the Sunday Times.

Mr Stancombe said the visit by the Princess of Wales – her first public engagement since finishing chemotherapy – “meant a great deal to Jenni”.

“I won’t say what they said to us, but what they shared with us was really, really powerful, and it was a powerful message and heartfelt, and it meant a lot,” he said.

The families also met the King at Clarence House in August.

“We could see how much he cared,” Mr Stancombe said, laughing about the moment Elsie’s sister offered the King a biscuit.

‘Highly likely’ killer will never be released

Axel Rudakubana was jailed in January for a minimum term of 52 years after he pleaded guilty to murdering Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe, six, and Elsie, seven, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

Rudakubana also admitted trying to murder eight other children, as well as instructor Leanne Lucas and businessman John Hayes, on 29 July last year.

He was 17 years old when he walked into the dance studio, indiscriminately stabbing his victims with a 20cm blade he had bought on Amazon.

He was given 13 life sentences, with Mr Justice Goose saying the killings had caused “shock and revulsion” around the nation and said it was “highly likely” he would never be released.

During sentencing he was twice ordered out of the dock after trying to disrupt proceedings, by shouting that he “felt ill”.

The court heard emotional statements from victims and families, with Ms Lucas who was stabbed in the back, saying she couldn’t give herself “compassion or accept praise, as how can I live knowing I survived when children died?”.

The incident was not labelled a terror attack, although officers later found a plastic box containing the toxin ricin under his bed in the village of Banks, Lancashire, along with other weapons including a machete and arrows.

His devices revealed an obsession with violence, war and genocide, and he was found to be in possession of an al Qaeda training manual. It fell outside the definition of terrorism because police couldn’t identify the killer’s motive.

Families did not want sentencing televised

Neither family was in court when Rudakubana suddenly changed his plea to guilty.

Both families did not want the sentencing televised, while Bebe’s family believe details about her injuries went beyond what was necessary.

“The sentencing shouldn’t have been televised,” Elsie’s uncle Chris says. Bebe’s father agreed: “We know it has to be heard in court but why did the whole nation need to see it on television?”

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/parents-of-southport-victims-pay-tribute-to-daughters-and-describe-moment-they-were-told-something-awful-has-happened-13305399

Apple has reportedly been ordered by the UK government to allow it access to encrypted data stored by the company’s users worldwide in its cloud service.

At the moment, only the Apple account holder can access such data – not even the US technology giant can see it.

Apple, which makes iPhones, iPads and iMacs, has been issued with a Technical Capability Notice (TCN), the Washington Post and BBC are reporting.

This order, which does not get published, is said to require a blanket ability for the government to view people’s encrypted data – both in the UK and abroad.

The Home Office will not confirm or deny the existence of the order. Apple has been approached for comment.

Getting technology companies to break encryption has long been a contentious issue in the UK government.

Ministers have argued they want to use it for purposes like protecting children, identifying criminals and keeping the public safe.

What are the concerns?

Opponents say it is a breach of privacy. They also highlight the risk to whistleblowers and journalists, and point out that any tool the government has to break into people’s information has a danger of being hijacked by bad actors.

There are also concerns that, if implemented, the UK’s order could lead nations like China to force Western companies to break their users’ privacy.

‘Advanced Data Protection’

On Apple products, users have the option to use Advanced Data Protection (ADP).

The UK government’s demand applies to all content stored using ADP, which means certain data can only be decrypted by the user.

Apple promises that even a cloud data breach would not make the information readable.

Users are also told that Apple cannot see the data due to the end-to-end encryption used to share the information.

End-to-end encryption means that messages and data sent between two devices can only be read by the person they are sent to – and are scrambled if anyone else tries to intercept or access them.

The debate stretches as far back as 2017, when then home secretary Amber Rudd stated that “I don’t need to understand how encryption works” to want it broken.

The order from the UK government was made under the UK Investigatory Powers Act 2016, according to The Washington Post. The act says the orders can be applied to companies outside the UK.

There are avenues for Apple to appeal against the TCN, but this process would not be made public.

The Labour government has been outspoken in its desire to target social media and technology companies while in power.

This includes recently trumpeting its plans to be the first country in the world to create a new AI sexual abuse offence to punish those generating and facilitating the creation of AI child sexual abuse images.

And Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has criticised social media companies for not being fast enough to take down videos previously viewed by Southport killer Axel Rudakubana.

Last year, Apple provided written evidence to MPs on its many oppositions to the Investigatory Powers Act and TCNs.

It noted that the law gives the UK government the power to “act as the world’s regulator” of security technology – something which could put it at odds with authorities like the European Union and the United States.

Order would ‘undermine human rights’

The American company also said that an order to force decryption would “undermine fundamentally human rights” and potentially put the UK at odds with the European Court of Human Rights.

“There is no reason why the [UK government] should have the authority to decide for citizens of the world whether they can avail themselves of the proven security benefits that flow from end-to-end encryption,” Apple said.

It added: “Moreover, any attempt by the [secretary of state] to use its extraterritorial powers to compel technology companies to weaken encryption technology will only strengthen the hands of malicious actors who seek to steal and exploit personal data for nefarious purposes.”

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/apple-ordered-by-uk-government-to-let-it-access-users-encrypted-data-reports-13304724

At St Jude children’s research hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, an unusual clinical trial is under way that, if successful, could have wider ramifications for the vast field of age-related chronic diseases. At first glance, childhood cancer survivors may seem like an unusual population in which to study ageing, but as Greg Armstrong, principal investigator of St Jude’s Childhood Cancer Survivorship Study, explains, we now know they represent a group of individuals who are ageing unusually quickly.

For while modern chemotherapies and radiotherapies have become increasingly efficient at curing childhood cancers, this comes at a great cost, owing to the corrosive impact of such treatment on these children’s bodies, something that becomes more apparent when they reach middle age.

