'Trauma is written on the faces of the evacuees'

By Jayne Secker, in Los Angeles

On a normal Saturday the Westwood recreation centre in Los Angeles is packed with people sweating through spin classes and circuits.

Today however its gym is crammed with neat rows of camp beds, each with a pillow, blanket and small pile of belongings at one end.

The American Red Cross – seen in so many international disaster zones – is now helping its own.

Spokesman Nicole Maul explained how the trailers lined up outside are full of the basics – toothpaste, soap, sanitary products – for those who now have nothing.

In the reception area new arrivals are greeted with warm smiles and tables of donated food. So much is being brought to the shelter from those who live nearby and want to help.

A large TV screen carries a local rolling news channel with wall to wall coverage of the blaze. For many though it is just too much.

Outside I spoke to one man sitting quietly on a bench. He has lost his home in the Pallisades blaze. He said the images were just too upsetting.

He has tried twice to get back to his street. Twice the authorities have turned him back, telling him it is still not safe.

He has nowhere else to go.

In the car park a local acupuncture clinic has sent up a tent offering free treatments to help relieve stress. Suddenly one of the practictioners leaps up and leaves. She'd received a call. The wind had changed and her house was now at threat.

A stark reminder of how unpredictable these fires are.

By the afternoon on the astro pitch outside, young girls practise their football drills, while a man honed his golf swing.

Normal life for some, cheek by jowl with those entirely uprooted from theirs.

There is so much goodwill here, but the trauma the evacuees are continuing to go through is written on their faces.

They have no idea how long they will have to stay here.

This place is a refuge, but it is certainly not home.

Wildfires continue to burn in Los Angeles, with at least 16 people killed in the blazes and 153,000 people under evacuation orders. The public health authority has urged people to stay indoors due to the high levels of smoke and ash in the air.

LA fires latest: Fire deaths rise as weather conditions to worsen; prisoners 'deployed to fight blazes'

Numerous programs initiated regarding women empowerment: Azma Bukhari

Punjab Information Minister Azma Bukhari says government has initiated numerous programs focused on women empowerment

In an exclusive interview with Radio Pakistan correspondent Zunera Khalid with reference to International Women's Day, she stressed women should be acknowledged every day, not merely on a singular occasion.

The Minister recognized the important contributions of women, whether they are homemakers, professionals or public servants, asserting that they are contributing toward society to make it more prosperous.

Azma Bukhari mentioned that Maryam Nawaz, as Punjab's first female Chief Minister, is devoted to empowering women and addressing their issues while prioritizing women's empowerment and overcoming their challenges.

She commended women for their greater diligence and commitment in every sector. The Minister also outlined various initiatives launched by the Punjab government, including the Pink Button initiative to combat harassment issues and the establishment of virtual police stations, which provide services to women, who may be reluctant to visit traditional police facilities.

She pointed out that women in Punjab are actively participating in various roles without facing discrimination, highlighting that many Assistant Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners working in the province are women, a significant achievement in the province history.

Azma Bukhari encouraged all women to recognize their strengths and to contribute positively to their families, communities and the nation, whether they are at home or in the workforce.

Numerous programs initiated regarding women empowerment: Azma Bukhari

Signature Brands to host Easter Egg and Cookie Decorating Stations

WASHINGTON, April 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- On April 21st, Signature Brands, LLC, holding company of PAAS, the leader in Easter Egg Coloring, will host decorating stations at the White House Easter Egg Roll. For over 30 years, Signature Brands has participated in this iconic event to celebrate the Easter holiday with families from across the country.

Signature Brands PAAS Easter Eggs Signature Brands

As part of the event, PAAS will host an Easter egg coloring activation where guests can explore their imagination and decorate colorful Easter eggs using PAAS Color Cups, magic crayons, and easy to use Grip N Dips. Additionally, PAWS, the lovable PAAS Easter Bunny, will be hopping about the lawn to interact with guests and take photos.

To round out the Easter decorating experience, Signature Brands will also host a cookie decorating station with their signature icings and sprinkles, all of which are proudly manufactured in Ocala, Florida.

"Participating in the White House Easter Egg Roll with the beloved tradition of coloring Easter eggs and decorating cookies means so much as it hits the core of what Signature Brands stands for – creating memories that will last a lifetime. We are happy to continue our long-standing White House Easter tradition of over 30 years and hope to continue it for another 30," said Joe Ens, CEO of Signature Brands.

This year, 94% of consumers who celebrate Easter and typically dye eggs, plan on decorating eggs this year per a third-party survey from PAAS conducted in January 2025. Signature Brands is happy to see that holiday traditions continue to remain strong as we head into Easter.

The White House Easter Egg Roll will take place on Monday, April 21, 2025, on the White House South Lawn. To learn more about PAAS decorating kits, please visit PAASEasterEggs.com.

About Signature Brands, LLC

Based in Ocala, Florida, Signature Brands operates a portfolio including PAAS® Easter Egg Decorating, Pumpkin Masters® Decorating Kits and GiftPop® Gifting Popcorn. Signature Brands is also one of the largest manufacturers, distributors, and marketers of dessert decorating products.

SOURCE Signature Brands

/PRNewswire/ -- On April 21st, Signature Brands, LLC, holding company of PAAS, the leader in Easter Egg Coloring, will host decorating stations at the White...

Signature Brands is Proud to Continue their 30+ Year Tradition of Easter Decorating at the White House Easter Egg Roll

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that the US may be ready to “move on” from efforts for a Russia-Ukraine peace deal if there is no progress in the coming days.

Speaking in Paris after a marathon day of landmark talks among US, Ukrainian and European officials, Rubio said the discussions had been constructive and produced an outline for steps towards peace.

French officials said a new meeting in the same format is expected in London in the coming days. Rubio said he could join that meeting, and it's expected early in the week.

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“We are now reaching a point where we need to decide whether this is even possible or not,” Rubio told reporters upon departure.

After weeks of efforts by the Trump administration to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine have failed to bring an end to the fighting, Rubio said the US administration wants to decide “in a matter of days whether or not this is doable in the next few weeks”.

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France hosted high-level talks on Thursday to discuss Ukraine and its security, the first time since President Donald Trump's inauguration that top American, Ukrainian and European officials are known to have met together to discuss an end to the war. The meetings came as European concerns grow about Trump's readiness to draw closer to Russia.

Rubio and presidential envoy Steve Witkoff have helped lead US efforts to seek peace. Several rounds of negotiations have been held in Saudi Arabia. Witkoff has met three times with Putin, Rubio said.

Moscow has effectively refused to accept a comprehensive ceasefire that Trump has pushed and Ukraine has endorsed. Russia has made it conditional on a halt in Ukraine's mobilisation efforts and Western arms supplies, which are demands rejected by Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia kept up a series of deadly strikes on Ukrainian cities, according to officials there, wounding scores of civilians days after missiles killed at least 34 during Palm Sunday celebrations in the northern city of Sumy.

One person died and over 60 others were hurt as Russia hit Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, early in the day, Ukraine's Emergency Service reported. Mayor Ihor Terekhov said cluster munitions struck a “densely populated” neighbourhood four times.

Russian drones also targeted a bakery in Sumy, less than a week after the deadly Palm Sunday strike there, killing a customer and wounding an employee, the regional prosecutor's office said. Photos released by the agency showed rows of Easter cakes stacked inside a devastated building, covered in thick dust, as a huge hole gaped in the wall behind them and rubble piled up on the floor.

Last Sunday's strike on Sumy, resulting in mass casualties, was the second large-scale missile attack to claim civilian lives in just over a week. Some 20 people, including nine children, died on April 4 as missiles struck Zelenskyy's hometown of Kryvyi Rih.

On Thursday, a Russian drone strike killed three civilians and wounded dozens more in Dnipro, a city in southeastern Ukraine, local authorities said. The attack came as a Ukrainian delegation sought security pledges from European powers during a high-level meeting in Paris that was joined by Rubio and Witkoff.

Regional Governor Serhii Lysak said one child died and five others were wounded in the Dnipro strike.

Was speaking in Paris after a marathon day of landmark talks among US, Ukrainian and European officials.

US will drop Ukraine-Russia peace efforts if no progress is made within days, suggests Rubio

Two people were killed and at least five others were wounded Thursday when a gunman opened fire at Florida State University, and police said a 20-year-old suspect — the son of a sheriff's deputy — was shot and taken into custody.

The university issued an active shooter alert at midday near the university's student union. By midafternoon, Florida State's alert system announced that law enforcement had “neutralised the threat.” The response to the shooting Some students and frightened parents hid in a bowling alley and crammed into a freight elevator inside the student union after hearing gunshots around 11.50 am ET outside the building. Ambulances, fire trucks and patrol vehicles from several law enforcement agencies rushed toward the campus.

Hundreds of students streamed away from the direction of the student union. Students were glued to their phones, some visibly emotional. The university instructed students and faculty to seek shelter and await further instructions.

Officers quickly arrived and shot and wounded the shooter after he refused to comply with commands, said Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell, who said the suspect refused to speak with police afterward. Revell said it's not believed that the suspect shot at officers.

A campus lockdown was lifted shortly after 3 pm EDT. Students and faculty were told to avoid the Student Union and several other areas still considered active crime scenes. People were otherwise free to move about the campus.

Dozens of patrol vehicles, including a forensics van, remained parked outside the student union. Officers blocked off the area with crime scene tape.

Florida State cancelled all classes and university events through Friday. All athletic events have been called off through Sunday.

Who are the victims?

The two people who died were not students at the university, said Florida State University Police Chief Jason Trumbower.

Five people were being treated at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, Trumbower said, and the shooter was also receiving medical attention.

A hospital spokesperson said one of the six people hospitalised was in critical condition and the other patients were in serious condition. The extent of the victims' injuries — and those of the suspect — was not immediately known.

Who is the suspect?

Leon County Sheriff Walter McNeil identified the suspect as Phoenix Ikner, the son of a sheriff's deputy within his department. McNeil said the deputy's former service weapon was used in the shooting and found at the scene.

McNeil said Ikner was a longstanding member of the sheriff's office's youth advisory council and engaged in a number of training programmes with the office. He added that the suspect's mother has been with the sheriff's office for over 18 years.

“We will make sure that we do everything we can to prosecute and make sure that we send a message to folks that this will never be tolerated here in Leon County, and I dare say across the state and across this nation,” McNeil said.

Trumbower said Ikner is believed to be an FSU student.

What are others saying about the shooting?

US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a social media post that the Justice Department was in touch with FBI agents on the scene. President Donald Trump said from the Oval Office that he had been “fully briefed.” “It's a horrible thing. It's horrible that things like this take place,” Trump said.

FSU president Richard McCullough said he visited some of the wounded students in the hospital.

McCullough called campus police officers “absolute heroes” and said their response to the shooting “prevented this from being a bigger tragedy.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a message posted on social media that “we are all Seminoles today. We stand by to help in any way that we can.” Where is Florida State? Founded in 1851, Florida State is one of Florida's 12 public universities, with its main campus located in Tallahassee, just minutes from the state Capitol building. About 44,300 students are enrolled in the university, according to the school's 2024 fact sheet.

The campus is located a few miles (kilometres) from Interstate 10, which crosses the northernmost part of the state from east to west. Tallahassee's rolling hill country stands in stark contrast to the rest of Florida's primarily flat landscape.

Florida AM University is also in Tallahassee, the state's capital city.

Have there been previous shootings at FSU? For some Florida State University faculty and staffers who have been on campus for many years, Thursday's campus shooting brought back memories of another shooting at the school's main library more than a decade ago.

Three people in 2014 were shot just outside and inside the entrance of Strozier Library in the middle of FSU's campus. Officers who arrived within two minutes of the first call shot and killed the gunman, 31-year-old Myron May.

Three bullets struck 21-year-old student Farhan “Ronny” Ahmed, including a shot that severely damaged his spine and left him paralysed from the waist down. The other two victims were library employee Nathan Scott, who was shot in the leg and later released from the hospital, and a student who was grazed by a bullet.

Two killed, five wounded in Florida State University shooting; suspect in custody, campus lockdown lifted.

Florida State University shooting: What to know about the deadly shooting

Chelsea progressed to the last four of the Conference League but Enzo Maresca’s problems continued to mount as Legia Warsaw won 2-1 at Stamford Bridge in their quarter-final second leg to deepen supporters’ frustrations with the head coach.

The Italian’s side will be favourites to reach the final in Wroclaw on May 28 but there was little here to strike fear into any opponent as the hosts were made to rely on their victory a week ago in Poland to go through 4-2 on aggregate.

A penalty by Czech forward Tomas Pekhart gave Legia the lead before Marc Cucurella levelled, but Chelsea were soon undone again when Steve Kapuadi scored early in the second half, as the Shed End glowed ominous red in the light of flares lit by the uproarious away fans.

The manner in which Chelsea were defeated at home by the team currently fifth in the Polish Ekstraklasa does not bode well for their bid to qualify for the Champions League and could have serious repercussions for the confidence fans place in Maresca, which has been sorely tested in recent months.

Cole Palmer was a surprise inclusion, Maresca perhaps sensing the chance for his number 10 finally to break a three-month scoring drought.

Legia did their best to oblige in the first five minutes, displaying abject carelessness on the ball and letting in first Palmer, who skewed badly wide when clean through, then Christopher Nkunku whose shot was saved.

A former Tottenham man quietened west London after nine minutes. Pekhart never played a first-team game for Spurs but left his mark on this tie, reaching a through-ball ahead of Filip Jorgensen who dived in recklessly and fouled.

The stand-in goalkeeper landed his ungainly routine by fumbling Pekhart’s weak penalty into the corner.

Chelsea Beaten at Warsaw, Qualify for Europa Conference League S’final – THISDAYLIVE

(L-R) France's Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot, Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio talk upon their arrival at the Quai d'Orsay, France's Minister of Foreign Affairs before a bilateral meeting with his French counterpart in Paris on April 17, 2025. [Photo/Agencies]

PARIS - France hosted a trilateral meeting on Ukraine on Thursday, marking the first time the United States, Ukraine and Europe sat at the same negotiation table since US President Donald Trump assumed office in January.

It was the first time Americans, Ukrainians, and Europeans have been "at the same table," French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told the News Channel LCI.

Barrot emphasized that the meeting was "essential" as it aimed to advance a shared objective: peace in Ukraine. However, he also stressed, "A lasting peace can only be achieved with the consent and contribution of the Europeans."

European leaders have voiced concern and frustration over the Trump administration's approach to talks on the Ukraine-Russia conflict that leave Kiev and its European backers on the sideline.

They have consistently emphasized that "no durable peace" can be achieved in Ukraine without European participation in the talks.

A second round of such talks is scheduled to take place in London next week, according to LCI.

US-Ukraine-Europe trilateral talks held in Paris

About 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of Robert F Kennedy, including handwritten notes by the assassin, who said the US senator and Democratic presidential candidate “must be disposed of” and acknowledged an obsession with killing him.

The release continued the disclosure of national secrets ordered by Donald Trump after he began his second presidency in January. It comes a month after unredacted files related to the 1963 assassination of president John F Kennedy were disclosed. The earlier documents gave curious readers more details about cold- war era covert US operations in other nations but did not initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK, RFK’s brother.

Robert Kennedy was fatally shot on 5 June 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, moments after giving a speech celebrating his victory in California’s presidential primary. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison.

The files included pictures of handwritten notes by Sirhan.

“RFK must be disposed of like his brother was,” read the writing on the outside of an empty envelope with the return address from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles.

Sirhan also filled a page of a Pasadena City College notebook with variations of “RFK must die” and “RFK must be killed.” In a note dated 18 May 1968, he wrote: “My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more of an unshakable obsession.”

In another of the newly released documents, the assassin said he advocated for “the overthrow of the current president”. The Democrat Lyndon Johnson was in the White House at the time of RFK’s death.

“I have no absolute plans yet, but soon will compose them,” wrote Sirhan, who pledged support for communist Russia and China.

The newly released files also included notes from interviews with people who knew Sirhan from a wide variety of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors and coworkers. While some described him as “a friendly, kind and generous person”, others depicted a brooding and “impressionable” young man who felt strongly about his political convictions and briefly believed in mysticism.

According to the files, Sirhan told his garbage collector that he planned to kill Kennedy shortly after Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated on 4 April 1968. The co-worker, a Black man, said he planned to vote for Kennedy because he would help Black people.

“Well, I don’t agree,” Sirhan replied, the man told investigators. “I am planning on shooting the son of a bitch”.

FBI documents describe interviews with a group of tourists who had heard rumors about Kennedy being shot weeks before his death. Several people who visited Israel in May 1968 said a tour guide told them Kennedy had been shot. One person said he heard that an attempt on Kennedy’s life had been made in Milwaukee. Another heard that he was shot in Nebraska.

The National Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website. Many files related to the assassination had been previously released – but others had not been digitized and sat for decades in federal government storage facilities.

Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But he’s also been deeply suspicious for years of the government’s intelligence agencies. His administration’s release of once-hidden files opens the door for additional public scrutiny and questions about the operations and conclusions of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI.

Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the release of government documents related to the assassinations of Robert F Kennedy and King after their killings within two months of each other.

Lawyers for Kennedy’s killer have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to society. And in 2021, a parole board deemed Sirhan suitable for release. But California governor Gavin Newson rejected the decision in 2022, keeping him in state prison. In 2023 , a different panel denied him release, saying he still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot Kennedy.

The late senator’s son Robert F Kennedy Jr, who now serves as Trump’s health and human services secretary, commended the president and his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, for what he called their “courage” and “dogged efforts” to release the files.

“Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,” Kennedy Jr said in a statement.

Release of files, ordered by Trump, includes notes from killer, who said presidential candidate ‘must be disposed of’

US releases thousands of files related to Robert F Kennedy assassination

Open this photo in gallery: In this photo released by the Italian Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps on April 17, rescuers reach for the smashed gondola of the Mt. Faito cable car near Naples in southern Italy.Soccorso Alpino e Speleologico/The Canadian Press

A cable car carrying tourists south of Naples crashed to the ground Thursday after a cable snapped, killing at least four people and critically injuring one, officials said.

The snapped cable brought both the upward and downward-going cable cars to a halt as they traversed Monte Faito in the town of Castellammare di Stabia. The upward cable car eventually crashed, causing the fatalities and injury, while eight tourists and an operator were evacuated from the downward cable car, Naples Prefect Michele de Bari said.

“The traction cable broke. The emergency brake downstream worked, but evidently not the one on the cabin that was entering the station,” said Castellammare Mayor Luigi Vicinanza.

Italy’s alpine rescue, along with firefighters, police and civil protection services responded to the accident.

The accident occurred just a week after the cable car, popular for its views of Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples, reopened for the season.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni expressed her condolences for the victims and their families and said she was in touch with rescuers. She was in Washington, D.C., where she met with U.S. President Donald Trump.

The incident happened just a week after the destination reopened for the season

Cable car accident in southern Italy kills at least 4 people

Open this photo in gallery: Technicians lift the mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope using a crane at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in 2017.Laura Betz/The Associated Press

In a potential landmark discovery, scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope have obtained what they call the strongest signs yet of possible life beyond our solar system, detecting in an alien planet’s atmosphere the chemical fingerprints of gases that on Earth are produced only by biological processes.

The two gases – dimethyl sulfide, or DMS, and dimethyl disulfide, or DMDS – involved in Webb’s observations of the planet named K2-18 b are generated on Earth by living organisms, primarily microbial life such as marine phytoplankton – algae.

This suggests the planet may be teeming with microbial life, the researchers said. They stressed, however, that they are not announcing the discovery of actual living organisms but rather a possible biosignature – an indicator of a biological process – and that the findings should be viewed cautiously, with more observations needed.

In a major discovery, scientists using the James Webb Telescope found the strongest signs yet of possible life beyond our solar system – gases in a planet’s atmosphere that, on Earth, come only from living things. Reuters

Nonetheless, they voiced excitement. These are the first hints of an alien world that is possibly inhabited, said astrophysicist Nikku Madhusudhan of the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, lead author of the study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“This is a transformational moment in the search for life beyond the solar system, where we have demonstrated that it is possible to detect biosignatures in potentially habitable planets with current facilities. We have entered the era of observational astrobiology,” Madhusudhan said.