“Of these children, 85% are going to beat their cancer, but it’s a win at a cost,” says Armstrong. “We know that these kids will have shortened lifespans. They often die young of chronic diseases like heart disease, stroke or secondary cancers which present much earlier. And we discovered about a decade ago that this is because they’re ageing much faster than their chronological age.”

In particular, this is reflected not just in their biology, but in physical frailty. When Kirsten Ness, a physical therapist and clinical epidemiologist at St Jude, assessed a group of childhood cancer survivors aged 24-41, she noted that when it came to heart function, flexibility, respiratory capacity and range of motion, they resembled people decades older. “We showed that at 30, they have physiological frailty that resembles people in their 70s and 80s, and it’s getting worse over time,” says Ness.

The underlying cause of this is senescence, a state in which cells cease to continue dividing as normal, but instead simply linger, refusing to die. Because of this quality, senescent cells have sometimes been described as “zombie cells” and they are now regarded as a driving force and a reflection of ageing. Over the course of a lifetime, our bodies incur increasing amounts of damage which in turn makes many of our cells, distributed throughout our body, more likely to become senescent.

For childhood cancer survivors, it appears that the consequence of undergoing such radical treatments at a young age leaves them with abnormally large populations of senescent cells, which would normally take decades to accrue. Ness explains that this drives loss of function and disease risk, and not only because senescent cells cease to function as they normally would. Senescent cells also generate a stream of inflammatory molecules, something known as the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). “If we look at data from our childhood cancer survivors, we can see that they have this low-grade inflammation,” says Ness. “And so they don’t feel great, they don’t move great.”

Over the past decade, interest has steadily grown in a class of drugs known as senolytics, so called because they have been shown to be capable of eliminating senescent cells in mice by disabling certain pathways, causing them to self-destruct. One of the most well-studied senolytics is actually a chemotherapy drug called dasatinib, while others include the natural chemicals quercetin and fisetin, which are found in various fruits and vegetables.

Now, Armstrong is leading a trial of 50-60 childhood cancer survivors with signs of frailty, along with blood-based markers that indicate a significant amount of senescence. Aged about 40, on average, the participants will receive oral doses of either dasatinib and quercetin, or fisetin, to see whether it can improve their physical function over the course of six months. These individuals will then be tracked every five years to assess whether this treatment can help extend their life expectancy.

For researchers into ageing around the world, such data represents a first tentative step towards indicating whether senolytics could one day be used as a way of extending healthy lifespan in all older adults.

At September’s British Society for Research on Ageing conference, Johannes Grillari, director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Traumatology in Vienna, discussed the future of senolytics in front of an intrigued audience of gerontologists.

As Grillari explained, while scientists continue to assess the long-term safety profile of these drugs, they will mostly be used in trials of patients with advanced illnesses, where the accumulation of senescent cells is thought to be a significant contributing factor.

“It’s all about the risk-benefit ratio, and if you’re considering giving them to healthy individuals then the risk must be close to zero,” Grillari later told the Observer. “But the promise is that these cells seem to be a common denominator in every age-associated disease that has ever been looked at: cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, musculoskeletal diseases, lung fibrosis, chronic kidney disease, you name it. And if we use senolytics, we see that the inflammation goes away and the regenerative capacity of the surrounding tissue is restored – well, at least if you’re a mouse.”

Based on dozens of preclinical studies in which rodents have been manipulated to develop various chronic diseases before being cured, senolytics are now starting to reach humans. The data so far is limited but clinical trials are under way to see whether dasatinib and quercetin can modulate disease progression in patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, while this same combination has previously been shown to alleviate some physical dysfunction in people with chronic lung disease.

Grillari – who is also co-founder of Rockfish Bio, a company that has developed its own senolytic – is now hoping to launch trials in other disease states, as well as using the company’s senolytic to try to rejuvenate organs from older donors. While the NHS says there is no age limit for becoming an organ donor, research has previously shown that recipients of organs donated by the over-60s tend to have poorer outcomes because the organ is more likely to have existing damage, while the rejection rate is also much higher.

“There was a study in the 2000s that showed that the more senescent cells you have in a human transplant organ, the worse the outcome of the transplantation,” says Grillari. “Because the senescent cells are pro-inflammatory, they attack the recipients’ immune system, and seem to attack the donor organ more frequently. The hope is that senolytics can help, because kidney transplant organs, for example, are so rare.”

All of this will provide more data on the safety and efficacy of various senolytics, while many studies are continuing to focus on their potential benefit in relatively young people with advanced disease. Dutch government agencies are funding a trial where dasatinib and quercetin will be offered to patients aged 18-65 with a diagnosis of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, a diet-related chronic illness where senescent cells are believed to be driving fibrosis, or scarring, throughout the organ, impairing its ability to function. According to Stijn Meijnikman, a gastroenterology and hepatology doctor leading the trial, the hope is that removing these cells will enable the liver to repair itself.

“In mice, you see that if you get rid of the senescent cells, you get rid of the fibrosis,” says Meijnikman. “So we’re looking to see indications of that in humans. It’s a very short trial, but we’re hoping that briefly disrupting the pathways that allow senescent cells to persist will enable them to be cleaned up by the immune system.”

The wider community of longevity scientists and investors remain intrigued as to whether these drugs can ultimately help reverse some of the signs of ageing in mid to later life, and perhaps even extend human lifespan.

“More people are becoming familiar with the concept of senescent cells and how you can maybe positively influence this,” says Marc Bernegger, founder of Longevity Investors, a funding network.

Glancing at a photo that Grillari pulls up on our Teams call, it’s easy to understand the excitement. It shows an elderly mouse of 34 months – equivalent to 90 in human years – its fur thinning and grey. “Just like us, they get bald patches as they age,” laughs Grillari.

In another picture, after being treated with a senolytic, the same mouse appears visibly younger. Its fur has grown back and regained its original pigmentation. If such a drug were to achieve similar results in humans, it would undoubtedly be a blockbuster.

But many are urging caution. Prof Tohru Minamino of Juntendo University in Japan, who has studied cellular senescence for two decades, points out that some senescent cells are beneficial to our body, playing important roles in key physiological functions such as wound healing. Simply clearing away everything could have negative long-term consequences.

Minamino believes that he may have the answer. In 2021, he and his colleagues unveiled an “ageing vaccine” that uses a protein called GPNMB to selectively remove senescent cells that contribute to inflammation. “We’re trying to specifically target the bad guys,” he says.

Once again, this has been shown to work remarkably well in mice, with older rodents showing fewer functional impairments after receiving the vaccine and living substantially longer. Minamino is now hoping to develop this as an RNA-style vaccine, similar to the Covid jab, which trains the immune system to remove inflammatory senescent cells and could be used in patients with Alzheimer’s, chronic lung disease or frailty.

“One of the challenges at the moment is that we don’t have particularly good tools to estimate the number of senescent cells in the human body and the extent to which this changes with treatment,” says Minamino. “But if we can develop better imaging systems for measuring how these cells are accumulating, you can envision a future where this could be part of an annual medical check.”

Ultimately though, researchers caution that senescent cells are still only one piece of the ageing puzzle. As Meijnikman points out when I ask whether senolytics could be used to revive the livers of 80-year-olds, which have been weathered by decades of heavy drinking or a bad diet, this isn’t only about clearing senescence.

Source : https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/feb/08/anti-ageing-jabs-they-can-rejuvenate-mice-but-will-they-work-on-humans

 

A magnitude 7.6 quake struck the Caribbean Sea late on Saturday evening, US monitoring agencies reported.

The earthquake hit at 6:23 p.m. local time (0123 GMT) in the middle of the sea about 130 miles (209 kilometers) off the coast of the Cayman Islands.

The United States Geological Survey said the quake struck at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers (six miles).

This is the largest earthquake in the region since 2021, when a 7.2 magnitude quake hit southwestern Haiti, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Tsunami advisories for Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands

A tsunami advisory issued for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands has been lifted, according to the US National Tsunami Warning Center.

There were no alerts issued for the mainland US coast.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/caribbean-hit-by-76-magnitude-earthquake/a-71551216

Billionaire Elon Musk said that he was not interested in purchasing TikTok, the popular short-video app that the United States has been trying to ban over national security concerns with its Chinese owner ByteDance.
Musk’s comments, made in late January, were released online Saturday by The WELT Group, a part of the German media company Axel Springer SE, which hosted a summit, where the Tesla (TSLA.O), chief joined the conference via video.

“I have not put in a bid for TikTok,” Musk said a week after U.S. President Donald Trump said he was open to Musk buying the ByteDance-owned app if he wanted to do so.
“I don’t have any plans for what I would do if I had TikTok,” Musk said, adding that he does not use the short video app personally, and was not familiar with the app’s format.
“I’m not chomping at the bit to acquire TikTok, I do not acquire companies in general, it’s quite rare,” Musk said, adding that his billion-dollar acquisition of social media platform Twitter, now called X, was unusual.

“I usually build companies from scratch,” Musk said.
The Republican president signed an executive order seeking to delay the enforcement of a ban on the popular short-video app that was slated to be shuttered on January 19.
ByteDance was given the January deadline to sell the U.S. assets of TikTok or face a U.S. ban, following lawmakers’ concerns that the app poses national security risks because China could compel the company to share the data of its U.S. users. TikTok has denied that it has or ever would share U.S. user data.

Apple and Google have not reinstated TikTok to their app stores since a U.S. law took effect. TikTok said on Friday that it was allowing U.S. Android users to download and connect to the app through package kits on its website, in an effort to circumvent restrictions on the popular platform in the country.
Trump has said that he was in talks with multiple people over TikTok’s purchase and would likely have a decision on the app’s future this month. It has about 170 million American users.

This week, the president signed an executive order to create a sovereign wealth fund within the year, saying it could potentially buy TikTok.
ByteDance has previously denied any plans to sell TikTok.
Trump saving TikTok represents a reversal in stance from his first term in office when he unsuccessfully sought to ban the app over concerns the company was sharing Americans’ personal information with the Chinese government.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/billionaire-musk-says-not-interested-acquiring-tiktok-2025-02-08/

In Ghana and Kenya, insecticide and mosquito nets sit in warehouses because U.S. officials haven’t approved urgent anti-malaria campaigns.
In Haiti, a group treating HIV patients awaits U.S. permission to dispense medicines that prevent mothers from giving the disease to their children.
In Myanmar, where famine looms and the U.S is the single largest aid donor, one humanitarian worker described the situation as “mayhem.”

Nearly three weeks into U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping freeze on foreign aid, life-saving programs across the globe remain shut as humanitarian workers struggle to secure U.S. government waivers meant to keep them open, dozens of aid workers and U.N. staff told Reuters.
After Trump announced the 90-day freeze on January 20, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued waivers for what he called “life-saving humanitarian assistance,” which included “core life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance.”

But aid workers and U.N. officials said the waivers had sparked widespread confusion, along with fears that their U.S. funding would never be restored.
They said they couldn’t restart work without first confirming with their U.S. counterparts whether specific programs qualified for exemption. This was proving nearly impossible, they said, due to a communication breakdown with U.S. officials, some of whom had been fired or barred from talking.

The breakdown appeared partly by design. On January 31, staff at the United States Agency for International Development, once the main delivery mechanism for American largesse, were told not to communicate externally about the waiver and what it may or may not include, according to a previously unreported recording of the meeting reviewed by Reuters.
The U.S. State Department and White House did not respond to requests for comment.