Madhusudhan noted that there are various efforts under way searching for signs of life in our solar system, including various claims of environments that might be conducive to life in places like Mars, Venus and various icy moons.

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K2-18 b is 8.6 times as massive as Earth and has a diameter about 2.6 times as large as our planet.

It orbits in the “habitable zone” – a distance where liquid water, a key ingredient for life, can exist on a planetary surface – around a red dwarf star smaller and less luminous than our sun, located about 124 light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). One other planet also has been identified orbiting this star.

About 5,800 planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, have been discovered since the 1990s. Scientists have hypothesized the existence of exoplanets called hycean worlds – covered by a liquid water ocean habitable by microorganisms and with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere.

Earlier observations by Webb, which was launched in 2021 and became operational in 2022, had identified methane and carbon dioxide in K2-18 b’s atmosphere, the first time that carbon-based molecules were discovered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet in a star’s habitable zone.

“The only scenario that currently explains all the data obtained so far from JWST (James Webb Space Telescope), including the past and present observations, is one where K2-18 b is a hycean world teeming with life,” Madhusudhan said. “However, we need to be open and continue exploring other scenarios.”

Madhusudhan said that with hycean worlds, if they exist, “we are talking about microbial life, possibly like what we see in the Earth’s oceans.” Their oceans are hypothesized to be warmer than Earth's. Asked about possible multicellular organisms or even intelligent life, Madhusudhan said, “We won’t be able to answer this question at this stage. The baseline assumption is of simple microbial life.”

DMS and DMDS, both from the same chemical family, have been predicted as important exoplanet biosignatures. Webb found that one or the other, or possibly both, were present in the planet’s atmosphere at a 99.7% confidence level, meaning there is still a 0.3% chance of the observation being a statistical fluke.

The gases were detected at atmospheric concentrations of more than 10 parts per million by volume.

“For reference, this is thousands of times higher than their concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere, and cannot be explained without biological activity based on existing knowledge,” Madhusudhan said.

Scientists not involved in the study counselled circumspection.

“The rich data from K2-18 b make it a tantalizing world,” said Christopher Glein, principal scientist at the Space Science Division of the Southwest Research Institute in Texas. “These latest data are a valuable contribution to our understanding. Yet, we must be very careful to test the data as thoroughly as possible. I look forward to seeing additional, independent work on the data analysis starting as soon as next week.”

K2-18 b is part of the “sub-Neptune” class of planets, with a diameter greater than Earth’s but less than that of Neptune, our solar system’s smallest gas planet.

To ascertain the chemical composition of an exoplanet’s atmosphere, astronomers analyze the light from its host star as the planet passes in front of it from the perspective of Earth, called the transit method. As the planet transits, Webb can detect a decrease in stellar brightness, and a small fraction of starlight passes through the planetary atmosphere before being detected by the telescope. This lets scientists determine the constituent gases of the planet’s atmosphere.

Webb’s previous observations of this planet provided a tentative hint of DMS. Its new observations used a different instrument and a different wavelength range of light.

The “Holy Grail” of exoplanet science, Madhusudhan said, is to find evidence of life on an Earth-like planet beyond our solar system. Madhusudhan said that our species for thousands of years has wondered “are we alone” in the universe, and now might be within just a few years of detecting possible alien life on a hycean world.

But Madhusudhan still urged caution.

“First we need to repeat the observations two to three times to make sure the signal we are seeing is robust and to increase the detection significance” to the level at which the odds of a statistical fluke are below roughly one in a million, Madhusudhan said.

“Second, we need more theoretical and experimental studies to make sure whether or not there is another abiotic mechanism (one not involving biological processes) to make DMS or DMDS in a planetary atmosphere like that of K2-18 b. Even though previous studies have suggested them (as) robust biosignatures even for K2-18 b, we need to remain open and pursue other possibilities,” Madhusudhan said.

So the findings represent “a big if” on whether the observations are due to life, and it is in “no one’s interest to claim prematurely that we have detected life,” Madhusudhan said.

Researchers have detected in an alien planet’s atmosphere the chemical fingerprints of gases that on Earth are produced only by biological processes

Scientists find strongest evidence yet of possible life on an alien planet

Barcelona Open 2025: Casper Ruud Sinks Medjedovic To Reach Quarters And Keep Title Defense Alive

Published By :

AFP

Last Updated: April 17, 2025, 07:47 IST

Meanwhile, runner-up to Ruud in 2024, third seed Stefanos Tsitsipas steered into the quarter-finals with a 7-6 (7/4), 6-4 win over American Sebastian Korda.

Casper Ruud in action (AFP)

Barcelona Open holder Casper Ruud ousted Hamad Medjedovic 7-5, 7-5 to reach the quarter-finals on Wednesday.

The Norwegian, ranked 10th in the world, conceded a break in the first game of the first set but pulled level at 4-4 with one of his own.

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Ruud survived four break points for a 6-5 lead and then converted his third set point to take the first set.

The 26-year-old, a three-time Grand Slam runner-up, once again came from a break down in the second set to triumph, breaking to love against the Serb to wrap up his win.

“That was quite fortunate today. I’m also happy with my mentality, that I didn’t give up, that I tried to hang in there," said Ruud.

“It was a little bit too much up and down today for my personal liking."

Runner-up to Ruud in 2024, third seed Stefanos Tsitsipas steered into the quarter-finals with a 7-6 (7/4), 6-4 win over American Sebastian Korda.

The Greek came up against spirited opposition, with both players strong on their serve, but did not concede a break point in his straight sets win.

Tsitsipas will face Frenchman Arthur Fils, who breezed past Spain’s Pedro Martinez in straight sets 6-3, 6-2.

Ranked 14th in the world, Fils conceded just one break point in the match, which the 20-year-old saved.

“I think (Fils) is a great competitor, I’ve played him twice and had no luck," said Tsitsipas.

“I’m going to change a few things compared to those two matches."

Holger Rune battled back from a set down to beat Sebastian Baez 4-6, 6-1, 6-2.

The world number 13 pulled out of Monte Carlo with food poisoning last week but roared back to defeat his Argentine opponent in three sets on the clay after a troubled opening.

Baez broke in the first game, consolidating for a 2-0 advantage and served it out to claim the first set, with Rune committing 15 unforced errors to 10 winners.

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However, the Dane broke three times in the second set to get back on track and did the same again in the decider, converting his third match point.

On Thursday, world number two Carlos Alcaraz will face Laslo Djere in another second-round match, with the Spanish home favourite aiming for his third Barcelona Open title.

Location : Spain

First Published: April 17, 2025, 07:47 IST

Meanwhile, runner-up to Ruud in 2024, third seed Stefanos Tsitsipas steered into the quarter-finals with a 7-6 (7/4), 6-4 win over American Sebastian Korda.

Barcelona Open 2025: Casper Ruud Sinks Medjedovic To Reach Quarters And Keep Title Defense Alive

The Associated Press

Chinese President Xi Jinping inspects honor guards during the official welcoming ceremony at the national palace in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Wednesday, April 16, 2025.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China appointed a new trade negotiator Wednesday in the midst of its tariff fight with the United States as the world’s two largest economies steadily increase tariffs on each other’s goods.

China’s government said Li Chenggang replaces Wang Shouwen, who participated in negotiations for the countries’ 2020 trade deal.

China faces 145% taxes on exports to the U.S., while the Trump administration gave dozens of other countries a 90-day reprieve for most duties. Beijing has hit back at the U.S. with 125% tariffs on American exports, while stressing its determination to keep its own markets open to trade and investment.

Earlier on Wednesday, China announced its economy expanded at a 5.4% annual pace in January-March, supported by strong exports. Analysts are forecasting that the world’s second largest economy will slow significantly in coming months, however, as tariffs on U.S. imports from China take effect.

Exports were a strong factor in China’s 5% annual growth rate in 2024. The official target for this year is also about 5%.

In the near term, the tariffs will put pressure on China’s economy, but they won’t derail long-run growth, Sheng Laiyun, a spokesperson for the National Bureau of Statistics, told reporters earlier.

It wasn’t clear why China was changing trade negotiators.

The decision comes as Chinese officials say the country has multiple options to respond to U.S. actions, including relying more on its own vast market of 1.4 billion consumers and on Europe and countries in the global south.

But as China’s domestic consumption continues to languish, it will be difficult to replace the U.S. consumer.

China has also responded to the U.S. by imposing more export controls on rare earths, which include materials used in high-tech products, aerospace manufacturing and the defense sector.

Both sides are now running out of tariff options, leaving them in a “near-stalemate,” said Sun Chenghao, a fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.

China will likely retain its focus on strengthening economic resilience against external shocks, including deepening trade ties with neighboring countries and promoting domestic consumption by shifting away from exports, Sun said.

A U.S. concession on fentanyl or ownership of TikTok could prompt a reciprocal move from Beijing, he added.

However, communication remains “far from being smooth,” Sun said, pointing out that Trump only recently appointed Jamieson Greer as top trade negotiator, and many other key positions remain empty.

Prior to his appointment as trade negotiator, Li spent about 4 1/2 years as China’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization, the body that governs global commerce. Beijing has appealed to it in its tariff dispute with the U.S.

Li was also deputy permanent representative to the Chinese delegation to the U.N. office in Geneva and other international organizations in Switzerland.

Perhaps more so than his predecessor Wang, Li’s experience at the Commerce Ministry and his participation in negotiating China’s accession to the WTO more than 20 years ago stand him in good stead as China refuses to cave in to U.S. demands, said Tu Xinquan, director of the China Institute for WTO Studies at the University of International Business and Economics.

Still, higher-ranking leaders from President Xi Jinping on down are likely to chart the course, with Li representing their case in any talks with the U.S., Tu said.

“There might be another style of negotiations. Li Chenggang is an open-minded person and supports free trade,” Tu added.

Asked about the possibility of talks with the U.S., Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said the U.S. had begun the tariff spat and China was only taking “necessary countermeasures” to defend its rights and interests.

“If the U.S. truly wants to resolve the issue through dialogue and negotiation, it should stop using maximum pressure and stop threats and blackmail. For any dialogue to happen, it must be based on equality, respect and mutual benefit,” Lin told a daily briefing.

Xi has been making the case for China as a source of “stability and certainty” in global free trade as he tours Southeast Asia this week — implying that China is a more reliable trade partner than the U.S.

After visiting Vietnam, he arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, later Tuesday, for a three-day visit and will end with a stop in Cambodia. In Malaysia, Xi is expected to discuss a free trade agreement between China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nation, one of several funds and agreements China has led as a means of sidestepping organizations and mechanisms dominated by the U.S. and the West.

China Appoints a New Trade Negotiator during Tariff Fight with the US

• WTO warns of ‘severe negative consequences’ after US slaps levies of up to 245pc on some Chinese sectors

• In Malaysia, Xi reiterates call for unity against US ‘unilateralism and protectionism’

GENEVA / WASHINGTON: Global trade is expected to plummet this year following US President Donald Trump’s tariff offensive, fuelling uncertainty that threatens “severe negative consequences” for the world, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) warned on Wednesday.

Since returning to office, Trump has imposed staggering tariffs on the imports of goods from around the world. But while he placed a brief pause on made a U-turn on steeper tariffs for dozens of countries, Trump has escalated a trade war with China, slapping 145 per cent levies on Chinese goods.

Beijing has countered that with a 125 per cent duty on all US products.

In the latest bout of one-upmanship, the White House has said that China could face tariffs of up to 245pc. Trump initially imposed 20pc tariffs on imports from China over its alleged role in the fentanyl supply chain, then added 125pc over trade practices that Washington deems unfair.

“If the US really wants to resolve the issue through dialogue and negotiation, it should stop exerting extreme pressure, stop threatening and blackmailing, and talk to China on the basis of equality, respect and mutual benefit,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said, reacting to the announcement.

The reciprocal tariffs add onto any existing tariffs already in place. For example, the Biden administration had placed a 100pc levy on Chinese Electric Vehicles. With the reciprocal tariffs accounted for, this is one sector that could face the maximum 245pc duty.

Trump has also ordered a probe into potential new tariffs on all US critical minerals imports, which is being seen as a major escalation. The order lays bare what manufacturers, industry consultants, academics and others have long warned Washington about: that the US is overly reliant on Beijing and others for processed versions of the minerals that power its entire economy.

China is a top global producer of 30 of the 50 minerals considered critical by the US Geological Survey, for example, and has been curtailing exports in recent months.

Trump signed an order directing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to begin a national security review under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

That is the same law Trump used in his first term to impose 25pc global tariffs on steel and aluminum and one he used in February to launch a probe into potential copper tariffs.

Asked for comment on the order, China’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that “artificial interference in the supply chain violates the laws of the market economy and international trade rules.”

Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping continued to call on Asian nations to unite in resisting geopolitical confrontation, unilateralism and protectionism, as he aims to consolidate ties with some of China’s closest neighbours.

President Xi is in Malaysia as part of a three-nation Southeast Asian trip that includes Vietnam and Cambodia.

“In the face of shocks to the current international order and economic globalisation, our two nations will stand united with other countries in the region to jointly resist the undercurrents of geopolitical and camp-based confrontation, overcome the countercurrents of unilateralism and protectionism, and safeguard the promising prospects for development in our shared Asian home,” he said at an event with Malaysian PM Anwar Ibrahim.

He did not directly refer to the United States in his remarks in Kuala Lumpur.

Published in Dawn, April 17th, 2025

WTO warns of "severe negative consequences" after US slaps levies of up to 245pc on some Chinese sectors.

Dismal outlook for trade as US-China standoff deepens

Arsenal come of age with Madrid masterclass

Arsenal's Bukayo Saka scores their first goal. Photo: Action Images via Reuters

Arsenal dethroned the kings of the European Champions League with ease as a 5-1 aggregate rout of Real Madrid sent the Gunners into the semi-finals for the first time since 2009.



A commanding 3-0 first leg victory, lit up by two stunning Declan Rice free-kicks, laid the foundations in London.



But a 2-1 win in the cauldron of the Santiago Bernabeu to complete the job on Wednesday was a coming of age performance for Mikel Arteta's rising stars.



Arteta's only major trophy in five and a half years in charge remains the 2020 FA Cup just months into his reign.



But the Spaniard has transformed a sleeping giant back into serial contenders for major honours.



"I sensed before I signed for the club that we were on an upwards trajectory," said Rice, who rejected the advances of Manchester City to join Arsenal for a club record US$139 million in 2023.



"This club is going to do special things in the coming years. We all fully believe in it, we have full trust in this manager - he's unbelievable!"



Despite never winning the competition, Arsenal were part of the Champions League furniture in the early years of former manager Arsene Wenger's reign.



Between 2000 and 2017 they never failed to qualify for Europe's elite competition.



But when that run came to an end, they spent six years without Champions League football.



Slowly Arteta rebuilt Arsenal back into a force around a core of promising talent now coming into their prime.



Not for the first time in his young career, Bukayo Saka did not let a missed penalty on the big stage affect him.



Saka's early spot-kick was saved by Thibaut Courtois, giving Madrid belief another miraculous Champions League comeback was on for the Spanish giants.



But the England international extinguished that hope with a sumptuous dink over the giant Belgian keeper 25 minutes from time to give Arsenal the lead on the night.



William Saliba blotted what was an otherwise flawless display over two legs to shut down his French international team-mate Kylian Mbappe moments later as Vinicius Junior pounced to bring Real level.



But Martinelli then put the icing on the cake for the Gunners in added time to seal a 2-1 victory on the night, 5-1 on aggregate.



Arsenal will next face Paris St Germain for a place in the final. (Agencies)

Arsenal dethroned the kings of the European Champions League with ease as a 5-1 aggregate rout of Real Madrid sent the Gunners into the semi-finals fo...

Arsenal come of age with Madrid masterclass

[Photo/Agencies]

China has repeatedly emphasized that threats, tariffs and sanctions do not work and are instead counterproductive. However, the United States administration insists on going down the paths of unilateralism, protectionism and economic bullying in its bid to contain China, ultimately setting off a trade war.

The White House last week confirmed that it has raised tariff rates on Chinese imports to as high as 145 percent. Although it was later revealed that the US had excluded smartphones, computers, and other consumer electronics from tariffs, US President Donald Trump then denied there would be exceptions for those products.

A century of oppression by foreign powers has taught China that concessions and compromises arrived at through bullying ultimately lead to disgrace. Thus the new US levies will only strengthen the Chinese people's resolve to resist and "fight till the end", as pledged by China's Ministry of Commerce.

Trump should remember the debacle the trade war against China resulted in during his first term, when stiff Chinese resistance against high tariffs and sanctions dashed all hopes of slashing the US trade deficit.

According to data from the US Census Bureau, the country's total trade volume in 2017 was $3.8 trillion, with a trade deficit of $792 billion. In 2024, its total trade was worth $5.33 trillion, and the trade deficit ballooned to $1.2 trillion. Simultaneously, bilateral trade between the US and China shrank from $635.2 billion in 2017 to $582.5 billion in 2024. The trade deficit followed the trend and shrunk from $375.2 billion in 2017 to $295.4 billion in 2024. The figures clearly show that the US trade deficit continues to grow despite tariff increases.

This time, despite the US administration targeting almost all of China's trading partners, it will still be impossible to achieve the desired results.

The US tariffs are blatant violations of free-trade principles and rules, especially those of the World Trade Organization. For decades the world has been on the free trade track with continuous efforts made — largely led by the US — to cut tariffs bilaterally, multilaterally and even globally. By reversing the trend, the current administration is disrupting the economic order the US helped create, betraying the trust the world community had in the US, and profiteering at the cost of everybody else.

The White House is pleased that dozens of countries are seeking deals on tariff cuts under pressure. However, such high-handed bullying may win short-term gains, but will certainly erode trust and moral integrity.

Furthermore, the new wave of tariffs will enhance China's determination to fight back and secure its interests. Past experiences have made China better prepared to face the renewed trade war. Thus it did not hesitate to hit back against the unfair tariffs imposed by the US.

China's swift and resolute responses signal strengthened guard. As the current US administration sharply escalated additional tariffs imposed on Chinese goods, China began responding with restrictions on more rare earth metals and dual-use materials, used widely in the US defense and aerospace industries.

China has been preparing for such turmoil for long and has reached out to other countries to do trade and business in anticipation of adverse changes. Under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, China has invested globally to create alternative avenues and mechanisms, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, China International Import Expo and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

These initiatives are paying off. The BRI has become the world's largest economic and investment initiative with more than 150 participants. CIIE has proved to be a great success, providing over 2,900 new technologies, products and services during the last seven years. This year, it provided more than 120 free stalls for 37 least-developed countries. AIIB is reshaping economic order by adopting principles of sustainability, innovation and prosperity for the people. AIIB functions as intended to deliver an apolitical, constructive, balanced and consensus-oriented decision culture, which is reflected in its funding decisions. India is the largest borrower from AIIB, having received $9.7 billion, followed by the Philippines with about $2 billion.

The resilience of the Chinese economy has vast potential thanks to effective decision-making under a strong central leadership. Multiple events this year, especially the two sessions, or the annual meetings of China's top legislature, the National People's Congress, and its top political advisory body, the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, have shown that China is focused on the domestic front to prepare for the future. Policies and mechanisms are at work to strengthen the innovation base, enhance domestic consumption, ensure monetary health and diversify domestic supply chains to face uncertain times.

The US will find it increasingly hard to cope with rising protests at home and abroad against the backdrop of the strong collective will of the Chinese. The US citizens will soon realize they must face the harsh facts by other means: The goal of the administration to make manufacturing return is illusory, judging from the tariffs and high production costs in the US; the wish to reduce US deficits to the minimum by high tariffs will remain just that as it is impossible as deficits result from a number of economic operations embedded with the country itself; and, the White House's threats to suppress China will only turn China stronger and more popular.

Thus the US should refrain from escalating a trade war, which would be a lose-lose proposition that can lead the world toward a recession. The wise policy option would be to immediately engage with China to find a win-win approach for cooperation and solving outstanding issues. It will be beneficial for the US, China and the whole world.

The author is CEO of the Asian Institute of Eco-civilization Research and Development in Pakistan.

China has repeatedly emphasized that threats, tariffs and sanctions do not work and are instead counterproductive. However, the United States administration insists on going down the paths of unilateralism, protectionism and economic bullying in its bid to contain China, ultimately setting off a trade war.

China will 'fight till end' in trade war

Manchester United score twice in extra time to win quarterfinal against Lyon at Old Trafford, capped off by Harry Maguire’s dramatic 121st minute game-winning goal.

Harry Maguire scored in the dying seconds of extra time to help Manchester United snatch a place in the Europa League semifinals with a sensational 7-6 aggregate victory over Olympique Lyonnais in their quarterfinal.

A thrilling second leg tie was taken into extra time after United threw away a two-goal lead on the night to be pegged back to 2-2 after 90 minutes, with goals from Rayan Cherki and Alexandre Lacazette putting Lyon on the verge of the semifinals at a stunned Old Trafford on Thursday.

However, United made their numerical advantage, given to them after Corentin Tolisso’s late red card in normal time, count. Maguire sent Old Trafford into delirium with his 121st-minute header, which sealed a 5-4 victory in the second leg.

It was the hosts who took an early lead, Manuel Ugarte slotting home 10 minutes in after a fine team move, before Diogo Dalot added a second just before the break to double the hosts’ lead.

As the minutes ticked on, however, the nerves crept in, and two goals in six second-half minutes from Tolisso and Nicolas Tagliafico drew the match and left the tie level in a sensational fashion.

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Tolisso’s late sending off swung the momentum back in United’s favour, but Cherki’s fine strike and Lacazzette’s calmly taken penalty seemingly settled the exhilarating contest.

Fernandes’s spot kick straight down the other end gave the home supporters hope of another dramatic finale, with Maguire having the final say, with United heading through to face Athletic Bilbao in the last four.

Tottenham overcome Frankfurt

Tottenham also put its domestic problems to one side by sealing a place in the last four.

Dominic Solanke’s first-half penalty secured a 1-0 win over Eintracht Frankfurt and a 2-1 aggregate victory.

The win keeps alive the Spurs’ hopes of salvaging a desperate campaign that has left them languishing in 15th place in the Premier League. The deep run in the second-tier competition has provided rare moments of optimism – and triumph would not only deliver a first trophy since 2008, but qualification for next year’s Champions League.

Athletic Bilbao also advanced to the semifinals after a 2-0 win over the Rangers following a 0-0 draw in the first leg.

Lazio vs Bodo/Glimt also went to extra time. Lazio won 2-0 on the night and levelled the tie at 2-2 on aggregate.

Spurs needed the assistance of VAR when awarded a penalty for a foul by Frankfurt goalkeeper Kaua Santos on James Maddison.

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Solanke fired down the middle for the decisive goal in the 43rd minute.

Oihan Sancet and Nico Williams were on target for Bilbao against the Rangers at San Mames.

Manchester United score twice in extra time against Lyon, capped off by Harry Maguire’s 121st minute winner.

Man Utd reach Europa League semifinals with late Maguire goal against Lyon

What we know about the FSU shooting suspect

What we know about the FSU shooting suspect

Two people were killed and six were injured after an active shooter opened fire on the Florida State University campus in Tallahassee on Thursday, law enforcement said at a news conference. The injured victims and the suspected shooter were brought to a local hospital.

The alleged gunman has been identified as 20-year-old Phoenix Ikner, an FSU student who is the son of a Leon County sheriff's deputy, Leon County Sheriff Walter McNeil said at the briefing.

The suspect was taken into custody after being shot by police, officials said, adding that he invoked his right not to speak with police.

Investigators say the suspect used his mother's former service weapon, now owned by her as a personal handgun, which was found at the scene. They said he was also armed with a shotgun.

CBS News later learned that the sheriff's deputy is the suspect's stepmother, and that his birth parents had been engaged in a years-long custody dispute that began in 2007 and lasted until 2023.

The sheriff's deputy has been at the agency for more than 18 years and her service to the community has been exceptional, the sheriff said. "Unfortunately her son had access to one of her weapons," Sheriff McNeil said. He also said that the alleged shooter was a longstanding member of the Leon County Sheriff's Office citizen advisory or youth advisory council and engaged in a number of their training programs. He had "been steeped in the Leon County Sheriff Office's family," the sheriff said.

Police said the two people killed in the shooting were not students. The victims' names have not been released.

Tallahassee police said at about 3:15 p.m. ET that the campus has been secured, although multiple law enforcement agencies remain on site for the ongoing investigation. "Law enforcement has neutralized the threat," FSU tweeted. The university said the student union and several other buildings on campus should be avoided "as they are still considered an active crime scene."

Police responded to an active shooter call from the area of the student union around 12:01 p.m., FSU said. Police later said the shooter opened fire at about 11:50 a.m. The school sent an alert warning those on campus to "seek shelter and await further instructions." The university also cautioned students to lock and stay away from all doors and windows.

The wounded are being treated at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare Hospital, a hospital spokesperson confirmed to CBS News Miami. The hospital said all patients were in fair condition as of around 4:30 p.m. Thursday.

In an update Friday morning, the hospital said two of the patients are expected to be discharged Friday, while three have improved and are in good condition and one remains in fair condition.

Law enforcement officers at Florida State University after a mass shooting on the FSU campus in Tallahassee on April 17, 2025. Alicia Devine/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images via REUTERS

Ava Arenado, an FSU student who was in class when the university alert went out, described a terrifying scene.

"One of my classmates got an alert on her phone and announced it to the rest of the class," Arenado told CBS News Miami. "My teacher immediately started barricading the door… and then another student said she'd rather go home, so we all just kind of ran to our cars."

FSU student Blake Leonard told CBS News Miami he heard a total of about 30 shots fired. Leonard said he was about 400 feet from the student union when he heard gunfire and started running.

"I heard about 12 shots go off. In my head I thought it was construction at first, until I looked behind me and saw people running from the union towards my direction, and then I heard another 12 or 15 shots go off, so I started running away from there too," he said.

Florida State University students wait for news amid an active shooter incident at the school's campus in Tallahassee, Fla., on Thursday, April 17, 2025 Kate Payne / AP

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tweeted, "Our prayers are with our FSU family."

The FBI and ATF said they had agents at the scene to assist local law enforcement.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Trump has been briefed on the shooting, and Mr. Trump made brief remarks about it Thursday afternoon.

"It's a shame. It's a horrible thing. Horrible thing. Things like this take place. And we'll have more to say about it later," Mr. Trump said.

Asked later if he would take a look at gun laws in light of the shooting, the president said, "Well, I'm going to have to look. I'm a big advocate of the Second Amendment. ... These things are terrible. But the gun doesn't do the shooting, the people do."

The university said classes and all events were canceled through Friday, and sports events canceled through Sunday.

Thursday's incident was not the first time there was a shooting at the school. Three people were shot in the university's library in 2014, before the gunman, a former student, was shot by police.

So far in 2025, there have been 80 mass shootings in the U.S., including the most recent incident at Florida State University, according to the Gun Violence Archive. That's a little more than five incidents per week. In all of 2024, there were 502 incidents, which is a little less than 10 incidents per week.

The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as an incident where four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter.

Law enforcement said the suspected shooter is the 20-year-old son of a Leon County sheriff's deputy and a student at FSU.

FSU mass shooting kills 2 people, injures 6; suspect in custody

JK Rowling has celebrated a new law which defines women by biologcal sex

The Supreme Court today ruled that the term "woman" is defined by biological sex, rather than gender, under the Equality Act of 2010. Amid sexism claims where those who were born male claimed to have been subjected to discrimination for being females, a Scottish campaign group appealed to the court - and succeeded. JK Rowling was in high spirits today as she took to X and exclaimed: "It took three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women with an army behind them to get this case heard by the Supreme Court and, in winning, they’ve protected the rights of women and girls across the UK." In a show of solidarity towards the campaign group, she added: "@ForWomenScot, I’m so proud to know you." Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch also celebrated the new ruling, as she wrote: "Saying 'trans women are women' was never true in fact and now isn’t true in law, either. A victory for all of the women who faced personal abuse or lost their jobs for stating the obvious. "

Kemi Badenoch was also delighted to hear about the new law

She continued: "Women are women and men are men: you cannot change your biological sex. The era of Keir Starmer telling us that some women have penises has come to an end. Hallelujah!" Dragons' Den investor Duncan Bannatyne, whose portfolio includes gyms, then spoke out on how the new ruling had impacted his business interests. "I hope all gym owners will join me now in agreeing that single sex spaces for women means biological women. No gym should ever allow men into woman’s changing rooms." Former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies, who has vocally challenged transgender rights for years, chimed in to say: "From now on I don’t want to see any media outlet refer to a man in a dress who rapes, abuses or murders someone as a woman! These are NOT our crimes."

Piers Morgan took a balanced view, writing on his X account: "The consequence of today’s UK Supreme Court ruling on women/biology is that while trans people should be entitled to the same rights to fairness, equality and safety as anyone else - and I sincerely believe that - they can’t erode women’s rights in the process. End." Then British broadcaster Andrew Neil offered his take, stating: "The Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that only people who are born female should be protected from discrimination as a woman under the Equality Act. It says much about the absurdities of our age that such a common sense statement should be regarded as a landmark ruling — or had to be taken all the way to the SC. " The ruling also comes after a series of high profile gender wars which saw transgender criminals identifying as female after committing crimes and going on to be placed in female prisons. Meanwhile, the likes of Piers Morgan have vociferously disagreed with those who were born male competing in women's sports, arguing that their sex at birth gives them innate biological advantages when it comes to physical strength. Transgender campaigners have fought for the right to be included in the "women" category, but the latest law now seems to have ruled that out - at least within the boundaries of the Equality Act.

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Broadcaster Piers Morgan, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, author JK Rowling and Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies were among those praising the new law.

Piers Morgan and JK Rowling lead celebs praising new UK law on sex and gender

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Despite the reprieve, the world has good reason to be concerned about Trump’s tariff threats. Apart from being extremely unreasonable, they are highly destructive to the global economy.

On “ Liberation Day ”, Trump saved his highest tariffs for some of the world’s most underdeveloped countries. In Asia, Cambodia faced 49 per cent and Bangladesh 37 per cent; these rates could come into effect after the 90-day pause period.

Equally deplorable, Trump’s “Liberation Day” imposed a baseline 10 per cent levy on imports that is still in effect. Many of these countries export garments, footwear and primary products such as minerals to the US. Since the Trump administration has no clear plan to develop these sectors, it is plausible that his tariff war is meant to boost US government revenue and help fund tax cuts.

Moreover, Trump’s sweeping tariffs are shaking the global trading system to the core. Under the World Trade Organization , countries are required to treat each other equally. Members must apply the same tariff rates to all parties. Charging some members higher rates than others, as the reciprocal tariffs threaten to do, stands against the cornerstone of the global trading system.

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Trump’s trade policy also contravenes WTO rules by increasing US import duties without the agreement of other WTO members. All WTO members have a bound rate – the ceiling on their custom tariff rates. These rates are the result of decade-long negotiations, often under US leadership, to balance the interests of all members.

Trump’s appetite exceeds what most nations can offer. He couldn’t care less if negotiations are not completed within the 90-day pause period.

Opinion | Countries hoping to negotiate away Trump tariffs should think again

WASHINGTON: Joe Biden, in his first major speech since leaving the White House, railed on Tuesday (Apr 15) against his successor Donald Trump's frenetic government overhaul, claiming the "hatchet" effort put Americans' retirement benefits at risk.

"Fewer than 100 days, this administration has done so much damage, and so much destruction - it's kind of breathtaking it could happen that soon," Biden told a conference of disability advocates in Chicago.

"They've taken a hatchet to the Social Security Administration (SSA), pushing 7,000 employees out the door," said the former president, referring to the national agency which pays out retirement and disability benefits.

Wearing a blue suit and tie, and standing in front of American flags, the 82-year-old Democrat spoke for around a half-hour, displaying at times the signs of ageing that prompted him to abandon his re-election campaign last year.

He stumbled over some sentences as he read from a teleprompter and struggled to get through winding off-the-cuff anecdotes, cutting himself off with a favourite phrase, "anyways".

President Trump, in a jab at Biden, posted a short video on social media of one of the rambling anecdotes, without comment.

Biden's choice of topic, Social Security, aimed to ramp up pressure on Trump over his rampaging government overhaul efforts.

He highlighted staff reductions at the agency that Trump and his billionaire aide Elon Musk have pushed as part of their "Department of Government Efficiency", saying the Social Security "website is crashing" and hindering retirees from getting their benefits.

The SSA pays out US$1.4 trillion in benefits to 73 million elderly and disabled Americans annually. Trump repeatedly pledged during his election campaign not to touch Social Security benefits.

The programme is colloquially known in Washington as the "third rail of politics" for its sensitivity to voters.

Many Americans "literally count on social security to buy food, just to get by", Biden said, and "many of these beneficiaries, it's their only income. If it were cut or taken away, it would be devastating, devastating for millions of people".

He bashed Trump's commerce secretary, former hedge fund manager Howard Lutnick, over a recent remark in which he said "fraudsters" would complain about a missing check, but not his mother-in-law.

Biden scoffed at that characterisation, saying "what about the 94-year-old mother living all by herself - who doesn't have a billionaire in the family?"

WASHINGTON: Joe Biden, in his first major speech since leaving the White House, railed on Tuesday (Apr 15) against his successor Donald Trump's frenetic government overhaul, claiming the "hatchet" effort put Americans' retirement benefits at risk. "Fewer than 100 days, this administration has done so much

Biden slams Trump 'destruction' in first post-presidency speech

‘America Has Never Been This Divided’: Joe Biden In First Speech Since Leaving Office

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Last Updated: April 16, 2025, 07:40 IST

Warning that the US has “never been this divided,” Joe Biden said, “We can’t go on like this as a divided nation, as divided as we are."

Former US President Joe Biden (Image Credit: Reuters)

Former President Joe Biden slammed the Donald Trump administration in his first public remarks since leaving office earlier this year. He said, “Look what’s happened now. Fewer than 100 days, this new administration has made so – done so much damage and so much destruction. It’s kind of breathtaking it could happen that soon."

Joe Biden warned against cuts and changes underway at the Social Security Administration and accused the current administration of taking a “hatchet" to the organization.

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“There’s 7,000 employees, 7,000 out the door in that time. Including the most seasoned career officials. Now they’re getting ready to push thousands more out the door," he said.

“They’re following that old line from tech startups – the quote is, ‘move fast, break things.’ Well they’re certainly breaking things. They’re shooting first and aiming later. And as a result, the result is a lot of needless pain and sleepless nights," the former president added.

US More Divided Than Ever, Joe Biden Says

Warning that the US has “never been this divided," Joe Biden said, “We can’t go on like this as a divided nation, as divided as we are. I said I’ve been doing this a long time, it’s never been this divided. Granted it’s roughly thirty percent, but it’s a thirty percent that has no heart. It’s what we see in America. It’s what we believe in. Fairness. And that’s the America we can never forget or walk away from."

Joe Biden Slams Donald Trump’s Social Security Plans

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Joe Biden also accused Donald Trump of purposely wrecking Social Security so that the Republicans can “rob" its trust fund. He said, “You’ve got to ask yourself, why is this happening? Why are these guys taking aim at Social Security now? They want to wreck it so they can rob it."

He continued, “And why do they want to rob it? In order to deliver huge tax cuts to billionaires and big corporations and keep it going. They want to make permanent the 2017 tax cuts which overwhelmingly benefited the wealthiest Americans and the biggest corporations. That’s going to cost $5 trillion. Where are they gonna get $5 trillion to pay for it. Well they’re going to continue to run the deficit up. What they always do, by running up the national debt, number one. And then by taking the money from someplace else."

Location : Washington D.C., United States of America (USA)

First Published: April 16, 2025, 07:36 IST

Warning that the US has “never been this divided,” Joe Biden said, “We can’t go on like this as a divided nation, as divided as we are."

‘America Has Never Been This Divided’: Joe Biden In First Speech Since Leaving Office

"We knew it was going to be a difficult game. We had belief, we kept our intensity, and we believed until the end we were going to go through,” the Brazilian said.

PSG came into the second leg at Villa Park with a 3-1 lead on aggregate, and the visitors picked up right where they left off last week, with Achraf Hakimi marauding forward to net the opener

Luis Enrique Says Paris Saint-Germain Deserved Win Despite Aston Villa's Late Surge

People walk past a clothing shop in Beijing. China said its economy topped forecasts in the first quarter, as exporters rushed to shift goods ahead of swingeing US tariffs, but warned it faced "certain pressures" from Donald Trump's trade blitz. Photograph: Wang Zhao / AFP

China’s economy grew faster than expected in the first three months of this year, as government stimulus measures helped to boost consumption. The 5.4 per cent increase of gross domestic product (GDP) compared to the same quarter last year came ahead of Donald Trump’s imposition of crippling tariffs on Chinese goods.

Retail sales grew by a bigger than expected 5.9 per cent in March compared to a year ago and industrial output was up by 7.7 per cent, the fastest growth since June 2021, according to data released on Wednesday. But in an apparent reference to the trade war with the United States, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said the economy needed more proactive and effective macro policies.

“We should be aware that the external environment is becoming more complex and severe, the drive for growth of effective domestic demand is insufficient, and the foundation for sustained economic recovery and growth is yet to be consolidated,” it said in a statement.

Mr Trump has imposed a 145 per cent tariff on Chinese imports, although he offered a temporary exemption for some electronic goods including smartphones and laptops. These products, which account for almost a quarter of China’s exports to the US, will face a 20 per cent tariff for the time being.

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China retaliated with a 125 per cent tariff on all US goods and with export restrictions on some rare earths used in the manufacture of high tech products. Beijing is also cutting the number of Hollywood films to be shown in Chinese cinemas and told the country’s airlines to suspend taking delivery of Boeing aircraft.

The White House said on Tuesday that Trump was open to making a deal with China to end the trade war but that it was up to Xi Jinping to make the first move.

“The ball is in China’s court. China needs to make a deal with us. We don’t need to make a deal with them,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, quoting the president.

“There’s no difference between China and any other country except they are much bigger. And China wants what we have, what every country wants, the American consumer. Or to put it another way, they need our money.”

Beijing has made clear that it will not follow other countries in approaching Trump as a supplicant and has focused instead on strengthening relationships with other trade partners. Xi is visiting Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia this week, urging them to join China in resisting Trump’s “bullying”.

US negotiators have put pressure on some countries to restrict their trade with China in return for tariff relief, in an attempt to weaken Beijing’s position in trade talks with Washington.

Government stimulus measures help to boost consumption

China’s economy grows faster than expected

Susan Smith and Marion Calder, of For Women Scotland, speak outside UK's supreme court on Wednesday after their legal victory. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty

The UK’s supreme court decision that trans women are not defined as women under equality law is likely to have widespread ramifications for the regulation of how public space is shared in Britain’s hospitals, schools, armed services, sports, changing rooms and toilets.

The biggest sigh of relief at the ruling, however, may come not from campaigners, but from British prime minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government. It feared the UK’s supreme court would kick the issue back to Westminster for politicians to decide, plunging MPs into a potentially nasty debate at a time when the government’s limited bandwidth is stretched by geopolitical matters.

Instead, the five-judge court on Wednesday was unanimous as it ruled clearly that the terms woman, man and sex are defined solely by a person’s biological sex in the UK’s Equality Act 2010, which underpins most British rules in this area. The ruling applies regardless of whether a trans person has a gender recognition certificate (GRC) giving legal recognition to the gender with which they identify.

The court has, perhaps, saved politicians from themselves. This contentious matter has been settled by the highest court in the UK.