The spiraling consequences of the aid freeze in developing countries underline the real-world harms from Trump’s upending of decades-old U.S. initiatives designed to build global alliances by making America the world’s most generous superpower and largest single aid donor.
Aid workers had a list of urgent questions going unanswered. Among them: Which programs could continue? What qualifies as life-saving aid? Food? Shelter? Medicine? And how do they keep people from dying when almost every aid service has been shut at once?
With little guidance from U.S. officials, aid workers said their organizations erred on the side of caution and closed programs rather than incur expenses that the U.S. government might not reimburse, the aid workers said. Some described how U.S partners – often people they had worked with for years – no longer answered their phones or emails.
One Geneva-based aid official who reached U.S. officials was stunned by their response. “We asked: Can you tell us exactly which programs we need to stop? Then we got a message saying ‘no more guidance is forthcoming’. This leaves us in a situation where you have to make a choice of which program is ‘life-saving’,” the official said. “We don’t have money to pay for it ourselves. We can’t spend money we don’t know if we have.”
The turmoil was particularly acute at USAID, now in disarray and targeted for closure as a “criminal organization” by Trump’s government efficiency tsar, the billionaire Elon Musk.
In his executive order, Trump said the U.S. “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy” were “in many cases antithetical to American values.” He ordered the 90-day pause pending a review on whether aid was consistent with his “America First” foreign policy.
Most of those who spoke to Reuters requested anonymity, fearful of antagonizing the Trump administration and jeopardizing the possible restoration of aid.
Two workers with aid organizations in Myanmar told Reuters they didn’t know whether U.S.-funded food distribution in the country was covered by a waiver and would continue. One of the workers described the situation as “mayhem.” Myanmar faces a severe food crisis due to natural disasters and a spiraling civil war. An estimated two million people in the country are on the brink of famine, according to the U.N.
Refugees also bore the brunt of the aid freeze in Bangladesh, where the U.S funds about 55% of assistance to more than a million Rohingya from Myanmar living in squalid camps. “Some essential and life-saving services” had been interrupted by the freeze, said the Inter Sector Coordination Group, an international relief organization that oversees the camps, in a previously unreported draft statement to local aid groups. The group didn’t respond to a request for comment.
A U.N. official in Bangladesh seeking clarity on which programs could remain open said U.S. counterparts were “not answering the phones.”
In Africa, humanitarian workers were due to start anti-malaria spraying campaigns this month in Ghana and Kenya before mosquito populations explode during the rainy season, but insecticide and mosquito nets are stuck in warehouses, said a USAID contractor.
A USAID memo, dated February 4 and seen by Reuters on Saturday, said “life-saving activities” to address malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases and conditions would be exempt from the freeze. But campaigns to protect millions of people appeared on hold as aid workers sought clarification on when funding would resume and specific malaria programs in Africa could restart, the contractor said.
Malaria, a preventable disease, is caused by parasites transmitted to people by the bites of infected mosquitoes. The vast majority of the world’s 597,000 malaria deaths in 2023 were African children aged under five years old, the World Health Organization said in December.
“There is a small window to do those campaigns which is going to close rapidly,” said the USAID contractor.
Millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars already spent on supplies to fight malaria in Africa could go to waste, aid workers said. Malaria No More, a global nonprofit based in Washington, said the freeze could prevent the distribution of 15.6 million life-saving treatments, nine million nets and 48 million doses of preventative medicine.
The U.S. is the top donor in the global fight against malaria, mostly through the President’s Malaria Initiative, known as PMI, set up under former President George W. Bush in 2005. PMI’s website – which included information on populations at risk of malaria – has been taken down and replaced with a brief statement: “In order to be consistent with the President’s Executive Orders, this website is currently undergoing maintenance as we expeditiously and thoroughly review all of the content.”
“It’s as if all the work . . . has just been erased,” said Anne Linn, a USAID staffer who worked remotely from Montana as a technical advisor and was fired on Jan. 28. “It’s so cruel and senseless,” she said. “The wastefulness of it is staggering to me.”
In Haiti, a program that provides treatment to AIDS patients was supposed to be exempt from the aid freeze under a State Department waiver but remained shut because it hadn’t received specific written instructions to open, said a worker at the nonprofit program. She said funding for the program came from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, the world’s leading initiative to combat HIV.
The State Department, which manages PEPFAR, said on February 1 that the program was covered by the waiver for life-saving humanitarian assistance. But the aid worker said she hadn’t received paperwork confirming that they could continue to distribute medicine.
“Everything is closed until further notice,” she said. Pregnant women were at risk because the program provides medication that can prevent HIV transmission to their infants, she added. She said more than half of Haiti’s 150,000 AIDS patients received treatment through PEPFAR.
In 2024, the U.S. provided 60% of Haiti’s humanitarian funding, totaling $208 million, according to the U.N.’s Financial Tracking Service.

TURMOIL AT USAID

The problems were exacerbated by turmoil at USAID, whose leaders Trump has described as “radical left lunatics.”
Trump’s administration plans to keep 611 staff at USAID out of its worldwide total of more than 10,000, according to a notice sent to the agency on February 5 and reviewed by Reuters.
Washington’s primary humanitarian aid agency has been a target of a government reorganization program spearheaded by Musk, a close Trump ally, since the Republican president took office on January 20. Staff have been shut out of the agency’s headquarters in Washington. Rubio has appointed himself the agency’s acting administrator.
An expert in water and sanitation spoke of “mass confusion” at the USAID’s global health bureau after she and dozens of others were fired on January 28. “It happened so quickly that I had no way of saving emails, contacts,” she said. “We were all just thrown away and bulldozed over.”
‘PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE’
In Thailand, the aid freeze forced the International Rescue Committee, which funds health clinics with U.S. support, to quickly shut down the hospital and clinics it ran in seven refugee camps on the Myanmar-Thai border. IRC was told by U.S. officials they couldn’t reopen before receiving another notification, which hasn’t arrived, said an aid worker.
Many were discharged from the IRC facilities, leaving people including pregnant women and children unable to access medication or medical equipment, said Francois Nosten, director of the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit, a field station in the border camps run by Bangkok’s Mahidol University.
An elderly woman, who had been hospitalized with lung problems and was dependent on oxygen, died four days after being discharged, according to her family. Reuters couldn’t independently confirm her cause of death.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-aid-freeze-keeps-life-saving-programs-shut-sparks-mayhem-2025-02-08/

When Donald Trump’s fortunes took a downturn in the 90s and he needed to raise cash fast, he sailed his 282ft (85m) superyacht, the Trump Princess, to Asia hoping he could attract Japan’s wealthy.

It wasn’t the first time the businessman had sought out Japanese buyers or lenders for his projects.

In the cut-throat world of New York real estate, Trump had a front-row seat from his Fifth Avenue skyscraper of Tokyo’s buying spree in the 80s of iconic US brands and properties, including Rockefeller Center.

It was then that his worldview on trade and America’s relations with its allies was formed, and his fixation on tariffs, a tax on imports, began.

“He had a tremendous resentment for Japan,” says Barbara Res, a former executive vice-president at the Trump Organization.

He watched with jealousy as Japanese businessmen were viewed as geniuses, she says. He felt America wasn’t getting enough in return for assisting its ally Japan with military defence.

Trump often complained that he had difficulties doing deals with large groups of Japanese businessmen.

“I’m tired of watching other countries ripping off the United States.”

That Trump quote could’ve been pulled from 2016, but it’s actually from the late 80s when he made an appearance on CNN’s Larry King Live, around the time he first floated his name as a potential presidential candidate.

Fresh from sharing his business philosophy in his 1987 book, The Art of the Deal, Trump went on a tirade against America’s trade policies in national interviews.

In an animated interview with Oprah Winfrey before a live studio audience on The Oprah Show, he said he would handle foreign policy differently by making the country’s allies “pay their fair share”.

He added that there wasn’t free trade when Japan was “dumping” products into America’s market but making it “impossible to do business” there.

Jennifer Miller, an associate professor of history at Dartmouth College, said others shared his concerns about the economy at the time.

Japan provided competition for US manufacturing, particularly in consumer electronics and cars. As US factories were shuttering and new Japanese brands entered the market, pundits were talking about Japan surpassing the US as the world’s leading economy.

“Trump is sort of symbolic of a lot of people who were kind of questioning American leadership in the American-led international order, and whether it actually served the United States,” Prof Miller says.

Before his Oprah appearance, Trump had spent almost $100,000 to release an “open letter” in full-page ads in three major US newspapers.

The headline read: “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.”

In it, he said Japan and other nations had been taking advantage of the US for decades. He claimed “the Japanese, unimpeded by the huge costs of defending themselves (as long as the United States will do it for free), have built a strong and vibrant economy with unprecedented surpluses”.

Trump believed the obvious solution was to “tax” these wealthy nations.

“The world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help,” he wrote.

The third week of Donald Trump’s second term has been marked by more major action from the US president and his team.

From announcing US goals on the future of Gaza and massively slashing the US agency for foreign aid to intervening in a golf dispute and banning transgender women from female sports competitions, Trump, his adviser Elon Musk and the rest of his team have pressed on with their agenda.

There’s a lot to keep up with – so here’s a reminder of 15 moves this week.

“If the island sinks, I will sink with it,” Delfino Davies says, his smile not fading for a second.

There is silence, except for the swish of his broom across the floor of the small museum he runs documenting the life of his community in Panama, the Guna.

“Before, you could hear children shouting… music everywhere, neighbours arguing,” he says, “but now all the sounds have gone”.

His community, living on the tiny low-lying island of Gardi Sugdub, is the first in Panama to be relocated because of climate change.

The government has said they face “imminent risk” from rising sea levels, which scientists say are likely to render the island uninhabitable by 2050.

In June last year, most of the residents abandoned this cramped jumble of wooden and tin homes for rows of neat prefabricated houses on the mainland.

The relocation has been praised by some as a model for other groups worldwide whose homes are under threat, but even so, it has divided the community.

“My father, my brother, my sisters-in-law and my friends are gone,” says Delfino. “Sometimes the children whose families have stayed cry, wondering where their friends have gone, he says.

House after house is padlocked. About 1,000 people left, while about 100 stayed – some because there was not enough room in the new settlement. Others, like Delfino, are not fully convinced climate change is a threat, or simply did not want to leave.

He says he wants to stay close to the ocean, where he can fish. “The people that lose their tradition lose their soul. The essence of our culture is on the islands,” he adds.

The Guna have lived on Gardi Sugdub since the 19th Century, and even longer on other islands in this archipelago off Panama’s northern coast. They fled from the mainland to escape Spanish conquistadors and, later, epidemics and conflict with other indigenous groups.

They are known for their clothes called “molas”, decorated with colourful designs.

The Guna currently inhabit more than 40 other islands. Steve Paton, a scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, says it is “almost a certainty” that most, if not all, of the islands will be submerged before the end of the century.

As climate change causes the Earth to heat up, sea levels are rising as glaciers and ice sheets melt and seawater expands as it warms.

Scientists warn that hundreds of millions of people living in coastal areas around the world could be at risk by the end of the century.

On Gardi Sugdub, waves whipped up during the rainy season wash into homes, lapping below the hammocks where families sleep.