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While trans activists in Britain are understandably disappointed, the other big loser in this affair is another political party. Labour’s rival, the Scottish National Party (SNP), now tastes bitter defeat after fighting the case all the way to the supreme court to argue that trans women could legally be classified as women.

What now of the dwindling legacy of the SNP’s former first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, who cited trans rights as her biggest achievement after failing to make headway with her party’s independence dream?

The genesis of the case lay in the decision of the SNP government in Scotland to count trans women as women in the calculation of gender quotas for boards of directors. A gender-critical campaign group, For Women Scotland, which is financially backed by Harry Potter author JK Rowling, challenged this decision, but lost twice against the Scottish government in the courts.

The matter ultimately went to the UK’s supreme court, which previously also scuttled Sturgeon’s attempts to hold an independence referendum without the permission of the UK government in Westminster. On the trans issue, the court deviated decisively from the lower courts that had ruled before. For Women Scotland won its case.

In its ruling delivered just before 10am, the court, which faces the UK’s political debating chambers from across the other side of Westminster’s Parliament Square, said the application of the Equality Act as it pertained to sex would become “incoherent” if biological sex was not considered legally immutable.

Starmer has in the past been criticised for his inability or unwillingness to define a woman in public. Now he doesn’t have to. On Wednesday, his government swiftly welcomed the “clarity and confidence” of the supreme court’s judgment.

Eight months after it banned puberty blockers for children, Starmer’s Labour government now has political and legal cover to further shift its position in the trans rights debate.

Trans rights activists, meanwhile, must begin a whole new lobbying campaign for fresh legal changes for the legal recognition of trans people. They may find this a hard sell to politicians in Westminster.

Labour may yet face an uncomfortable period of internal debate on the balancing of trans and women’s rights. The party has vocal wings on both sides of the issue.

Trans activists will be disappointed, but the ruling gives cover to Britain’s Labour government

UK supreme court’s biological sex ruling disappoints trans activists, lets off politicians

US-China trade war escalates with huge stakes for the economies of both nations and the rest of the world.

The US and China are locked in a fast-moving trade war. It’s a game of brinkmanship.

Tariffs on both sides are now so high that commerce between them is effectively about to cease.

If it escalates into a full economic break, the consequences will hurt both economies and will send shockwaves worldwide.

But, if he wants to negotiate, Donald Trump might have to bargain alone.

China is seeking to win allies elsewhere, in Europe and Southeast Asia, where many nations also face punitive Trump tariffs.

And Trump’s tariffs on Chinese tech products.

Plus, a global deal to cut shipping emissions.

US-China trade war escalates with huge stakes for the economies of both nations and the rest of the world.

Who will win the US-China trade war?

Migrants leave the arrival center for asylum seekers at Berlin's Reinickendorf district, Germany, October 6, 2023. — Reuters

The European Union unveiled a list of seven nations designated as "safe" on Wednesday, proposing a controversial policy to fast-track migrant deportations by curtailing asylum rights for citizens of these countries across the bloc.

The European Commission said it was proposing to designate Kosovo, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Morocco and Tunisia as "safe countries of origin".

The move, criticised by rights groups, is set to allow EU governments to process asylum applications filed by citizens of those countries more quickly by introducing a presumption that such claims lack merit.

"Many member states are facing a significant backlog of asylum applications, so anything we can do now to support faster asylum decisions is essential," said Magnus Brunner, the EU's commissioner for migration.

Brussels has been under pressure to clamp down on irregular arrivals and facilitate deportations, following a souring of public opinion on migration that has fuelled hard-right electoral gains in several countries.

On Wednesday, the commission said EU candidate nations would also, in principle, meet the criteria to be designated as safe countries.

But it also laid out exceptions, including when they are hit by a conflict -- something that would, for example, exclude Ukraine.

The EU had already presented a similar list in 2015, but the plan was abandoned due to heated debates over whether or not to include Turkey, another candidate for membership.

The list published Wednesday can be expanded or reviewed over time and was drawn up looking at nations from which a significant number of applicants currently come, the commission said.

Several member states already designate countries they deem "safe" for asylum — France's list, for instance, includes Mongolia, Serbia and Cape Verde.

The EU effort aims to harmonise rules and ensure that all members have the same baseline.

States can individually add countries to the EU list, but not subtract from it.

Asylum cases will still have to be examined individually, ensuring that existing safeguards remain in place and asylum-seekers are not rejected outright, the commission added.

The plan has to be approved by the European Parliament and member states before it can enter into force.

But it has already come under fire from human rights groups.

EuroMed Rights, an umbrella group, said some of the countries featured in the EU list suffered from "documented rights abuses and limited protections for both their own citizens and migrants".

"Labelling them 'safe' is misleading — & dangerous", it wrote on X.

Irregular border crossings detected into the European Union were down 38% to 239,000 last year after an almost 10-year peak in 2023, according to the EU border agency Frontex.

But led by hawks including Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands, EU leaders called in October for urgent new legislation to increase and speed up returns and for the commission to assess "innovative" ways to counter irregular migration.

Currently, less than 20% of people ordered to leave the bloc are returned to their country of origin, according to EU data.

Last month, the commission unveiled a planned reform of the 27-nation bloc's return system, which opened the way for member states to set up migrant return centres outside the EU.

Italy's interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi Wednesday hailed the EU's

The European Union unveiled a list of seven nations designated as safe on Wednesday, proposing a controversial policy to fast-track migrant deportations by curtailing asylum rights for citizens of...

Here’s the EU’s list of countries now considered safe for migrant returns

US special envoy Steve Witkoff said that the Trump administration is prepared to agree that Iran could enrich uranium at a low level if it is subject to stringent verification, a significant shift from the White House’s initial demand that Tehran’s nuclear program be dismantled.

The position, if adopted during talks that are to resume Saturday following an initial meeting last weekend, would leave Iran with a toehold on a nuclear program and put the US at odds with Israel’s goals on the question, Wall Street Journal reported.

In an interview with FOX News, Witkoff did not mention a demand to fully dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, as other US officials have, saying only that Iran does not need to enrich uranium past 3.67% to run a civilian program.

MNA

TEHRAN, Apr. 15 (MNA) – US special envoy Steve Witkoff has said that Iranian uranium enrichment can continue despite the earlier request that called for dismantling the Iranian nuclear program.

US softens position on Iranian uranium enrichment: report

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As Donald Trump welcomes the self-proclaimed "world's coolest dictator" to the White House, Sky's US correspondents Mark Stone and James Matthews dig into his relationship with El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, and ask what their deportation deal means for the rule of law in the US.

Plus, is golf really helping keep the president fit for office?

If you've got a question you'd like Mark, Martha, and James to answer, you can email it to trump100@sky.uk.

Don't forget, you can also watch all episodes on our YouTube channel.

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Day 86: Trump meets 'the world's coolest dictator'

Oprah Winfrey Tears Up Watching Gayle King Overcoming Fear Of Flying In Historic Space Flight

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Last Updated: April 15, 2025, 13:54 IST

Oprah Winfrey opened up about Gayle King’s space journey and how the latter overcame the fear of flying.

Oprah Winfrey got emotional about Gayle King’s space flight experience. (Photo Credit: X)

Media icon Oprah Winfrey was visibly emotional on Monday after watching her best friend of over five decades, CBS Mornings anchor Gayle King, conquer her fear of flying to join Blue Origin’s historic all-women spaceflight. The touching moment marked a significant personal triumph for Gayle, and Oprah shared how her friend’s journey on the all-female crew was even more impactful than going to space itself. Oprah’s heartfelt reaction highlighted the profound emotional significance of Gayle’s accomplishment.

Despite being visibly nervous ahead of the launch, Gayle King bravely took part in the 11-minute historic space journey, and this impressed her best friend Oprah Winfrey, calling the journey “cathartic". The Colour Purple star was moved to tears watching her best friend excelling the same, and shared, “This is bigger than going to space for her," adding, “She’s overcoming a wall of fear, a barrier."

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Winfrey also talked about King’s deep fear of flying but mentioned how this never became a hindrance in her path of excelling the panics during turbulence. “It’s about fulfilling something within," said Oprah, further mentioning, “There’s only one first time all the women go up together. To be a pioneer is great."

Just moments before the takeoff, Winfrey had a few moments of encouragement for King. She clamingly told her, “Peace be still. Hold to God’s unchanging hand. He’s got your back."

After the journey ended, King talked about her experience, mentioning, “It’s oddly quiet when you get up there," adding, “You look down and think, ‘That’s where we came from?’ It’s a reminder to do better, be better." To this, Oprah stated, “This goes beyond space. It’s an everlasting experience of growth and courage."

For those unaware, according to the New York Post, Gayle King was accompanied by five other women pioneering in their respective fields on her rocket journey into space on Blue Origin’s first all-female tourism flight. King, 70, was joined by pop star Katy Perry, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, Jeff Bezos’s fiance Lauren Sanchez, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, and producer Kerianne Flynn. The rocket journey was an 11-minute suborbital trip on the New Shepard spacecraft, which took off from West Texas. For the same, the ladies were all dressed up in coordinated blue suits and looked gorgeous.

First Published: April 15, 2025, 13:53 IST

Oprah Winfrey opened up about Gayle King’s space journey and how the latter overcame the fear of flying.

Oprah Winfrey Tears Up Watching Gayle King Overcoming Fear Of Flying In Historic Space Flight

TOKYO -- Asian bonds look to be more resilient than those issued in the U.S., largely supported by the region's central banks easing rates and President Donald Trump's unstable tariff policy eroding the idea of U.S. exceptionalism.

Trump's punishing tariffs -- amounting to 145% on Chinese goods -- roiled markets last week. Stocks worldwide tanked before paring some losses. Yields on U.S. Treasurys and Japanese government bonds rose, sparking fears of a global recession.

TOKYO -- Asian bonds look to be more resilient than those issued in the U.S., largely supported by the region's central banks easing rates and Preside

Asian bonds look firmer than U.S. peers amid Trump tariff chaos

BOSTON (AP) -- The federal government says it's freezing more than $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard University, after the institution said it would defy the Trump administration's demands to limit activism on campus.

In a letter to Harvard Friday, President Donald Trump's administration had called for broad government and leadership reforms at the university, as well as changes to its admissions policies. It also demanded the university audit views of diversity on campus, and stop recognizing some student clubs.

BOSTON (AP) -- The federal government says it's freezing more than $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard University, after th

Trump freezes $2.2bn in grants to Harvard over campus activism

Zuckerberg Testifies As Meta Faces Landmark Antitrust Trial Over Instagram, WhatsApp Acquisitions

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News18.com

Last Updated: April 15, 2025, 08:31 IST

Mark Zuckerberg defended Meta in a landmark US antitrust trial, denying claims it bought Instagram and WhatsApp to crush competition. The FTC argues Meta holds a monopoly in social networking.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Photo: Reuters)

Mark Zuckerberg on Monday took the stand in a landmark US antitrust trial, over enforcers’ claims that Meta spent billions of dollars to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp to fend off Facebook competitors.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) attorneys argued that Facebook, since renamed Meta, devoured what it saw as competitive threats.

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The FTC also sought to force Meta to restructure or sell Instagram and WhatsApp, testing President Donald Trump’s promises to take on Big Tech while posing an existential threat to a company that by some estimates earns about half of its US advertising revenue from Instagram.

During the trial, Zuckerberg was shown an internal Facebook email from 2011 that warned Instagram was a hit on smartphones and could easily copy what his social network offered.

Another 2012 email regarding acquiring Instagram suggested simply keeping the app running without any improvements while Facebook developed its own products, and in doing so avoid upsetting users by shutting it down.

Zuckerberg downplayed those exchanges as early talk before plans for Instagram came together.

The Meta Platforms CEO also emphasised that friends and family sharing was only one priority for the app along with discovering other content.

In fact, a 2018 decision to prioritise Facebook content shared by users’ friends over video posts and other public content failed to grasp a shift toward users sharing that content via messages instead of posting life updates in their feeds, Zuckerberg said.

“I think we misunderstood how social engagement online was evolving," Zuckerberg said.

“People just kept on engaging with more and more stuff that wasn’t what their friends were doing," he said.

He estimated that now around 20 per cent of content on Facebook and 10 per cent on Instagram is generated by users’ friends as opposed to accounts they follow based on interests.

Meta attorney Mark Hansen countered in his first salvo that “acquisitions to improve and grow an acquired firm" are not unlawful in the United States and that is what Facebook did.

THE FTC ARGUMENTS

The FTC argues that Meta’s $19 billion WhatsApp acquisition in 2014 followed the same pattern, with Zuckerberg fearing the messaging app could either transform into a social network or be purchased by a competitor.

Meta’s defense attorneys counter that substantial investments transformed these acquisitions into the blockbusters they are today.

They also highlight that Meta’s apps are free for users and face fierce competition.

The FTC argues that Meta’s monopoly power is demonstrated by a severely downgraded user experience — with too many ads and product changes.

The US government argues that Facebook and Instagram are dominant players in apps that provide a way to connect with family and friends, a category that does not include TikTok and YouTube.

However, Meta disagrees.

COMPETITION WITH TIKTOK

Meta has argued that its purchases of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 have benefited users, and that Zuckerberg’s past statements are no longer relevant amid competition from ByteDance’s TikTok, Google’s YouTube and Apple’s messaging app.

How users spend time on social media and which services they consider interchangeable will be core to the case. Meta will argue that an increase in traffic to Instagram and Facebook during TikTok’s brief shutdown in the United States in January shows direct competition.

The FTC claims that Meta holds a monopoly on platforms used to share content with friends and family, where its main competitors in the United States are Snap’s Snapchat and MeWe, a tiny privacy-focused social media app launched in 2016.

Platforms where users broadcast content to strangers based on shared interests, such as X, TikTok, YouTube and Reddit, are not interchangeable, the FTC has argued.

THE CASE AGAINST META

The case against Meta was originally filed in December 2020, during the first Trump administration, and all eyes were on whether he would ask the FTC to stand down.

Zuckerberg, the world’s third-richest person, has made repeated visits to the White House as he tried to persuade the US leader to choose settlement instead of fighting the trial.

As part of his lobbying efforts, Zuckerberg contributed to Trump’s inauguration fund and overhauled content moderation policies.

He also purchased a $23 million mansion in Washington in what was seen as a bid to spend more time close to the center of political power.

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Zuckerberg’s former lieutenant Sheryl Sandberg and a long line of executives from rival companies are scheduled to testify at a trial expected to last at least eight weeks.

Central to the case is Facebook’s 2012 billion-dollar purchase of Instagram — then a small but promising photo-sharing app that now boasts two billion active users.

First Published: April 15, 2025, 08:06 IST

Mark Zuckerberg defended Meta in a landmark US antitrust trial, denying claims it bought Instagram and WhatsApp to crush competition. The FTC argues Meta holds a monopoly in social networking.

Zuckerberg Testifies As Meta Faces Landmark Antitrust Trial Over Instagram, WhatsApp Acquisitions

ALBAWABA - Renowned Hollywood actor Val Kilmer, best known for roles such as Iceman in "Top Gun," Batman in "Batman Forever", and many more, has passed away at 65.

According to an email sent by Kilmer's daughter to AP, the actor passed away on Tuesday in his LA house, surrounded by his friends and family, after battling a case of pneumonia. Val Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer, and despite defeating it back in 2014, his diagnosis still required him to undergo a tracheotomy procedure.

The tracheotomy procedure altered his voice as witnessed during his recent performances, including his comeback as Iceman in 2022's "Top Gun: Maverick."

Top Gun star Val Kilmer dies at 65

Val Kilmer, ‘Top Gun’ and ‘Batman Forever’ actor, has died at 65. His daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, told ‘The New York Times’ that her father died of pneumonia on Tuesday.



He is survived by his children, Jack and Mercedes. pic.twitter.com/TiMQuL91CZ April 2, 2025

Starring as American singer Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's 1991 biography "The Doors," became one of Val Kilmer's most popular roles in Hollywood and was highly regarded by audiences and critics alike for his performance.

While the actor didn't receive many awards during his career, a critic named Roger Ebert recognized Kilmer's talent and wrote, "If there is an award for the most unsung leading man of his generation, Val Kilmer should get it."

He added, "In movies as different as Real Genius, Top Gun, Top Secret!, he has shown a range of characters so convincing that it's likely most people, even now, don't realise they were looking at the same actor."

Renowned Hollywood actor Val Kilmer, best known for roles such as Iceman in Top Gun, Batman in "Batman Forever", and many more, has passed away at 65.

Top Gun star Val Kilmer dies at 65

Hanoi. Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized that no one wins in a trade war as he began a diplomatic tour of Southeast Asia on Monday, positioning China as a stabilizing force in contrast to US President Donald Trump’s latest tariff actions.

While Trump has paused some tariffs, he has kept in place 145 percent duties on Chinese imports, affecting the world’s second-largest economy.

“There are no winners in a trade war, or a tariff war,” Xi wrote in an editorial published jointly by Vietnamese and Chinese media. “Our two countries should resolutely safeguard the multilateral trading system, stable global industrial and supply chains, and an open and cooperative international environment.”

Xi’s visit serves as an opportunity for China to present itself as a "responsible superpower," in contrast to the US under Trump, said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute.

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Xi was welcomed on the tarmac by Vietnam’s President Luong Cuong at the start of his two-day visit, an honor not often extended to foreign dignitaries, according to Nguyen Thanh Trung, a professor of Vietnamese studies at Fulbright University Vietnam. A drum art group performed as women waved Chinese and Communist Party flags.

While the visit was likely planned earlier, it gains significance amid the ongoing tariff conflict between China and the US. The trip offers Beijing a chance to strengthen regional alliances and explore solutions to counter the high trade barriers the US has imposed on Chinese exports.

During his time in Hanoi, Xi met with Vietnam’s Communist Party General Secretary To Lam, noting the two countries’ shared commitment to peaceful development. He said their partnership has brought stability and certainty to the global stage.

Xi also met with Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, where the two sides signed several memorandums, though details were not disclosed. According to Nhan Dan, the official mouthpiece of Vietnam’s Communist Party, China and Vietnam will accelerate a $8 billion railway project that was approved earlier in February.

Xi’s Visit Sends a Political Message

The timing of the visit sends a clear political message, signaling Southeast Asia’s importance to China, said Huong Le-Thu from the International Crisis Group. With US tariffs weighing heavily, Southeast Asian nations are concerned that the trade war could disrupt their economic development.

Vietnam has adeptly balanced its relationships with both the US and China. While it operates under a communist, one-party system like China, it has also fostered strong ties with the US In 2023, Vietnam was the only country to host both US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The same year, Vietnam upgraded its diplomatic ties with the US to match those with China and Russia.

In 2024, China-Vietnam trade surged by 14.6 percent, making China Vietnam’s largest trading partner.

As businesses have sought alternatives to China, Vietnam has benefited, attracting companies looking to relocate their supply chains. However, the intensification of the trade war places Vietnam in a “precarious situation,” according to Giang, as the US perceives it as a backdoor for Chinese goods. Before the 90-day tariff pause, Vietnam was hit with a 46 percent tariff by the US.

Although China and Vietnam share significant trade relations, they also have long-standing territorial disputes in the South China Sea, where Vietnam has clashed with China’s coast guard but generally avoids publicizing these confrontations.

Following his visit to Vietnam, Xi is expected to travel to Malaysia and Cambodia.

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Xi Jinping visits Southeast Asia, highlighting China as a stabilizing force amid the US trade war, emphasizing no winners in tariff disputes

China’s Xi Says There Are No Winners in a Trade War as He Visits Southeast Asia

A host of celebrities including Olivia Munn and Emily Ratajkowski have slammed the Blue Origin mission as 'gluttonous' and 'planet destroying' as Katy Perry comes under fire.

The historic 11-minute expedition carried Perry, Lauren Sanchez, Gayle King, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, former rocket scientist Aisha Bowe and filmmaker Kerianne Flynn.

Blue Origin is owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, 61, who is engaged to Sanchez, 55.