Mr Paton says, “it is very unlikely that the island will be habitable by 2050, based on current and projected rates of sea level rise”.

However, the first discussions about relocation began, more than a decade ago, because of population growth, not climate change.

The island is just 400m long and 150m wide. Some residents see overcrowding as the more pressing problem. But others, like Magdalena Martínez, fear the rising sea:

“Every year, we saw the tides were higher,” she says. “We couldn’t cook on our stoves and it was always flooded… so we said ‘we have to get out of here’.”

Magdalena was among those who clambered into motor boats and wooden canoes last June, bound for new homes.

“I brought just my clothes and some kitchen utensils,” she says. “You feel like you are leaving pieces of your life on the island.”

The new community, Isberyala, is – weather permitting – just 15 minutes by boat, followed by a five-minute drive, from Gardi Sugdub. But it feels like another world.

Identical white and yellow homes line tarmacked roads.

Magdalena’s eyes light up as she shows off the “little house” where she lives with her 14-year-old granddaughter Bianca and her dog.

Each house has a small area of land behind it – a luxury not available on the island. “I want to plant yucca, tomatoes, bananas, mangoes and pineapples,” she enthuses.

“It is quite sad to leave a place you’ve been in for so long. You miss your friends, the streets where you lived, being so close to the sea,” she says.

Isberyala was built with $15m (£12m) from the Panamanian government and additional funding from the Inter-American Development Bank.

In its new meeting house, which is roofed with branches and leaves in the traditional style, waits Tito López, the community’s sayla – or leader.

“My identity and my culture aren’t going to change, it’s just the houses that have changed,” he says.

He is lying in a hammock, and explains that as long as the hammock keeps its place in Guna culture, “the heart of the Guna people will be alive”.

When a Guna dies, they lie for a day in their hammock for family and friends to visit. It is then buried next to them.

In the state-of-the-art new school, students aged 12 and 13 are rehearsing Guna music and dances. Boys in bright shirts play pan pipes, while girls wearing molas shake maracas.

The cramped school on the island has closed now, and students whose families stayed there travel each day to the new building with its computers, sports fields and library.

Magdalena says conditions in Isberyala are better than on the island, where she says they had only four hours of electricity a day and had to fetch drinking water by boat from a river on the mainland.

In Isberyala, the power supply is constant, but the water – pumped from wells nearby – is only switched on for a few hours a day. The system has at times broken down for days at a time.

Also, there is no healthcare yet. Another resident, Yanisela Vallarino, says one evening her young daughter was unwell and she had to arrange transport back to the island late at night to see a doctor.

Panamanian authorities told the BBC that construction of a hospital in Isberyala stalled a decade ago over lack of funding. But they said they hoped to revive the plan this year, and were assessing how to create space for remaining residents to move from the island.

Yanisela is delighted that she is now able to attend evening classes in the new school, but she still returns to the island frequently.

“I’m not used to it yet. And I miss my house,” she says.

Communities around the world will be “inspired” by the way the residents of Gardi Sugdub have confronted their situation, says Erica Bower, a researcher on climate displacement at Human Rights Watch.

“We need to learn from these early cases to understand what success even looks like,” she says.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz0lg9pedz1o

As Hong Kong prepares to welcome the Year of the Snake on Wednesday, Chau Ka-ling displays a moving serpent with practiced ease, holding it like a pet in her decades-old restaurant in the city.

As one of the last keepers of the city’s traditional snake soup industry, Chau saves three live snakes for occasional display in wooden drawers that once housed more serpents for cooking. The cuisine she makes, long cherished in southern Chinese culture for keeping people warm in the winter, is slithering away.

Founded by Chau’s late father in the 1960s, Shia Wong Hip once slaughtered live snakes for its dishes. “Shia Wong” means “Snake King” in Cantonese.

Under her father’s guidance, Chau learned to catch and kill serpents and make soup, eventually becoming known as the city’s “Snake Queen.” A newspaper photo displayed on the wall captured her success in catching an over 2-meter-long venomous king cobra in 1997 at a marine police office in rural Hong Kong at the authorities’ request.

But the restaurant, alongside most of the city’s other remaining snake soup shops, switched to using frozen snake meat from Southeast Asia after a 2003 outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, killed 299 people in Hong Kong. Scientists have linked the virus’s origin to wild animals.

Despite the change, preparing snake soup still takes a long time. The defrosted snake meat must be boiled for at least two hours to achieve the desired tenderness. After it cools, Chau debones it with a sharpened chopstick and tears it into thin pieces by hand.

The snake bones then are simmered with chicken and pork bones for at least six hours to make the soup base. Next, the broth is stewed with snake meat, shredded chicken, ham, fungus and mandarin orange peel before finally being thickened with starch.

When a bowl of soup is served, diners usually garnish it with lemon leaves and crispy chips.

Snake meat, which has a texture similar to chicken after cooking, is rich in protein and low in fat.

During the winter, Chau can sell up to 800 bowls a day ranging in price from $7 to $11. But that figure drops to 100 or less in the summer, when the soup is less popular.

Snake soup shops have closed after the COVID-19 pandemic and as older chefs retire, leaving only about 20 still in operation.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/snake-soup-hong-kong-winter-new-year-4f04a46eb312b0acba399741a4f8db37

A new Netflix miniseries tells the story of an Australian influencer who lied about having a terminal illness to promote alternative therapies. A decade on, it remains a warning.

Back in 2013, a remarkable, against-all-odds story of survival hit the headlines when a young woman launched what would become a best-selling wellness app with advice on how she had beaten cancer. Just four years earlier in 2009, Australian blogger Belle Gibson, then aged 20, had, by her own account, been diagnosed with a “malignant brain cancer” and been given “six weeks, four months tops” to live. However, she claimed that she had chosen to withdraw from chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment, and had instead embarked on “a quest to heal myself naturally… through nutrition, patience, determination and love”.