Flight NS-31 marked the first launch with an all-female crew since Russian astronaut Valentina Tereshkova's solo space flight in 1963.

Ahead of the mission, Munn blasted it 'gluttonous' due to the extraordinary cost for just 11 minutes in space, as she declared: 'Some people can't even afford eggs!'

And after the crew touched down, more celebrities took to social media to call out the voyage... here MailOnine takes a look at the stars who made their disdain known.

Olivia Munn has called the Blue Origin mission 'gluttonous' while Emily Ratajkowski raged it was 'destroying the planet' as they lead the stars slamming the mission

The historic 11-minute expedition carried Katy Perry , Lauren Sanchez , Gayle King , civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, former rocket scientist Aisha Bowe and filmmaker Kerianne Flynn

Flight NS-31 marked the first launch with an all-female crew since Russian astronaut Valentina Tereshkova's solo space flight in 1963

Emily Ratajkowski

Model Emily Ratajkowski, 33, was among those to blast the mission as she said on Monday that she was 'disgusted' by it on her TikTok.

'That space mission this morning? That's end time s**t. Like, this is beyond parody,' she ranted.

'That you care about Mother Earth and it's about Mother Earth, and you're going up in a spaceship that is built and paid for by a company that's singlehandedly destroying the planet?'

Ratajkowski continued, perplexed about the purpose of the quick journey: 'Look at the state of the world and think about how many resources went into putting these women into space.

'For what? What was the marketing there?'

She added: 'And then to try to make it like... I'm disgusted, literally I'm disgusted.'

Model Emily Ratajkowski, 33, was among those to blast the mission as she said on Monday that she was 'disgusted' by it on her TikTok

Olivia Munn

Earlier this month, actress Olivia Munn slammed the space mission ahead of its launch, while appearing on Today With Jenna And Friends.

'What are they doing? Like why? You know what I mean?' she said. 'I know that this is probably not the cool thing to say, but there are so many other things that are so important in the world right now.'

Munn then added: 'What are you going to do up in space? What are you doing up there?'

The mother-of-two went on to compare the launch to a ride at Disneyland, before asking why those on the trip needed 'to tell' everyone about it, versus just going up, having a nice time and coming back down.

'I know that this is probably obnoxious - but like, it's so much money to go to space. You know, there's a lot of people that can't even afford eggs,' she stressed.

Host, Jenna Bush Hager, then informed Olivia that the all-female crew will go to space 'in glam' which prompted the actress to give a confused reaction.

'They are getting their hair done, their makeup done, even eyelash extensions,' Hager continued.

Munn was left speechless once again and then questioned: 'They said this out loud?'

The actress silently shook her head and Hager humorously added: 'Yeah, and a lot of eyelash glue to nail that baby down. That's what I can't stop thinking about.'

Earlier this month, actress Olivia Munn slammed the space mission ahead of its launch, while appearing on Today With Jenna And Friends

'What are they doing? Like why? You know what I mean?' she said. 'I know that this is probably not the cool thing to say'

Amy Schumer

Comedian Amy Schumer joined in on the backlash as she shared clips of herself mocking the mission and pretending she was joining.

'Guys, last second they added me to space and I'm going to space,' she said in a video on social media as she held a black panther toy – mocking Katy, who brought a daisy to represent her daughter Daisy.

'I'm bringing this thing. It has no meaning to me, but it was in my bag and I was on the Subway, and I got the text and they were like, "Do you want to go to space?" so I'm going to space.'

'Thank you to everyone who got me here, I'll see you guys in space.'

In a second clip Schumer was lying on a bed in a doctor's office and continued to ramble about the mission, slurring her speech in a suggestion she was under some sort of anaesthetic.

She said: 'So I'm going space. I'm so excited. Lauren Sanchez, Katy Perry and Amanda Nguyen have been my guiding lights through this whole journey, which I just got called to be part of the space team this morning - and I'm loving it.

'I've always wanted to go to space... and also I just want to say how high were the people who came up with the name for space, were they like "What should we call it? It's got so much like... space, you know". And they were like "That's it! Call it space" And like... was that the best they could do? But okay I'm going there and I can't wait.'

Comedian Amy Schumer joined in on the backlash as she shared clips of herself mocking the mission and pretending she was joining

In a second clip Schumer was lying on a bed in a doctor's office and continued to ramble about the mission

Olivia Wilde

Having safely returned to Texas, Perry was photographed kissing the ground, a picture that quickly spread across social media.

Olivia Wilde shared a meme of the kissing snaps on her Instagram Stories as she made clear her disapproval.

The meme shared by Wilde referenced the recent surge in plane crashes and saw two pictures of Perry, one of her kissing the ground and another punching the air, with the caption: 'Getting off a commercial flight in 2025.'

The Don't Worry Darling director captioned her sharing of the meme: 'Billion dollars bought some good memes I guess.'

The historic 11-minute expedition carried Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, Gayle King, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, former rocket scientist Aisha Bowe and filmmaker Kerianne Flynn.

Katy Perry comes under fire as a host of stars including Olivia Munn and Emily Ratajkowski slam 'gluttonous' and 'planet destroying' 11-minute space mission

Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez and four other high-profile women were blasted into space aboard a Blue Origin rocket yesterday afternoon.

During their 11-minute journey, they reached an altitude of 66.5 miles (107 km), crossing the Karman Line and officially entering space.

But not everyone is convinced that the all-female crew actually left Earth, as wild conspiracy theories ignited online.

Sceptics have panned the launch as a 'Hollywood fake', claiming it had 'the worst CGI any of these fake space agencies has produced'.

Wild theories claim that Jeff Bezos' New Shepard mission took place entirely inside a film studio, with the crew 'floating' in tanks of water.

Some online theorists went even further, claiming that the entire mission was a 'satanic' ritual led by Katy Perry and Jeff Bezos.

While none of these claims have any basis in reality, psychologists say that this mission was a 'perfect storm for conspiratorial thinking'.

Dr Daniel Jolley, an expert on the psychology of conspiracies from the University of Nottingham, told MailOnline: 'This mission brings together two domains that have long been fertile ground for conspiracy theories: space exploration and celebrity culture.'

Yesterday, Katy Perry (pictured) and Lauren Sanchez blasted into space aboard a Blue Origin's rocket, but conspiracy theorists aren't convinced they really went

Jeff Bezos' Blue Shepard rocket took a crew consisting of Kerianne Flynn, Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, Aisha Bowe, Gayle King and Amanda Nguyen (left to right) just beyond the official boundary of space

On X, formerly Twitter, conspiracy theories ignited as users claimed that the Blue Origin misison had been a fake

Psychologists say the mission was a 'perfect storm for conspiratorial thinking' combining space, so-called Hollywood elites, and the billionaire Jeff Bezos

While the event was streamed live and covered by the world's media organisations, online theorists think they have seen through the lies.

On X, formerly Twitter, a sceptical user asked: 'Anyone else think that the Blue Origin flight today was a Hollywood fake?'

Another said it was 'one of the biggest lies in the history of mankind', adding 'Hollywood studios have enough technology to produce impressive special effects.'

'Look another Hollywood production of fake space,' one commenter added.

While another chimed in: 'When you realise that Katy Perry & those other celebrities are actually in an Hollywood Movie Studio inside a pool, instead of fake space.'

Just like the conspiracy surrounding the moon landings, many users claimed that travelling to space was impossible, and therefore the flight must be fake.

Meanwhile, adherents to the 'flat Earth' theory suggested that space itself was fake so the rocket couldn't possibly have flown anywhere.

As one commenter put it: 'The whole key of the space is fake movement is to show what they're selling us as 'space' is a lie. A literal Hollywood creation.'

On commenter on X called the mission 'one of the biggest lies in the history of mankind' and said it had been produced by a Hollywood studio

A commenter claimed that the crew of the Blue Origin mission were really suspended in a swimming pool to appear weightless

Other conspiracy theoriests appeared to claim that space itself was fake

Who was on Blue Origin mission NS-31? Lauren Sánchez: Former news anchor and Jeff Bezos' fiancee Katy Perry: Internationally famous pop star Gayle King: Co-host of CBS Mornings and author Kerianne Flynn: Film producer and philanthropist Amanda Nguyen: Civil rights activist Aisha Bowe: Former NASA rocket scientist turned entrepreneur Advertisement

However, the involvement of big-name celebrities like Katy Perry and the billionaire Jeff Bezos also attracted a more intensely paranoid strain of conspiracy.

Many commenters on X believed that the mission was part of an elaborate satanic or occult ritual led by Katy Perry.

On X, one commenter wrote: 'Katy Perry one of the biggest industries occult promoter is one of the signs this is fake.

Another added: 'Satanic rituals in the middle of Passover to show they mock God what else would Katy Perry and co be doing at the week of Passover?'

While one commenter wrote: 'Katy Perry has been part of the Satan scandal bs for a while now. Ask why... why these women? Why all female? Why space?'

Conspiracy theorists centred on the NS-31 mission patch worn by each of the passengers, claiming that this was actually a satanic symbol.

'Katy Perry is a known Satan worshiper. They are all wearing Satan worshiping labels on their space outfits,' one commenter proclaimed.

While another asked: 'Did you notice the logo on Katy Perry and her fellow Blue Origin Space travellers' patch is the satanic goat with an upside down cross if you flip it over?'

Many conspiracy theorists latched onto the presence of Katy Perry (pictured) as a sign that the mission was really a 'satanic' ritual

One social media user bizzarely claimed that Katy Perry was an 'occult promoter'

On X, many users focussed on the mission patches worn by all members of the crew, claiming that these contained secret satanic symbols

Psychologists say that satanic celebrity theories are common online and emerge from longstanding fears about secrets of powerful people. Here, a user claims Katy Perry is wearing a hidden satanic goat symbol

However, Dr Jolley explains that this is not an entirely new conspiratorial claim.

He says: 'The idea that celebrities are part of satanic cults or secret rituals is surprisingly common in online conspiracy spaces - It ties into longstanding fears about hidden evil among the powerful, which go back centuries.

'In the internet age, these old tropes have taken new forms, often blending religious imagery with more modern anxieties about control, manipulation, and media influence. Katy Perry has been a frequent target of these narratives, like many other celebrities, who are seen as powerful.'

Likewise, the sense that this privately funded space flight was an 'elite' project added another layer of perceived secrecy for conspiracy theorists to hold on to.

In reality, at 14:30 BST (08:30 local time), the NS-31 mission launched from Blue Origin's Launch Site One, about 30 miles north of Van Horn, Texas.

On board were Jeff Bezos' fiancé Lauren Sánchez, pop star Katy Perry, CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King, film producer Kerianne Flynn, activist Amanda Nguyen, and former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe.

After liftoff, the New Shepard rocket carried the crew capsule just over the Karman Line, a boundary used to define the edge of space.

After enjoying a few minutes of weightlessness, the capsule fell back to Earth and landed safely just 11 minutes after liftoff.

Some users made the strange claim that the mission was not real, but rather a satanic ritual to 'mock God'

Psychologists say that Katy Perry has long been a focuss for conspiracy theory attacks, with many people online believing that she is a Satan worshipper

Combining the mystery of space travel with the presence of billionaire Jeff Bezos, pictured opening the door to the capsule, made fertile ground for conspiracy theories to take root, according to psychologists

However, the conditions surrounding the mission were almost perfect for creating conspiracies.

Psychologists believe that people are likely to adopt a conspiracy theory when some of their basic needs aren't being met - including the 'epistemic' need to have the truth.

Professor Karen Douglas, a psychologist from the University of Kent, told MailOnline: 'People are looking for ways to understand what is going on and they don't like the uncertainty that often surrounds unfolding events.

'Also, a simple explanation is often not very appealing. People assume that there must somehow be a bigger explanation, or more going on than people know about.'

The natural mystery of space travel, combined with the involvement of celebrities and the billionaire Jeff Bezos, created uncertainty which allowed the conspiracies to flourish.

Combining these factors with social media means that lots of people who might have been feeling uncertain suddenly have access to a more satisfying conspiratorial explanation.

Professor Douglas says: 'It is easy to find and share conspiracy theories on social media. People who are interested in conspiracy theories can find them almost immediately and they can spread rapidly.

'Once conspiracy theories are out there, they are difficult to quell, especially when some of the facts are still unknown.'

Yesterday, Katy Perry and Lauren Sanchez blasted into space. But conspiracy theorists were quick to claim that the whole mission was an elaborate hoax.

Conspiracy theorists claim Blue Origin mission was FAKE - as sceptics claim rocket launch with Katy Perry and Lauren Sanchez had 'the worst CGI'

Many celebrities - notably Olivia Munn, Emily Ratajkowski, and Kesha - have publicly blasted the Blue Origin spaceflight including Katy Perry.

The 11-minute expedition - which took place on Monday - carried Perry, Lauren Sanchez, Gayle King, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, former rocket scientist Aisha Bowe and filmmaker Kerianne Flynn.

Blue Origin is owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, 61, who is engaged to Sanchez, 55.

Flight NS-31 marked the first launch with an all-female crew since Russian astronaut Valentina Tereshkova's solo space flight in 1963.

The mission was blasted by A-listers who had branded it 'gluttonous' and 'planet destroying' as many questioned what it actually does for society.

Now DailyMail.com highlights all the stars who have taken to media and social media to blast Blue Origin NS-31 and the celebrities on board.

Many celebrities - notably Olivia Munn and Emily Ratajkowski - have publicly blasted the Blue Origin spaceflight including Katy Perry.

Kerianne Flynn, Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, Aisha Bowe, Gayle King and Amanda Nguyen in front of Blue Origin's New Shepard NS-31 rocket in Van Horn, Texas on Monday

Emily Ratajkowski

Model Emily Ratajkowski, 33, was among those to blast the mission as she said on Monday that she was 'disgusted' by it on her TikTok.

'That space mission this morning? That's end time s**t. Like, this is beyond parody,' she ranted.

'That you care about Mother Earth and it's about Mother Earth, and you're going up in a spaceship that is built and paid for by a company that's singlehandedly destroying the planet?'

Ratajkowski continued, perplexed about the purpose of the quick journey: 'Look at the state of the world and think about how many resources went into putting these women into space.

'For what? What was the marketing there?'

She added: 'And then to try to make it like... I'm disgusted, literally I'm disgusted.'

Model Emily Ratajkowski, 33, was among those to blast the mission as she said on Monday that she was 'disgusted' by it on her TikTok

Olivia Munn

Earlier this month, actress Olivia Munn slammed the space mission ahead of its launch, while appearing on Today With Jenna And Friends.

'What are they doing? Like why? You know what I mean?' she said. 'I know that this is probably not the cool thing to say, but there are so many other things that are so important in the world right now.'

Munn then added: 'What are you going to do up in space? What are you doing up there?'

The mother-of-two went on to compare the launch to a ride at Disneyland, before asking why those on the trip needed 'to tell' everyone about it, versus just going up, having a nice time and coming back down.

'I know that this is probably obnoxious - but like, it's so much money to go to space. You know, there's a lot of people that can't even afford eggs,' she stressed.

Host, Jenna Bush Hager, then informed Olivia that the all-female crew will go to space 'in glam' which prompted the actress to give a confused reaction.

'They are getting their hair done, their makeup done, even eyelash extensions,' Hager continued.

Munn was left speechless once again and then questioned: 'They said this out loud?'

The actress silently shook her head and Hager humorously added: 'Yeah, and a lot of eyelash glue to nail that baby down. That's what I can't stop thinking about.'

Earlier this month, actress Olivia Munn slammed the space mission ahead of its launch, while appearing on Today With Jenna And Friends

'What are they doing? Like why? You know what I mean?' she said. 'I know that this is probably not the cool thing to say'

Fast food chain Wendy's

Katy Perry was not only blasted by her fellow celebrities but she and the Blue Origin space mission were also mocked by fast food chain Wendy's.

The official page for the burger joint commented on a photo of the singer in her space suit, shared by Pop Crave, which had the caption 'Katy Perry has returned from space.'

Wendy's responded with a comment that read: 'Can we send her back.'

The Wendy’s account went on to repost photos of Katy kissing the ground after landing back on Earth. 'I kissed the ground and I liked it,' they wrote, in reference to Katy's song 'I Kissed a Girl.'

Katy Perry was not only blasted by her fellow celebrities but she and the Blue Origin space mission were also mocked by fast food chain Wendy's

Kesha

Kesha, 38, piled onto the drama, posting a snap of herself enjoying a Wendy's shake and smiling.

Kesha's jab at Perry comes after the Dark Horse singer's controversial reunion with Dr. Luke, who settled a defamation lawsuit with Kesha in 2023, after she claimed in a 2014 lawsuit that he had sexually and physically abused her.

Perry collaborated with music professional on her flop comeback album, 143. They previously worked together on hit singles such as 2008's I Kissed a Girl, 2010's California Gurls and 2013's Roar.

Last September Katy addressed the controversy surrounding her working with the producer, and insisted that her lyrics all come from her own personal experiences and do not reflect the views of the producer.

Kesha, whose full name is Kesha Rose Sebert, tweeted 'lol' in the wake of news Perry and Dr. Luke would be collaborating.

Kesha and Dr. Luke announced they had settled their long-running legal battle in June of 2023.

Kesha said in a statement at the conclusion of the proceedings, 'Only God knows what happened that night' while Dr. Luke said he was 'absolutely certain that nothing happened' and that he 'never drugged or assaulted her.'

After the official X account for Wendy's questioned if we 'can send her [Perry] back' to space, Kesha piled onto the drama, posting a snap of herself enjoying a Wendy's shake and smiling

Kesha's jab at Perry comes after the Dark Horse singer's controversial reunion with Dr. Luke. He was locked in a decade-long legal battle with Kesha, whom he sued in 2014 when she accused him of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, which he denied; he and Perry seen in 2014

Kesha and Dr. Luke announced they had settled their long-running legal battle in June of 2023; she is seen in 2024

Olivia Wilde

Having safely returned to Texas, Perry was photographed kissing the ground, a picture that quickly spread across social media.

Olivia Wilde shared a meme of the kissing snaps on her Instagram Stories as she made clear her disapproval.

The meme shared by Wilde referenced the recent surge in plane crashes and saw two pictures of Perry, one of her kissing the ground and another punching the air, with the caption: 'Getting off a commercial flight in 2025.'

The Don't Worry Darling director captioned her sharing of the meme: 'Billion dollars bought some good memes I guess.'

Olivia Wilde shared a meme of the kissing snaps on her Instagram Stories as she made clear her disapproval

Amy Schumer

Comedian Amy Schumer joined in on the backlash as she shared clips of herself mocking the mission and pretending she was joining.

'Guys, last second they added me to space and I'm going to space,' she said in a video on social media as she held a black panther toy – mocking Katy, who brought a daisy to represent her daughter Daisy.

'I'm bringing this thing. It has no meaning to me, but it was in my bag and I was on the Subway, and I got the text and they were like, "Do you want to go to space?" so I'm going to space.'

'Thank you to everyone who got me here, I'll see you guys in space.'

In a second clip Schumer was lying on a bed in a doctor's office and continued to ramble about the mission, slurring her speech in a suggestion she was under some sort of anaesthetic.

She said: 'So I'm going space. I'm so excited. Lauren Sanchez, Katy Perry and Amanda Nguyen have been my guiding lights through this whole journey, which I just got called to be part of the space team this morning - and I'm loving it.

'I've always wanted to go to space... and also I just want to say how high were the people who came up with the name for space, were they like "What should we call it? It's got so much like... space, you know". And they were like "That's it! Call it space" And like... was that the best they could do? But okay I'm going there and I can't wait.'

Comedian Amy Schumer joined in on the backlash as she shared clips of herself mocking the mission and pretending she was joining

The 11-minute expedition carried Perry , Lauren Sanchez , Gayle King , civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, former rocket scientist Aisha Bowe and filmmaker Kerianne Flynn.

'Disgusting' Blue Origin mission slammed by celebs... all A-listers who spoke against Katy Perry's spaceflight

The Nigeria Police Force has arrested and detained a man identified as David Nwokorie on the orders of a retired Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police, Hilary Okpara, following a complaint by his daughter, Genevieve Okpara, over allegations of cyberstalking and blackmail.