Amassing 200,000 fans online on Instagram – then in its early days – who avidly followed her wellness journey, she then launched a best-selling wellness and nutrition app, followed by a cookbook, called The Whole Pantry, crediting her diet for curing her of her terminal illness, and inspiring others to follow her in “empowering myself to save my own life”. She was dubbed “the most inspiring woman you’ve met this year” by Elle Australia, while in 2014, Cosmopolitan gave her a “Fun, Fearless Female” award.

However, it was all a lie. Gibson had never been diagnosed with a brain cancer, nor the “cancer in my blood, spleen, brain, uterus, and liver” that she subsequently claimed she had also been diagnosed with in a 2014 Instagram post, when rumblings first began to surface in Australian media that she may have been a fraud. Finally, in April 2015, she admitted the truth in an interview with Women’s Weekly. “No, none of it’s true,” she said, but refusing to take further responsibility, she added, opaquely: “I am still jumping between what I think I know and what is reality. I have lived it and I’m not really there yet.”

Hamas has released the names of three Israeli hostages it says it will release today in the fifth such swap of a fragile ceasefire in Gaza.

The hostages are Eli Sharabi, Ohad Ben Ami and Or Levy, Hamas armed wing spokesperson Abu Obeida said in a Telegram post.

An Israeli official confirmed Israel had received the three names from Hamas.

In return for the captives’ release, Hamas said it expects 183 Palestinian prisoners to be released.

Both Mr Ami, 56, and Mr Sharabi, 52, were taken from Kibbutz Be’eri during the 7 October attack. The cross-border attack saw around 1,200 Israelis killed and around 250 people taken hostage.

Mr Levy, 34, was abducted from the Nova music festival.

Of the Palestinian prisoners being freed, 18 have been serving life sentences, 54 were serving long sentences and the vast majority, 111, were detained in Gaza during the war.

Eli Sharabi

Mr Sharabi’s wife Lianne Sharabi was born in Bristol.

She, along with their children, 16-year-old Noiya and 13-year-old Yahel, were killed in the 7 October attack.

His brother Yossi was also killed after being taken hostage.

In a statement after news he would be released was announced, Mr Sharabi’s lawyers said the “family has already lost too much… [they] are pleased and relieved that Eli Sharabi is reportedly on the list for release by Hamas”.

It added: “It is long past time to bring Eli home.”

Or Levy

Mr Levy was captured by militants from a bomb shelter near the Nova music festival.

His wife Einav was killed during the 7 October attack. Their son Almog, a toddler, is staying with his grandparents.

Mr Levy is from the city of Rishon Lezion, where he worked as a computer programmer.

Some of Mr Levy’s family previously spoke about his kidnapping and the death of his wife.

Speaking around Hanukkah last year, his brother Michael Levy told Sky News’s Yousra Elbagir: “I have three little girls but it won’t be the same. Hanukkah is a happy holiday – you light candles, you sing and eat all sorts of things but for us it is not a real holiday without Or.”

Ohad Ben Ami

Mr Ben Ami, a father of three, was taken hostage with his wife Raz, who was released during the brief ceasefire period in November.

His daughter Ella Ben Ami previously spoke to Sky News about missing her dad Mr Ami, as she pleaded for his release.

“On the eve of Christmas, on the 24 December, it will be his birthday, and I don’t want to celebrate it without him,” she told Sky News in 2023.

Ms Ami was previously one of the first to tell the world what happened on 7 October, calling an Israeli TV channel while hiding.

Row over aid access

Earlier on Friday, Hamas accused Israel of breaching the ceasefire accord and held off announcing the names of the Israeli hostages until the deadline had passed.

The militant group claimed Israel delayed the entry of hundreds of trucks carrying food and other humanitarian supplies agreed under the truce deal and held back all but a fraction of the tents and mobile homes needed to provide people shelter in the devastated enclave.

“This demonstrates clear manipulation of relief and shelter priorities,” Hamas said in a statement.

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that is overseeing the aid deliveries into Gaza, denied the accusation.

It added Israel would “not tolerate violations by Hamas”.

The claims and counter-claims highlight the fragility and uncertainty of the ceasefire.

This has been heightened by US President Donald Trump recently saying the US could take over Gaza and move the Palestinian population out.

Israel’s air and ground war in Gaza has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, and displaced the majority of the strip’s population.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/hamas-names-three-israeli-hostages-it-says-it-will-release-on-saturday-13304815

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has told Donald Trump “let’s do a deal” as he offered the US a partnership over Ukraine’s stores of rare earth and minerals.

Earlier this week, Mr Trump said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with critical resources in exchange for financial support in its war with Russia.

In an interview with Reuters on Friday, Mr Zelenskyy said: “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it.”

While emphasising that Kyiv was not proposing “giving away” its resources, he said he was open to a mutually beneficial partnership to develop them jointly.

Rare earths are a group of 17 metals that are vital in the production of high-performance magnets, electric motors and consumer electronics.

Mr Zelenskyy touted the country’s reserves of titanium and uranium as Europe’s largest.

According to the World Economic Forum, Ukraine also has the potential to become a key supplier of lithium, beryllium, manganese, gallium, zirconium, graphite, apatite, fluorite and nickel.

Showing a map of Ukraine’s mineral deposits, he then said Russia currently has control of less than 20% of the country’s mineral resources – but that includes about half its rare earth deposits.

“Putin is not just grabbing them [minerals] along with the land, he is already thinking about how to get other partners in his alliance – North Korea, Iran… and he will give them access,” Mr Zelenskyy said.

“This is very rich land. This does not mean that we are giving it away to anyone, even to strategic partners. We are talking about partnership…

“Let’s develop this together, make money, and most importantly, it’s about the security of the Western world.”