Family sources told SaharaReporters on Tuesday that David was arrested last week by operatives of the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID) and has been held in custody since then.

According to David’s legal counsel, Barrister Ezike Chibuzor, who is also representing him in the ongoing case, the situation stems from a failed relationship between David and Genevieve.

Chibuzor explained that David only discovered Genevieve had previously been married and had two children after their relationship had progressed significantly.

“Genevieve never disclosed her past marriage and children to David. When he found out, he ended the relationship,” Chibuzor said.

The lawyer further alleged that tensions escalated in January when Genevieve found out that David had proposed to another woman. In response, she reportedly stormed his home and damaged several household items.

“David forgave her initially, but the problems continued. Eventually, he decided to end both the relationship and their joint NGO project, which they had started less than a year ago,” the lawyer added.

David, through his lawyer, reportedly demanded N25 million in compensation from Genevieve for the damages caused to his property.

He also posted a flier online with Genevieve’s picture, describing her as “wanted for damages done to his home.”

Genevieve, in reaction to the post, filed a petition with the police, alleging cyberbullying and extortion. This led to David’s arrest.

“She was not happy about the post and reported him to the police. That’s how this issue started,” said the lawyer.

Meanwhile, David's family alleges that Genevieve’s father, retired DIG Hilary Okpara, used his influence to get David arrested and detained.

“When we checked his [Hilary Okpara’s] profile, we saw that he was once a Commissioner of Police and later retired as an Assistant Inspector General (AIG). We believe he’s using his influence to keep David behind bars,” a family member told SaharaReporters.

According to Chibuzor, the police have secured a 14-day remand order and are working toward formally charging David in court.

“The remand order is expected to expire soon. The police had said they might file charges either yesterday or today,” the lawyer said.

There are also reports that David reached out to Genevieve’s estranged husband, allegedly sending him pictures of Genevieve, the children, and himself.

He has reportedly offered to testify in the custody battle between Genevieve and her husband.

“Genevieve and her husband are currently in court over custody of their children. David is promising to serve as a witness against her,” Chibuzor confirmed.

When SaharaReporters contacted Genevieve Opara for comment, she said David is currently detained for blackmail, cyberbullying, and making threats to life.

"I think you should speak to my lawyer because you won’t be able to get all the necessary information from me. The matter has already progressed significantly. Please speak to my lawyer — it’s already in court,” she said.

"Maybe I’ll share my lawyer’s number with you so you can call her. Let her tell you what she can disclose. But the police cannot just arrest people arbitrarily."

"They must have had some information. He is — well, he is currently detained for blackmail, cyberbullying, and making threats to life. The police have a clear picture and a full story," she added.

When SaharaReporters contacted Genevieve's lawyer, she said: “I cannot divulge any further information. As of today, the matter is sub judice. That means it is already before the court, okay? And I cannot speak on it.

"You are acting on speculations, and I am telling you that the matter is now sub judice. As of today, it has already been filed in court and is now before a competent court of jurisdiction.”

"So, we can't speak further on this matter,” she added.

The Nigeria Police Force has arrested and detained a man identified as David Nwokorie on the orders of a retired Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police, Hilary Okpara, following a complaint by his daughter, Genevieve Okpara, over allegations of cyberstalking and blackmail.

EXCLUSIVE: Man Detained By Nigerian Police For Cyberstalking Over Break-Up With Daughter Of Retired DIG Hilary Opara

Unai Emery will always shudder at mention of La Remontada. It came to define his time as the manager of Paris Saint-Germain, the inexplicable Champions League defeat by Luis Enrique’s Barcelona in 2017 after his team had held a 4-0 first-leg lead. Barcelona would end up needing three goals with 88 minutes of the second leg gone at the Camp Nou. They got them for a 6-5 aggregate victory.

On an epic night at Villa Park, the roles were reversed – and so nearly to cathartic effect for Emery. His Villa team were magnificent. They refused to believe that this showpiece Champions League quarter-final was over after Luis Enrique’s PSG surged into a 2-0 lead on the night for a 5-1 aggregate advantage, the goals coming from their flying full-backs, Achraf Hakimi and Nuno Mendes.

Villa needed four to force extra time. No away goals any more, of course. And when Youri Tielemans got the first on 34 minutes, it was just the start.

It was a second half that will live long in the memory of everybody present, Villa’s showing cut and thrust to go with their conviction, John McGinn and Ezri Konsa on the scoresheet before the 60 minute mark. They were far from isolated thrusts. PSG have been painted as the best team in Europe in recent months. They were shadows in the second half, Villa producing a performance for the ages.

They had the chances to equalise, golden ones. What a story it would have been if Marco Asensio, on as a substitute to face his parent club, had not been denied by Gianluigi Donnarumma in a one-on-one. Or Konsa had not blown a header from a whipped free-kick from the outstanding Marcus Rashford. At the very end, another substitute Ian Maatsen saw a goalbound shot blocked by Willian Pacho. It looked as though Donnarumma was beaten. PSG celebrated that like a goal of their own. They had survived. Just.

Emery’s one change from the first leg had hinted at pragmatism – Amadou Onana in, Jacob Ramsey out – but it was optimism that ran riot in the home crowd at kick-off time, Prince William among the believers in the stands. Hi Ho Aston Villa was an assault on the eardrums, although it was incongruous to hear the music selector play the Europa League theme tune over the PA system. The atmosphere pulsed, the PSG fans more than playing their part.

Hakimi helped to settle PSG because Villa did bring the storm at the outset, Morgan Rogers catching the eye with a couple of swashbuckling runs. Villa pushed through Marcus Rashford but when he was dispossessed by Marquinhos, PSG moved the ball from their right to the left and then up to Bradley Barcola with clinical precision.

It was certainly a show of strength from Luis Enrique when he started Barcola ahead of Désiré Doué, one of the stars of the first leg. But as everybody knows, Barcola has tremendous quality and speed. His low cross was behind Pau Torres, who moved towards the ball and then left it for Emiliano Martínez, who had to have seen the ball late and could only push out towards Hakimi. It was on a plate for him.

PSG’s second also spoke to Luis Enrique’s spirit of adventure because once again it was a full-back applying the final brushstrokes to a counterattacking masterpiece. PSG won the ball inside their own area and it was a blur of blue as they moved decisively upfield, Hakimi was prominent before Ousmane Dembélé went square to Mendes. The finish was lovely; a dart away from Matty Cash and a curler that kissed the post on its way in.

View image in fullscreen Ezri Konsa wheels away in celebraton after firing home Aston Villa’s third goal against PSG. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

Villa had flickered at 1-0. Torres blasted too close to Gianluigi Donnarumma while Rogers took a pass from Tielemans and curled just wide. They deserved the Tielemans goal which was teed up by a reverse pass by McGinn after an excellent move involving Rashford. Tielemans’s shot flicked home off Pacho.

It was feisty and there was uproar when McGinn went down in the area after a shoulder-to-shoulder challenge from Hakimi on 36 minutes. Hard but fair, said the referee José Maria Sánchez. No penalty. Hakimi kicked up and out at McGinn as the pair tangled on the ground and he was very lucky not to make any contact.

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PSG might have had another before the interval only for Fabián Ruiz to scuff his shot slightly when well placed.

Emery’s transformation of Villa has been remarkable, very much of a piece with the magic he has sprinkled at his previous clubs, especially in Europe.

This was the 14th season in 17 that he had competed in the knockout rounds of one Uefa competition or another.

He needed the mother and father of all comebacks as the second half started and yet there was no diluting Villa’s belief. They continued to bring the intensity, to play their football. The crowd stayed with them, how they stayed with them and by the hour mark, Villa were back in it. PSG squinted into the whirlwind.

Rashford exploded to life. He had extended Donnarumma in the 51st minute as PSG panicked at the back and his cut-back for Konsa’s low shot for 3-2 on the night followed a nutmeg on Ruiz and a swerve away from Vitinha. Moments earlier, he had extended Donnarumma after a burst inside.

That had followed McGinn lighting the touchpaper with a run and shot from distance that looped over Donnarumma. Straight after the Konsa goal, Tielemans almost scored with a header, Donnarumma clawing over. Then Torres could not react in time to direct a header of his own. It was bedlam inside the stadium.

Goals from Youri Tielemans, John McGinn and Ezri Konsa gave Aston Villa a 3-2 win against PSG but the French side held on to win 5-4 on aggregate

PSG end Aston Villa’s European run after epic fightback falls just short

ALBAWABA – Scientists at Cambridge University's Institute of Astronomy have discovered a distant planet known as K2-18b. Preliminary evidence suggests that the planet may show signs of possible life.

New evidence of possible signs of life on planet K2-18b

Professor Nikku Madhusudhan, the lead researcher at Cambridge University's Institute of Astronomy, and his team have discovered signs of molecules that are typically produced by simple organisms on Earth. This discovery hints at possible signs of life on the newly identified planet.



According to the team of scientists, more evidence and details are still needed to confirm the possible signs of life on planet K2-18b.



"This is the strongest evidence yet there is possibly life out there. I can realistically say that we can confirm this signal within one to two years. The amount we estimate of this gas in the atmosphere is thousands of times higher than what we have on Earth. So, if the association with life is real, then this planet will be teeming with life," stated Professor Madhusudhan.

'The evidence is growing it may be teeming with life'



Science correspondent Pallab Ghosh had more details on #BBCBreakfast about tentative evidence that a faraway planet called K2-18b could be home to lifehttps://t.co/1tawRpZY1O pic.twitter.com/39igcDEImb — BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) April 17, 2025

Notably, the planet K2-18b is about two and a half times the size of Earth and is located approximately 700 trillion miles away. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — the largest and most powerful space telescope ever built — will be used to analyze the chemical composition of K2-18b by studying the light that passes through its atmosphere from the small red star it orbits.



The team of scientists discovered signs of molecules including dimethyl sulphide (DMS) and dimethyl disulphide (DMDS). These molecules are typically produced by bacterial organisms on Earth.



"If we confirm that there is life on k2-18b it should basically confirm that life is very common in the galaxy", Professor Madhusudhan concluded.

ALBAWABA – Scientists at Cambridge University's Institute of Astronomy have discovered a distant planet known as K2-18b. Preliminary evidence suggests t

K2-18b: newly discovered planet shows signs of possible life

Algeria to expel 12 French embassy officials

France and Algeria's national flags seen flying ahead of French President Emmanuel Macron's official visit to Algeria in 2022

Barrot urged Algeria to "abandon" the expulsions and said France was ready to "respond immediately" if they went ahead.

They are accused of involvement in the abduction last year of Amir Boukhors, 41, a critic of Algeria's government with a large audience on social media, who was reportedly granted asylum in France in 2023.

Jean-Noel Barrot added that it was linked to the indictment of three Algerians in France on Friday, one of whom is a consular official.

Algeria has asked 12 French embassy staff to leave the country within 48 hours, France's foreign minister has said.

Boukhors, also known as Amir DZ, has lived in France since 2016 and was reportedly granted political asylum in 2023.

He was abducted in April 2024 in the southern suburbs of Paris and released the following day, according to his lawyer Eric Plouvier.

Plouvier told AFP that Boukhors had been "the subject of two serious attacks, one in 2022 and another on the evening of April 29 2024".

French media reported that he was forced into a car with a flashing light by "fake police officers", then released the next day without explanation.

Algeria has issued nine international arrest warrants against him, accusing him of fraud and links to terrorist organisations".

He denies the allegations. In 2022, the French courts refused his extradition.

The case is the latest in a growing number of incidents to have exacerbated a rift between France and Algeria.

They include the arrest and imprisonment in Algeria of French-Algerian author Boualem Sansal, who was accused of undermining Algeria's territorial integrity.

Algeria recalled its ambassador from Paris last year after France backed Morocco's claim to the disputed territory of Western Sahara.

The 12 French officials asked to leave on Monday include some members of the French interior ministry, a diplomatic source told AFP.

On Monday, Barrot said: "I am asking Algerian authorities to abandon these expulsion measures... if the decision to send back our officials is maintained, we will have no other choice but to respond immediately."

Barrot claimed that the expulsions were a response to the indictment of three Algerian nationals on Friday in Paris - including the consular official - on charges including abduction, arbitrary detention and illegal confinement and participating in a terrorist organisation.

Algeria's foreign ministry said it had summoned French ambassador Stephane Romatet in response to "express its strong protest" and called for the official's immediate release, according to the official Algerian news agency.

It added that the individual "was arrested in public and then taken into custody without notification through the diplomatic channels".

The ministry claimed the move was "not a coincidence as it happens in a very specific context with the aim of stymying the process of relaunching bilateral relations".

Tentative steps have been made to repair relations between the two nations with a phone call between French President Emmanuel Macron and President Abdelmadjid Tebboun taking place in March.

"The two presidents had a long, frank and friendly exchange on the state of bilateral relations and the tensions that have built up in recent months," a joint statement read.

Following an official visit to Algeria on 6 April where he met with Tebboun, Barrot said he hoped for a "new phase" in relations.

France said the move was in response to the indictment of three Algerians in Paris on Friday.

Algeria to expel 12 officials from French embassy

Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel literature laureate and a giant of Latin American letters for many decades, has died, his son said on Sunday. He was 89.

“It is with deep sorrow that we annouce that our father, Mario Vargas Llosa, passed away peacefully in Lima today, surrounded by his family,” read a letter signed by his children Álvaro, Gonzalo and Morgana, and posted by Álvaro on X.

The letter says that his remains will be cremated and that there won't be any public ceremony.

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“His departure will sadden his relatives, his friends and his readers around the world, but we hope that they will find comfort, as we do, in the fact that he enjoyed a long, adventurous and fruitful life, and leaves behind him a body of work that will outlive him,” they added.

He was author of such celebrated novels as ‘The Time of the Hero’ and ‘Feast of the Goat’.

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A prolific novelist and essayist and winner of myriad prizes, Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel in 2010 after being considered a contender for many years.

Vargas Llosa published his first collection of stories ‘The Cubs and Other Stories’ in 1959. But he burst onto the literary stage in 1963 with his groundbreaking debut novel ‘The Time of the Hero’, a book that drew on his experiences at a Peruvian military academy and angered the country's military. A thousand copies of the novel were burned by military authorities, with some generals calling the book false and Vargas Llosa a communist.

That, and subsequent novels such as ‘Conversation in the Cathedral’ in 1969, quickly established Vargas Llosa as one of the leaders of the so-called ‘Boom’, or new wave of Latin American writers of the 1960s and 1970s, alongside Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes.

Vargas Llosa started writing early, and at 15 was a part-time crime reporter for La Crónica newspaper. According to his official website, other jobs he had included revising names on cemetery tombs in Peru, working as a teacher in the Berlitz school in Paris and briefly on the Spanish desk at Agence France-Presse in Paris.

He continued publishing articles in the press for most of his life, most notably in a twice-monthly political opinion column titled 'Touchstones' that was printed in several newspapers.

Vargas Llosa came to be a fierce defender of personal and economic liberties, gradually edging away from his communism-linked past, and regularly attacked Latin American leftist leaders he viewed as dictators.

Although an early supporter of the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro, he later grew disillusioned and denounced Castro's Cuba. By 1980, he said he no longer believed in socialism as a solution for developing nations.

In a famous incident in Mexico City in 1976, Vargas Llosa punched fellow Nobel Prize winner and ex-friend García Márquez, whom he later ridiculed as “Castro's courtesan”. It was never clear whether the fight was over politics or a personal dispute, as neither writer ever wanted to discuss it publicly.

As he slowly turned his political trajectory towards free-market conservatism, Vargas Llosa lost the support of many of his Latin American literary contemporaries and attracted much criticism even from admirers of his work.

Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa was born on March 28, 1936, in Peru's southern city of Arequipa, high in the Andes at the foot of the Misti volcano.

His father, Ernesto Vargas Maldonado, left the family before he was born. To avoid public scandal, his mother, Dora Llosa Ureta, took her child to Bolivia, where her father was the Peruvian consul in Cochabamba.

Vargas Llosa said his early life was “somewhat traumatic”, pampered by his mother and grandmother in a large house with servants, his every whim granted.

It was not until he was 10, after the family had moved to Peru's coastal city of Piura, that he learned his father was alive. His parents reconciled and the family moved to Peru's capital, Lima.

Vargas Llosa described his father as a disciplinarian who viewed his son's love of Jules Verne and writing poetry as surefire routes to starvation, and feared for his “manhood”, believing that “poets are always homosexuals”. After failing to get the boy enrolled in a naval academy because he was underage, Vargas Llosa's father sent him to Leoncio Prado Military Academy — an experience that was to stay with Vargas Llosa and led to ‘The Time of the Hero’. The book won the Spanish Critics Award.

The military academy “was like discovering hell”, Vargas Llosa said later.

He entered Peru's San Marcos University to study literature and law, “the former as a calling and the latter to please my family, which believed, not without certain cause, that writers usually die of hunger”.

After earning his literature degree in 1958 — he didn't bother submitting his final law thesis — Vargas Llosa won a scholarship to pursue a doctorate in Madrid.

Vargas Llosa drew much of his inspiration from his Peruvian homeland, but preferred to live abroad, residing for spells each year in Madrid, New York and Paris.

His early novels revealed a Peruvian world of military arrogance and brutality, of aristocratic decadence, and of Stone Age Amazon Indians existing simultaneously with 20th-century urban blight.

“Peru is a kind of incurable illness and my relationship to it is intense, harsh and full of the violence of passion,” Vargas Llosa wrote in 1983.

After 16 years in Europe, he returned in 1974 to a Peru then ruled by a left-wing military dictatorship. “I realised I was losing touch with the reality of my country, and above all its language, which for a writer can be deadly,” he said.

In 1990, he ran for the presidency of Peru, a reluctant candidate in a nation torn apart by a messianic Maoist guerrilla insurgency and a basket-case, hyperinflation economy.

But he was defeated by a then-unknown university rector, Alberto Fujimori, who resolved much of the political and economic chaos but went on to become a corrupt and authoritarian leader in the process.

Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Vargas Llosa's longtime friend, later confessed that he had rooted against the writer's candidacy, observing: “Peru's uncertain gain would be literature's loss. Literature is eternity, politics mere history.”

Vargas Llosa also used his literary talents to write several successful novels about the lives of real people, including French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin and his grandmother, Flora Tristan, in 'The Way to Paradise’ in 2003 and 19th-century Irish nationalist and diplomat Sir Roger Casement in ‘The Dream of the Celt’ in 2010. His last published novel was ‘Harsh Times’ in 2019 about a US-backed coup d'etat in Guatemala in 1954.

He became a member of the Royal Spanish Academy in 1994 and held visiting professor and resident writer posts in more than a dozen colleges and universities across the world.

In his teens, Vargas Llosa joined a communist cell and eloped with and later married a 33-year-old Bolivian, Julia Urquidi — the sister-in-law of his uncle. He later drew inspiration from their nine-year marriage to write the hit comic novel ‘Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter’.

In 1965, he married his first cousin, Patricia Llosa, 10 years his junior, and together they had three children. They divorced 50 years later, and he started a relationship with Spanish society figure Isabel Preysler, former wife of singer Julio Iglesias and mother of singer Enrique Iglesias. They separated in 2022.

He is survived by his children.

He was author of such celebrated novels as ‘The Time of the Hero’ (La Ciudad y los Perros) and ‘Feast of the Goat’.

Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel literature laureate, dies at 89

Traders unwound dollar (USD) exposure last week amid US President Donald Trump’s back-and-forth tariffs, which threaten to undermine confidence in US assets and the economy. While a 90-day tariff reprieve has been granted to most nations, the escalating trade tensions between the US and China pressure global supply chains, potentially fuelling inflationary pressures and slowing economic growth.

Another week, another round of tariffs

For the Research Team here last week, it was a case of ‘Another Day, Another Tariff’. Frankly, many market participants – myself included – struggled to keep up.

Following ‘Liberation Day’ earlier this month – an event that saw Trump impose 10% baseline tariffs on all nations and higher levies on approximately 60 countries – the President staged a considerable U-turn last week, pausing higher tariffs for 90 days and applying a 10% blanket tariff on all non-retaliatory countries. Of course, while this was welcomed news – and risk assets demonstrated their relief – we are far from free-trade bliss.

The US and China remain at loggerheads after Trump excluded China from the temporary halt and increased tariffs to an eye-popping 125% on goods exported to the US, following Beijing’s 84% duties on all US imports. The tit-for-tat exchanges escalated in the second half of the week, with the US imposing a tariff rate of 145% on Chinese imports, to which China responded by slapping the US with 125% tariffs. However, according to a policy release from the Ministry of Finance (MoF) last Friday, China stated they will now ignore the US. The MoF noted: ‘At the current tariff level, there is no market acceptance for US goods exported to China. If the US continues to impose tariffs on Chinese goods exported to the US, China will ignore it’.

Amid the ongoing uncertainties between the US and China, the economy is facing ‘considerable uncertainty’, according to Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase. Economists at JPMorgan also estimate a 50/50 chance of a recession occurring. Additionally, Larry Fink, the Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, has indicated that the US may already be in a recession.

Unfortunately, this tit-for-tat US-China trade theme is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. I do not see China backing down to the US – despite problems at home – and the Trump administration has been downplaying the market impact; it is fair to say that uncertainty will remain high and markets are on edge.

This week’s focus?

Last week’s macro slate revealed softer-than-expected US inflation on both the consumer and producer side, though the market’s reaction was limited and did little to slow the rise in US Treasury yields. It is also worth mentioning that consumer sentiment data released from the University of Michigan came in much cooler than expected, and inflation expectations surged.

For many traders worldwide this week, despite the long Easter weekend ahead and the focus remaining on tariff developments, the upcoming week does not lack tier-1 macro drivers. In addition to updates from the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of Canada (BoC) this week, US retail sales numbers will be closely watched, inflation data from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand will also make the airwaves, as well as employment data from the UK and Australia.

Kicking off with the US, retail sales data are out on Wednesday at 12:30 pm GMT and are forecast to have firmed between February and March, up 1.4% from a meagre 0.2%. Excluding autos, retail sales are also expected to tick higher to 0.4% from 0.3%. According to a ‘Consumer Checkpoint’ report from the Bank of America: ‘The import content of consumer goods and services is substantial, raising the risk of price rises from higher tariffs. In Bank of America data we find some evidence that consumers were buying durables ahead of the introduction of tariffs. The evidence is strongest in autos sales’.

Regarding central banks, the BoC is making a show on Wednesday. As of writing, markets are currently pricing in 11 bps of easing (about a 43% chance that the central bank will reduce the overnight rate by 25 bps to 2.50%). I feel it is about a 50/50 chance that the BoC will pull the trigger again at this week’s meeting – the central bank has cut rates in its last seven meetings. Economic activity growing at an annualised pace of 2.6% in Q4 24, up from 2.2% in Q3 24, and headline year-on-year (YY) inflation rising by 2.6% in February (note that the March CPI inflation data will hit the wires on Tuesday) suggests the bank could hold the overnight rate at 2.75% this week. On the other side of the fence, the BoC, like many other central banks, are working in uncertain times and could opt to reduce its interest rate given the uncertainty Trump’s tariffs bring to Canada’s economy. According to Statistics Canada, the country is a dominant trading partner to the US, with over 75% of its exports sent to the US.

We also have the ECB up on Thursday. Swaps traders are fully pricing in that the ECB will reduce all three benchmark rates by 25 bps; a cut this week would lower the deposit rate to 2.25%. Unlike in Canada, eurozone inflation has continued to trend in the right direction (inflation eased to 2.2% in March on a YY basis, marking the lowest rate since late last year). Although the European Union now face lower-than-expected US tariffs, the central bank is expected to step in and shore up the economy amid risks to growth.

Market outlook

The first full trading week of April wrapped up with the USD taking a solid hit to the midsection, down 3.0% according to the USD Index; this was despite a rally in US Treasury yields across the curve. In the equity space, US indexes teetered in and out of bear market territory but ultimately finished the week positively, and Spot Gold (XAU/USD) chalked up a one-sided move to fresh all-time highs of US$3,245.

The USD Index ended the week shaking hands with monthly support between 98.72 and 99.67, though daily charts suggest further underperformance to at least 98.58. The rebound in the S&P 500 still has some room to manoeuvre according to the technical picture, targeting daily resistance from 5,570, while Gold shines the spotlight on two daily support levels to watch this week: US$3,148 and demand from US$3,000-US$3,058.

While monitoring the upcoming macro events closely is important, most of the data this week will take a backseat to any developments regarding tariffs.

Written by FP Markets Chief Market Analyst Aaron Hill

DISCLAIMER:

The information contained in this material is intended for general advice only. It does not take into account your investment objectives, financial situation or particular needs. FP Markets has made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information as at the date of publication. FP Markets does not give any warranty or representation as to the material. Examples included in this material are for illustrative purposes only. To the extent permitted by law, FP Markets and its employees shall not be liable for any loss or damage arising in any way (including by way of negligence) from or in connection with any information provided in or omitted from this material. Features of the FP Markets products including applicable fees and charges are outlined in the Product Disclosure Statements available from FP Markets website, www.fpmarkets.com and should be considered before deciding to deal in those products. Derivatives can be risky; losses can exceed your initial payment. FP Markets recommends that you seek independent advice. First Prudential Markets Pty Ltd trading as FP Markets ABN 16 112 600 281, Australian Financial Services License Number 286354.

Will this week be as volatile as the previous one for investors?

Tariffs remain front and centre this week

But Katy's reaction to completing the journey left many people unamused

The singer, 40, soared into the sky on Monday with a star-studded female crew

'Dramatic' Katy Perry has been brutally slammed online over her 'try-hard' antics following her 11-minute trip to space on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin spaceship.

The singer, 40, soared into the sky with a star-studded all-female crew including Lauren Sanchez and Gayle King on Monday morning.

The women crossed the Karman Line, often used as the boundary of space, and were treated to roughly three minutes of weightlessness before they headed back down to the ground.

Upon arriving back on Earth, each of the ladies were seen exiting the rocket one by one - but Katy's reaction to completing the journey left many people all across the web unamused.

As she emerged from the ship, the Firework songstress stopped and held a daisy up to the sky for a couple seconds before she kissed it - in honor of her daughter.

She then flipped her hair with a dramatic swish before she headed down the ladder. Upon reaching the bottom, she got down on her hands and knees and kissed the ground dramatically.

And social media users were quick to bash Katy's actions.

'Oh dramatic. You were there for 20 seconds miss girl,' one user wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in response to a clip of Katy getting off the ship.

'Dramatic' Katy Perry has been brutally slammed online over her try-hard antics following her 11-minute trip to space on Jeff Bezos ' Blue Origin spaceship

The singer, 40, soared into the sky with a star-studded all-female crew including Lauren Sanchez and Gayle King on Monday morning

The women crossed the Karman Line, often used as the boundary of space, and were treated to roughly three minutes of weightlessness before they headed back down to the ground

Upon arriving back on Earth, each of the ladies were seen exiting the rocket one by one - but Katy's reaction to completing the journey left many people all across the web unamused

'Her kissing the ground as if she wasn't gone for two seconds,' added another, alongside some laughing emojis.

'Girl get the f**k up,' someone else quipped, while a fourth person chimed in, 'It was only a 10-minute flight PLEASE.'

'This b***h is so f**king dramatic,' scathed someone else.

A sixth tweet read, 'Drama queen,' while a seventh said, 'Seriously? This is so lame. Nothing but a photo op and a mockery of real space, travel, and actual astronauts.'

While chatting with reporters after the trip, Katy said it left her feeling 'super connected to love.'

'I think this experience has showed me that you never know how much love is inside of you and how much love you have to give and how loved you are,' she gushed.

She described launching into space as the 'highest high' she ever felt, and revealed that she sang the song What A Wonderful World.

'It's not about me, it's not about singing my songs, it's about a collective energy in there,' she said, when asked why she chose that song.

As she emerged from the ship, the Firework songstress stopped and held a daisy up to the sky for a couple seconds before she kissed it

She then flipped her hair before she headed down the ladder

Upon reaching the bottom, she got down on her hands and knees and kissed the ground dramatically

'[The trip was] about us and making space for future women and taking up space and belonging,' she continued.

'It's about this wonderful world that we see out there and appreciating it. This is all for the benefit of Earth.'

Explaining why she took a daisy, the name as her daughter, with her, Katy revealed that it's a flower that can 'grow in all conditions.'

'Daisies are common flowers but they grow through any condition, they grow through cement, through cracks, through walls,' she said.

'They are resilient, they are powerful, they are strong, they are everywhere. To me, flowers are God's smile.

'They are a reminder of our beautiful earth and the beautiful magic that is everywhere all around us.'

The six-person crew also included film producer Kerianne Flynn, activist Amanda Nguyen, and former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe.

Their journey was powered by a reusable rocket which pushed the capsule into space before detaching and gently guiding itself back to Earth.

Social media users were quick to bash Katy's actions

While chatting with reporters after the trip, Katy said it left her feeling 'super connected to love'

Katy shared a handwritten list of affirmations over the weekend, providing fans with a deeper look into her mindset ahead of soaring into space.

The first read, 'I am safe - in all ways,' leading many to believe that she was terrified about the endeavor.

'I am a fearless, heart-centered leader that will continue to lead with love, justice, and be a candle for truth,' the note continued.

'I can surrender. I am all the love that I need. I have clarity. I return and process large amounts of information effortlessly.'

The star also broke down in a morning interview days before the launch, when asked if she had a message for her family.

'My message is that I love them and I am so full of love,' she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

'I am so grateful to be representing fearless females in my family.'

Upon arriving back on Earth, each of the women were seen exiting the rocket one by one - but Katy's reaction to completing the journey left many people all across the web unamused.

'Dramatic' Katy Perry is brutally slammed over her bizarre antics following Blue Origin space trip

“If they’re criminals and if they hit people with baseball bats over the head that happen to be 90 years old and if, uh, if they rape 87-year-old women in Brooklyn, yeah, yeah, that includes them,” he added.

“They’re as bad as anybody that comes in. We have bad ones, too.”

Trump previously suggested that people who vandalize Teslas as a protest against the company’s billionaire CEO Elon Musk should also be sent to El Salvador.

The reporter asked the question after Trump encouraged Bukele to build several more detention facilities and even offered to help pay for them, praising them as “great facilities, very strong facilities.”

Conditions at the megaprison are notoriously brutal. Juanita Goebertus, the director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, testified last month under penalty of perjury that people there are denied communication with their relatives and lawyers; that people are tried en masse by the hundreds; and that some prisoners are held in solitary confinement cells that are completely dark.

A livestream of the full meeting on Bukele’s social media accounts appeared to capture the two leaders discussing the plan in more detail.

It's the second time in a week that the Trump administration has said it wants to forcibly disappear U.S. citizens abroad.

Trump Says He's "All For" Sending American Citizens To El Salvador

GEORDIE football hero Dan Burn stunned onlookers when he helped to push a stranded car off a busy roundabout.

The 6ft 7in Newcastle defender — whose Carabao Cup final goal last month inspired them to their first domestic trophy in 70 years — sprang into action on Saturday.

3 Dan Burn stunned onlookers when he helped to push a stranded car off a busy roundabout Credit: Facebook

3 The Geordie football hero sprang into action on Saturday Credit: x

3 Dan's Carabao Cup final goal last month inspired Newcastle to their first domestic trophy in 70 years Credit: Getty

Witnesses said an electric BMW i3 had come to a standstill with its airbags deployed after a driver slammed on the brakes to avoid a crash on the A19, north of the North East city.

Phone footage shot by fan Joeanne Collis shows new England cap Burn, 32, climbing from his own car to join two other men.

Her nine-year-old son Reuben-Joh, nine, can be heard asking: “Mum, is that actually Dan Burn?”

She replies: “It is, aye. Absolute legend.”

Full-time carer Joeanne, 40, from Blyth, told The Sun: “Dan is from round here, so everyone knows him.

“It just proves what a top man he is.

"The car was small so he towered above it.”

It was an all-action weekend for Burn — yesterday he played in the home game against Manchester United.

GEORDIE football hero Dan Burn stunned onlookers when he helped to push a stranded car off a busy roundabout.The 6ft 7in Newcastle defender — whose

Watch moment 6ft7inch Prem star stunned onlookers when he helped push a stranded car of a busy roundabout

Washington: Former defence minister turned lobbyist Christopher Pyne says the biggest threats to the AUKUS pact are “naysayers” and a lethargic defence establishment, but admits the $368 billion program lacks a broad social licence and has only qualified support from the Trump administration.

While figures such as US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth have backed the agreement in principle and accepted the first of Australia’s cheques, they remain nervous about selling submarines at a time when US production is lagging and threats to American interests are growing.

Former Australian defence minister Christopher Pyne in Washington, DC, on April 11.

“When he speaks to journalists about AUKUS you can tell that he’s uncomfortable about AUKUS if it means that the Americans in any way have to give anything up to anybody,” Pyne said in an interview in Washington.

He also pointed to remarks from undersecretary for defence policy Elbridge Colby, who has called himself an AUKUS sceptic but at his confirmation hearing said the US should do what it can to make the deal work.

The former defence minister turned lobbyist is confident the $368 billion deal will come to fruition, but admits US support under Trump is “qualified”.

Trump uncertainty not biggest threat to $368 billion AUKUS pact, Pyne says

Over 30 killed in Russian missile attack on Sumy in Ukraine

The strikes come a day after Russia and Ukraine's senior diplomats accused each other of violating a tentative US-brokered deal to pause strikes on energy infrastructure, underscoring the challenges of negotiating an end to the 3-year war

By AP Published Date - 13 April 2025, 08:08 PM

The city center in the aftermath of the Russia's missile attack that killed at least over 30 civilians in Sumy, Ukraine.

Kyiv: At least 32 people have been killed in a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Sunday, officials said. Two ballistic missiles struck the heart of the city at around 10.15 am as people gathered to celebrate Palm Sunday, according to officials.

Images from the scene on official channels showed lines of black body bags lying on the side of the road, while more bodies were seen wrapped in foil blankets among the debris. Video footage also showed fire crews as they fought to extinguish the shells of burned-out cars among the rubble from damaged buildings.

At least 32 people were killed as a result of the attack, including two children, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said in a statement. A further 99 people were injured, including 11 children, it said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that rescue efforts were ongoing and said “dozens” had been killed in the double missile attack. “According to preliminary information, dozens of civilians were killed and wounded. Only filthy scum can act like this — taking the lives of ordinary people,” he said.

The head of the Ukrainian president’s office, Andriy Yermak, said that the strike had also used cluster munitions in an attempt to kill as many people as possible.

The attack on Sumy is the second large-scale attack to claim civilian lives in just over a week, following a deadly missile strike on Zelenskyy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih on April 4 that killed some 20 people, including nine children.

Other world leaders also condemned the attack, with French President Emmanuel Macron saying that the strike undermined Washington-led peace talks between the two sides. “Everyone knows: This war was initiated by Russia alone. And today, it is clear that Russia alone chooses to continue it — with blatant disregard for human lives, international law and the diplomatic efforts of President Trump,” he wrote in a statement.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, a 62-year-old woman was killed in Russian shelling on the Ukrainian city of Kherson, regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said Sunday. The mayor of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, also said Sunday that a Russian strike had hit one of the city’s kindergartens, shattering windows and damaging the building’s facade. No casualties were reported.

The strikes come a day after Russia and Ukraine’s senior diplomats accused each other of violating a tentative US-brokered deal to pause strikes on energy infrastructure, underscoring the challenges of negotiating an end to the 3-year war.

The two countries’ foreign ministers spoke at separate events at the annual Antalya Diplomacy Forum, a day after US envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss peace prospects. “The Ukrainians have been attacking us from the very beginning, every passing day, maybe with two or three exceptions,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, adding that Moscow would provide the US, Turkiye and international bodies with a list of Kyiv’s attacks during the past three weeks.

His Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Sybiha, contested that claim, saying that Russia had launched “almost 70 missiles, over 2,200 (exploding) drones, and over 6,000 guided aerial bombs at Ukraine, mostly at civilians” since agreeing to the limited pause on strikes. Russian forces hold the advantage in Ukraine, and Kyiv has warned Moscow is planning a fresh spring offensive to ramp up pressure on its foe and improve its negotiating position.

Retired Lt Gen Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, said that the Sumy attack crossed “any line of decency” and that the White House remained committed to ending the conflict. “There are scores of civilian dead and wounded. As a former military leader, I understand targeting and this is wrong. It is why President Trump is working hard to end this war,” he said.

The strikes come a day after Russia and Ukraine's senior diplomats accused each other of violating a tentative US-brokered deal to pause strikes on energy infrastructure, underscoring the challenges of negotiating an end to the 3-year war

Over 30 killed in Russian missile attack on Sumy in Ukraine

By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters

Photo: Omar Al-Qatta / AFP

Two Israeli missiles hit a building inside a main Gaza hospital, destroying the emergency and reception department and damaging other structures, medics said, in a strike that Israel said was against Hamas fighters exploiting the facility.

Health officials at the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital evacuated the patients from the building on Sunday (local time) after one person said he received a call from someone who identified himself as Israeli security shortly before the attack took place.

No casualties were reported, according to the civil emergency service.

The Israeli military said in a statement it had taken steps to reduce harm to civilians before it struck the compound which was being used by Hamas militants to plan attacks.

The hospital, an institution of the Anglican Church, was a major medical facility in Gaza City, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which is now out of operation because of the attack.

"Hundreds of patients and injured people had to be evacuated in the middle of the night, and many of them are now out in the streets without medical care, which puts their lives at risk," Khalil Al-Deqran, the ministry's spokesperson, told Reuters.

Images circulating on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed dozens of people leaving the premises, with some appearing to be dragging sick relatives on hospital beds.

The Palestinian foreign ministry and Hamas condemned the attack at Al-Ahli and said in a statement that Israel was destroying Gaza's healthcare system.

Israel said Hamas systematically exploits civilian structures, including hospitals, which the militant group denies. Israeli forces have carried out numerous raids on medical facilities in the enclave.

In October 2023, a deadly blast at a parking lot in the compound of Al-Ahli Hospital was blamed by Hamas on an Israeli air strike. Israel said a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group had caused the blast.

The militant group denied it was responsible. An investigation by Human Rights Watch later concluded the 2023 explosion was most likely caused by a failed Palestinian rocket launch.

Cairo talks

Sunday's strikes came hours after leaders from the Hamas group visited Cairo to hold talks with Egyptian mediators over ways to salvage the stalled ceasefire agreement.

Egypt, Qatar, and the US have stepped up efforts to bridge the gaps between Hamas and Israel.

The Baptist Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East said in a statement that 20 minutes before the attack on the hospital, the Israeli military ordered all patients, employees and displaced people to evacuate the premises.

It said the two strikes destroyed the two-storey Genetic Laboratory, damaged the Pharmacy and Emergency Department buildings, and caused collateral damage to surrounding structures, including the St. Philip's church building.

"The Diocese of Jerusalem is appalled but the bombing of the hospital is now for the fifth time since the beginning of the war in 2023 - and this time was on the morning of Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week," the Baptist Church said.

"We call upon all governments and people of goodwill to intervene to stop all kinds of attacks on medical and humanitarian institutions," it said in a statement.

Separate strikes in the enclave on Sunday killed at least 10 Palestinians, including the head of a police station in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Hamas-run enclave, according to Hamas media and local health authorities.

At least eight more people, including a woman, were killed further north, according to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.

There was no immediate Israeli comment on those reports.

The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas' 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive, according to local health authorities.

Much of Gaza is in ruins and most of its population has been displaced.

- Reuters

Health officials evacuated the patients from the building after receiving a warning call from someone who identified himself as Israeli security.