The Ukrainian president added that Kyiv and the White House were discussing the idea of using the country’s underground gas storage sites to store American liquefied natural gas, calling it “very interesting”.

He also said he would like to discuss the US having priority when it came to rebuilding Ukraine, saying it would amount to “a lot of money for business”.

‘Not accepting Russia’s ultimatums’

He also insisted that Mr Trump must meet with him before he meets with the Russian president, “otherwise it will look like a dialogue about Ukraine without Ukraine”.

He added: “I don’t know what compromises can be discussed at the negotiating table, we have not reached that point…

“It is important for people to understand that Ukraine is negotiating, not accepting ultimatums from Russia.”

He also stressed Ukraine’s need for security guarantees from its allies as part of any settlement.

It comes as Mr Trump said he may meet with Mr Zelenskyy in the White House as early as next week. The two last met in New York in September last year.

Mr Trump also repeated his interest in meeting the Russian president with whom he said he always had a “good relationship”.

Speaking to reporters while meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Mr Trump said: “I’d like to see it end, just on a human basis. I’d like to see that end. It’s a ridiculous war.”

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/zelenskyy-tells-trump-lets-do-a-deal-for-ukraines-rare-earths-13304934

RESCUERS searching for a missing plane that vanished off the coast of Alaska have found an aircraft matching its description, with all its passengers dead.

A frantic search was launched after the Bering Air flight vanished over the ocean near the infamous Alaska Triangle, an area where more than 20,000 people have reportedly disappeared.

The Cessna Caravan, flying from Unalakleet to Nome, was last seen about 12 miles offshore at 3.16 pm on Thursday, according to FlightRadar.

Brutal weather has hampered rescue efforts, with the Coast Guard and Air Force scouring the treacherous shoreline.

The FBI joined the search Friday, using cell phone tracking to try and locate survivors.

But now the aircraft was discovered 34 miles southeast of Nome, its intended destination, after vanishing from radar.

The small commuter plane crashed in western Alaska and was located on sea ice and all passengers on board died, authorities said.

Officials confirmed the grim find at 6.17pm local time on Friday.

Startling footage previously showed the total white-out conditions a plane was flying in when it vanished with 10 people onboard.

A time-lapse video showed the snowy weather near Nome’s airport, which created zero visibility when the plane went missing.

It was 17 degrees in Unalakleet when the plane took off, according to the National Weather Service.

The area was covered in fog, and light snow was falling.

The harsh weather is also causing problems for the urgent air search for the flight, according to White Mountain Fire Chief Jack Adams.

“Word is, all the aircraft are grounded, there’s zero visibility,” Adams told NBC and CBS affiliate KTUU-TV.

“Basically, you can’t see anything from the air or the ground, and in the dark looking for something in zero visibility is a tough job.”

The Coast Guard had brought in a Jayhawk helicopter to search the area on Friday.

The emergency department was conducting a ground search spanning 30 miles with volunteers from Nome and White Mountain.

The searches started after an eerie radar video showed the moment the plane disappeared an hour after taking off.

The plane disappeared while flying over Alaska’s Norton Sound, an inlet of the Bering Sea.

MYSTERY TRIANGLE

While the exact coordinates of where the aircraft was last seen are still being determined, the plane had been lost near the Alaska Triangle.

The Alaska Triangle is a remote area in the middle of Utqiagvik, Anchorage, and Juneau.

The region, often compared to the Bermuda Triangle, is made up of forests, tundra, and icy peaks.

The triangle is known for its extreme weather and strange occurrences.

A shockingly high number of flights, tourists, and hikers have disappeared there without a trace.

The names of the people onboard the Bering Air flight haven’t been released.

Hospitals near Nome are prepared in case they need to respond as the search continues, according to the Norton Sound Health Corporation.

“Staff at Bering Air is working hard to gather details, get emergency assistance, search and rescue going,” David Olson, the director of operations for Bering Air, told the Associated Press.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13479533/alaska-flight-missing-video-bering-triangle-plane/

A coalition of mostly Democratic-led U.S. states filed a lawsuit on Friday to stop a Trump administration panel led by billionaire Elon Musk from accessing government systems used to process trillions of dollars in payments.
The 19 states led by the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, claim Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has no legal power to access the U.S. Department of Treasury systems that contain personal information on millions of Americans.

The lawsuit in Manhattan federal court says Musk and his team could disrupt federal funding for health clinics, preschools, climate initiatives, and other programs, and that Republican President Donald Trump could use the information to further his political agenda.
DOGE’s access to the system also “poses huge cybersecurity risks that put vast amounts of funding for the States and their residents in peril,” the attorneys general said.

The White House and the Treasury Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump deputized Musk to lead DOGE to identify fraud and waste in the government. Musk’s efforts have alarmed Democrats and advocacy groups who say he is overstepping his authority by seeking to dismantle agencies responsible for critical government programs and fire federal workers en masse.
The lawsuit names Trump and the Treasury Department as defendants. James was joined by the attorneys general of California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Washington, and New Jersey, among other states.

In a separate lawsuit by unions claiming Musk’s team is violating privacy laws by accessing the payment systems, a federal judge on Thursday ordered the Treasury to limit access to two “special government employees” and said their access must be read-only.
Lawsuits also have been filed seeking to block DOGE from accessing data at the U.S. Department of Labor and the Department of Education.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a Trump appointee, said this week that the department’s payment system will not be touched by Musk and that any decisions to stop payments would be made by other agencies.

In Friday’s lawsuit, New York and the other states claim that allowing DOGE access to the payment system violates a federal law requiring agencies to conduct “privacy impact assessments” before using technology that collects or disseminates information, and unlawfully usurps the powers of Congress.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-states-sue-block-musks-doge-accessing-payment-systems-2025-02-08/