Israeli missiles strike Gaza hospital, patients evacuated

McIlroy puts in blistering third round to lead Masters

Rory McIlroy reacts after holing his putt on the 18th green. Photo Reuters

Rory McIlroy raced out to the best start the Masters has seen in its 91-year history, with six straight 3s on his scorecard that shot him into the lead on Saturday and left him 18 holes away from that coveted green jacket and the career Grand Slam.



McIlroy chipped in for eagle as part of his amazing start. And then he delivered another eagle late in the round as contenders were lining up behind him, a majestic 6-iron to 6 feet on the par-5 15th hole that carried him to a second straight 6-under 66.



“It was an awesome day and puts me in a great position going into tomorrow,” McIlroy said.



He led by two shots over a familiar foe — Bryson DeChambeau, who delivered some magic of his own with a 45-foot birdie putt to start his round and a putt from nearly 50 feet for birdie on the 18th hole that gave him a 69.



It was DeChambeau who crushed McIlroy’s spirit last year at Pinehurst No. 2 by beating him at the US Open, stretching McIlroy's drought in the majors to more than a decade.



Also familiar to McIlroy was his position going into the final day at Augusta National .



It was 14 years ago when McIlroy, a 21-year-old with long, curly locks and unlimited potential, took a four-shot lead into the final round of the Masters. What followed was a meltdown that left him in tears when he shot 80.



“I just have to stay firm and just stay in my own little world,” McIlroy said.



He hasn't had a better chance at that green jacket until this week, when he recovered from two double bogeys in the opening round and responded with rounds of 66-66.



At stake on Sunday is a chance to become only the sixth player to capture all four professional majors, a feat last accomplished nearly 25 years ago by Tiger Woods at the British Open.



Corey Conners, who went from a five-shot deficit to one shot behind McIlroy in a span of three holes on this wild Saturday, closed with eight straight pars for a 70. He was in third place, four shots behind.



No one else was closer than six shots of McIlroy. Justin Rose, who had a one-shot lead at the start of the day, shot 75 and was seven shots back. (AP)

Rory McIlroy raced out to the best start the Masters has seen in its 91-year history, with six straight 3s on his scorecard that shot him into the lea...

McIlroy puts in blistering third round to lead Masters

A devastating Russian ballistic missile strike on Sumy, Ukraine, resulted in over 21 fatalities and 83 injuries, including children, on Palm Sunday. President Zelenskyy shared a horrific video of the aftermath, showing widespread destruction and casualties, and urgently appealed to the world for a firm response. The video showed several dead bodies and injured being rescued, cars engulfed in flames and the street littered with debris—shards of glass, pieces of concrete, and tree branches thrown by the explosion.

More than 21 people were killed and 83 injured in a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Sunday. Sharing the video of the devastation President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made an urgent appeal asking the "world to respond firmly"."Russia hit the city centre with ballistic missiles. Right when there were many people on the street," Ukrainian emergency said. "Eighty-three people were wounded, including seven children," the interior ministry said.The horrific video showed several dead bodies and injured being rescued, cars engulfed in flames and the street littered with debris—shards of glass, pieces of concrete, and tree branches thrown by the explosion."A horrific Russian ballistic missile strike on Sumy.Russian missiles hit an ordinary city street, ordinary life – residential buildings, educational institutions, cars on the street… And that’s on the day when people go to church – Palm Sunday, the feast of the Lord's Entry into Jerusalem. According to preliminary information, dozens of civilians were killed and wounded. Only filthy scum can act like this – taking the lives of ordinary people. My condolences to the families and loved ones. A rescue operation is underway. All necessary services are working at the scene," Zelenskyy said in a post on X."The world must respond firmly. The United States, Europe, everyone in the world who wants this war and these killings to end. Russia wants exactly this kind of terror and is dragging this war out. Without pressure on Russia, peace is impossible. Talks have never stopped ballistic missiles and aerial bombs. What’s needed is an attitude toward Russia that a terrorist deserves. I thank everyone who stands with Ukraine and helps us defend life," he added.The strike occurred less than 24 hours after the top diplomats from Russia and Ukraine traded accusations over breaching a tentative US-mediated agreement to halt attacks on energy infrastructure, highlighting the ongoing difficulties in reaching a resolution to the three-year-long war.

Europe News: A devastating Russian ballistic missile strike on Sumy, Ukraine, resulted in over 21 fatalities and 83 injuries, including children, on Palm Sunday. P

Russian Strike on Sumy: Over 21 Killed as Zelenskyy Urges Firm Global Response

Firefighters try to extinguish the shells of burned-out cars among the rubble from damaged buildings. Photograph: Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP

At least 32 people have been killed in a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy.

Local officials said two ballistic missiles struck the heart of the city at about 10.30am local time as people gathered to celebrate Palm Sunday.

Video footage showed fire crews attempting to extinguish the shells of burned-out cars among the rubble from damaged buildings.

“On this bright Palm Sunday, our community has suffered a terrible tragedy. Unfortunately, we already know of more than 20 deaths,” said acting city mayor Artem Kobzar, initially.

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At least 32 people were killed as a result of the attack, including two children, said the state emergency service of Ukraine.

A further 84 people were injured, including 10 children, it added.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirmed rescue efforts are ongoing as “dozens” had been killed in the double missile attack.

“According to preliminary information, dozens of civilians were killed and wounded,” he said.

The attack is the second to claim civilian lives in just over a week, following a deadly missile strike on Mr Zelenskiy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih on April 4th that killed about 20 people, including nine children.

In response to the attack on Sumy, Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Harris said he was appalled.

“I utterly condemn this cowardly attack by Russia and express deep condolence to the families of those killed. This is just the latest in a series of horrific attacks on Ukrainian cities in recent weeks ... Russia has demonstrated yet again it has no interest in peace and is intent on continuing its illegal war,” said Mr Harris.

He added that the Republic is working with its European and international partners to support Ukraine in the face of continuing Russian aggression.

World leaders also condemned the attack, with French president Emmanuel Macron saying the strike undermines Washington-led peace talks between the two sides.

“Everyone knows: This war was initiated by Russia alone,” he wrote in a statement. “And today, it is clear that Russia alone chooses to continue it – with blatant disregard for human lives, international law and the diplomatic efforts of President Trump.”

It comes less than a day after Russia and Ukraine’s top diplomats accused each other of violating a tentative US-brokered deal to pause strikes on energy infrastructure, underscoring the challenges of negotiating an end to the three-year war.

The two countries’ foreign ministers spoke at separate events at the annual Antalya Diplomacy Forum, a day after US envoy Steve Witkoff met Russian president Vladimir Putin to discuss peace prospects.

“The Ukrainians have been attacking us from the very beginning, every passing day, maybe with two or three exceptions,” said Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. He added that Moscow would provide the US, Turkey and international bodies with a list of Kyiv’s attacks during the past three weeks.

His Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Sybiha, fiercely contested that claim, saying on Saturday that Russia had launched “almost 70 missiles, over 2,200 [exploding] drones, and over 6,000 guided aerial bombs at Ukraine, mostly at civilians”, since agreeing to the limited pause on strikes. – AP

World leaders condemn bombing characterised as ‘cowardly attack’ by Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Harris

Ukraine war: Russian missile strike on city of Sumy leaves at least 32 dead

(Reuters) -- The Trump administration has granted tariff exclusions for smartphones, computers and other electronics imports supplied largely by China, sparing them from much of President Donald Trump's steep 125% duties.

In a notice to shippers, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency published a list of tariff codes that will be excluded from the duties. The exclusions are retroactively to 12:01 a.m. on April 5.

(Reuters) -- The Trump administration has granted tariff exclusions for smartphones, computers and other electronics imports supplied largely by China

U.S. excludes smartphones, computers from 'reciprocal' Trump tariffs

US President Donald Trump is betting that a beleaguered Iran is so vulnerable following a tumultuous 18 months in the Middle East that it might finally be ready to abandon its nuclear programme.

The renewed push to solve one of the most delicate foreign policy issues facing the White House and the Mideast will begin in earnest Saturday when Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi gather in Oman.

Trump says he prefers a diplomatic solution, even as he warns that Iran will face “great danger” if talks don't go well. But Iran's nuclear advances since Trump scrapped an Obama-era agreement during his first term make finding a pathway to a deal difficult, and experts warn that the prospects of US military action on Iranian nuclear facilities appear higher than they have been in years.

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“I want Iran to be a wonderful, great, happy country, but they can't have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said Friday night aboard Air Force One as he flew to Florida for the weekend.

The moment is certainly fraught, but the White House is seeing hopeful signs that the timing might be right. The push comes as Iran has faced a series of enormous setbacks that has ostensibly left Tehran in a weaker negotiating position.

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Iran's recent challenges

The military capabilities of Iranian-backed proxy forces Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon have been dramatically degraded by Israeli forces. US airstrikes, meanwhile, targeting Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen have hit oil refineries, airports and missile sites.

Israel also carried out strikes against Iran in October that damaged facilities linked to Tehran's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. And in December, Iran saw Syrian leader Bashar Assad - Tehran's closest Mideast ally - ousted after more than two decades in power.

The leaders of the Islamic Republic also face domestic pressure as years of international sanctions have choked the economy. The US Treasury Department announced a new round of sanctions earlier this week targeting five entities and an individual that American officials say play key roles in Iran's nuclear programme.

“All eyes are on Oman by Iranians following this very closely and potentially hoping that this would impact the state of the economy,” said Negar Mortazavi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, a Washington-based think tank.

But it remains to be seen if the US can entice Iran with a big enough carrot for it to make concessions to meet Trump's demands that any potential deal go further in ensuring Tehran doesn't develop nuclear weapons than the agreement forged during Democratic President Barack Obama's administration.

Under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran could only maintain a small stockpile of uranium enriched to 3.67%. Today, it has enough to build multiple nuclear weapons if it chooses and has some material enriched up to 60%, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels.

It's not clear if talks will be face to face

At the meeting on Saturday in Oman's capital city of Muscat, Iran will be represented by Araghchi and the United States by Witkoff. It's unclear if the two will speak directly.

Trump has said the two sides will have “direct” negotiations. But Iranian officials have insisted that the plan is for “indirect talks,” meaning an intermediary from Oman would shuttle messages between Witkoff's and Araghchi's teams holed up in different rooms.

Either way, the decision for the two sides to talk - announced by Trump in the Oval Office this week alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - came as a bit of a surprise.

Trump has been calling for direct talks while threatening “consequences” for Iran if it doesn't move to get a deal done.

Iran, meanwhile, has given mixed signals about the utility of the talks, arguing that engaging would be useless under the shadow of threats.

After Trump recently sent a letter to Iran's supreme leader, 85-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling for direct negotiations, Tehran rejected the entreaty while leaving open the possibility of indirect negotiations.

President Masoud Pezeshkian again pledged this week that Iran's “not after a nuclear bomb” and even suggested Tehran could be open to the prospect of direct American investment in the Islamic Republic if the countries can reach a deal.

That was a departure from Iran's stance after its 2015 nuclear deal, in which Tehran sought to buy American airplanes but in effect barred US companies from coming into the country.

How much room is there for negotiation?

National security adviser Mike Waltz has said Trump wants the “full dismantlement” of Iran's nuclear program, adding, “That's enrichment, that is weaponisation, and that is its strategic missile programme.” But Trump left greater space for negotiations: “The only thing that they can't have is a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters as he met with his Cabinet secretaries Wednesday.

Witkoff also has signalled that the administration could be amenable to a deal that is less than full nuclear disarmament.

“Where our red line will be, there can't be weaponisation of your nuclear capability,” Witkoff said in a Wall Street Journal interview published Friday.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu, who met with Trump on Monday, said he would welcome a diplomatic agreement along the lines of Libya's deal with the international community in 2003. The Israeli leader is known for his hawkish views on Iran and in the past has urged Washington to take military action against Iran.

The Libya deal saw late dictator Moammar Gadhafi give up all of his clandestine nuclear programme. Iran has insisted its programme, acknowledged to the International Atomic Energy Agency, should continue.

But Trump has notably not embraced Netanyahu's push for the Libya model, said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, another Washington-based think tank.

“If it's narrow, if it's focused on the nuclear programme, if the goal of the US is to prevent a nuclear weapon, then there is a likelihood for success,” Parsi said. “And it's under those circumstances that I suspect that you will see talks, perhaps in rather short order, be elevated.”

Iran and the US will meet for talks over Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear programme on Saturday in Oman's capital Muscat.

Trump opens door to Iran deal, warns of consequences if talks fail

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post

From left, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a Cabinet meeting Thursday at the White House.

President Donald Trump’s rapid-fire trade war has set in motion a commercial rupture without precedent, which is rippling through the global economy in unpredictable and costly ways.

The triple-digit taxes that the president has imposed on Chinese products – and China’s retaliatory measures – are expected to shrink trade between the world’s two largest economies from a recent annual peak of nearly $700 billion to almost nothing.

After more than a quarter-century of a love-hate relationship, the United States and China are on the verge of a commercial divorce. Yet some coveted Chinese products will continue finding their way to American customers via other nations that face lower U.S. trade barriers. And even as direct trade shrivels, the U.S. will remain dependent on Chinese components that are inside products made in countries such as Mexico, Thailand or Vietnam.

“We’re entering a new phase, a broader strategic decoupling between our two economies. It’s going to be painful. It’s going to hit both economies. It’s going to hit the global economy,” said Myron Brilliant, a senior counselor at DGA Group, a business advisory firm.

Many U.S. importers will be unable to quickly find alternatives for their Chinese suppliers, leaving them little choice but to pay the tariffs. Those extra costs will show up in higher prices for consumers or will erode profits, cutting into hiring and growth.

Other companies are putting the brakes on operations, as tariff pain spreads across the United States.

Earlier this week, Kim Bradley, chief operating officer for Highline United, a footwear maker in Dedham, Massachusetts, stopped a 20-foot shipping container full of women’s footwear as it was about to be loaded aboard a ship in a Chinese port. Rather than pay a $60,000 tariff bill when it arrived in the United States, she returned it to her factory in Dongguan, China.

With Chinese goods now facing import taxes of 145 percent, the projected tariff exceeded the value of the shoes inside the container and was roughly 10 times what the company normally pays.

“It’s going to be catastrophic for the industry,” she said. “I can’t imagine that the president is going to let this devastation happen.”

There is no way that a wholesaler with modest profit margins, like Highline, could absorb such a cost increase. Even routine import duties stress the company’s cash flow. U.S. Customs officials, for example, automatically deduct import taxes and other fees from Highline’s bank account less than a month after clearing its cargo into the United States. Yet it might be two or three months before Highline is paid by its customers.

Bradley has paused other shipments while hoping for an early trade war resolution. So many companies are canceling their Chinese orders that the shipping line she uses may not operate its next scheduled sailing from the port of Yantian on April 17.

Like most in her industry, Bradley said she has no choice but to buy from China. In the past, Highline has experimented with importing some products from Vietnam. But suppliers there require larger minimum orders than the more flexible Chinese producers.

While she endorses the president’s stated goal of trade “fairness,” she sees little likelihood that footwear manufacturing could return to the United States, as he intends.

“People in the United States don’t want to be making shoes,” she said.

With the company’s fate hanging on diplomatic talks that have not yet begun, Highline last week laid off two longtime employees, including one who had worked for the company for 11 years.

Trump’s sky-high tariffs represent “an extinction-level event” for thousands of small companies, said Steven Lamar, president of the American Apparel and Footwear Association.

The U.S.-China slugfest will dent growth in both nations and send shock waves around the globe. By year end, the U.S. economy, which began 2025 growing at an annual rate of 2.4 percent, will be almost dead in the water, according to economists from both Goldman Sachs and Oxford Economics.

As China’s factories continue to hum, Chinese goods that would have gone to the U.S. will instead head for Europe and other markets, threatening them with the sort of job-killing shock that battered American workers in the first decade of this century.

China’s retaliation for Trump’s tariffs, featuring its own levies of 125 percent, will make itself felt on American farms and businesses.

Commercial aircraft maker Boeing has roughly three dozen suppliers in China, which produce components for every one of its current models.

Soybean and corn growers are worried about losing Chinese sales after Beijing’s announcement Friday that it had raised its tariffs in response to Trump’s latest move.

Chinese mines dominate global production and processing of exotic rare earth minerals such as gadolinium and yttrium. Earlier this month, the Chinese government announced new export restrictions on seven categories of medium and heavy rare earths.

The share price of GE Healthcare Technologies, which uses the Chinese materials in a contrast agent for MRIs, fell 14 percent in one day following the announcement.

Within a month or two, some U.S. companies may run short of magnets needed to produce electric vehicles.

Elsewhere, consumer electronics companies – or other manufacturers that have signed long-term contracts with Chinese suppliers – will be under the most pressure. China for the past 15 years has exported more laptops, mobile phones and tablets than all other nations combined, according to the Rhodium Group, a New York-based consultancy.

U.S. companies could shift their orders to Vietnam and India. But adding production capacity there requires 12 to 24 months, according to Chris Rogers, head of supply chain research at S&P Global Market Intelligence. Opening new plants in other countries would take even longer.

Trump said Wednesday that he wants to reach a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping to ease tensions. But there is little trust between the two sides after years of trade friction and fruitless negotiations.

“I’m not concerned. I think President Xi is a very smart guy, and I think we’ll end up making a very good deal,” the president told reporters.

Rather than a comprehensive agreement, Beijing and Washington should try to rebuild mutual confidence through a series of incremental improvements, according to two business executives who have recently spoken to Chinese officials and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Both sides have reason to favor a deal. On Wall Street, stocks and bonds lost ground last week while China’s economy is struggling amid a hangover from a property bubble. Yet hard bargaining lies ahead.

“Any deal that is going to be acceptable to Beijing is going to need to involve a substantial rolling back of penalties, tariffs, at least to the status quo ante of January 20,” said Scott Kennedy, a China specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “What they’re most desirous of is predictability and stability.”

The U.S.-China trade war is likely to push the global economy perilously close to recession. Assuming Trump’s 10 percent universal tariff remains in place, and taxes on Chinese goods ultimately settle around 60 percent, the conflict will knock about 0.4 percent off global growth, according to Neil Shearing, chief global economist for Capital Economics in London.

The impact could be more profound if the trade war morphs into a financial battle.

In February, the president ordered his Cabinet officers to identify ways of preventing U.S. capital from financing Chinese technology companies that aid China’s military and intelligence industries.

Among the measures that the presidential memo proposed: evaluating the risks involved in allowing Chinese companies such as Alibaba and Baidu to continue listing their shares on U.S. stock exchanges.

“A shift from trade to financial conflict would be a material escalation and [would] force markets to price in the possibility of financial decoupling,” Rory Green, chief China economist for TS Lombard in London, wrote in a research note Friday.

The open breach between Washington and Beijing comes after both nations spent years trying to reduce their mutual dependence. Under Xi’s “dual circulation” strategy, China has tried to shrink its reliance on foreign inputs. Likewise, both the Biden and Trump administrations have promoted domestic production rather than rely on an adversary like China for critical products such as pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and rare earths.

Severing direct trade links with China, however, does not mean that the U.S. will no longer be vulnerable to Chinese economic coercion. Solar panels from Southeast Asia contain silicon wafers made in China. And U.S. automakers indirectly import four times as much Chinese content as they buy directly, according to research presented at a Brookings Institution conference in 2023.

“We may decouple, but not de-risk,” said economist Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations. “You can’t eliminate all Chinese content.”

As attention turns to the president’s talk of making an unspecified deal with China, CEOs mourn the apparent end of decades of mutually profitable relations. Many companies, including Apple, Tesla and Starbucks, will remain in China to serve Chinese customers. Others have begun shifting their supply chains to locations that will face lower U.S. trade barriers.

No matter what the two leaders manage to work out later this year, the long period of U.S.-Chinese commercial cooperation has ended, according to many who follow the transpacific relationship, including Aaron Friedberg, who advised then-Vice President Dick Cheney in the years after China joined the global trading system.

“We’re in a whole different world,” said Friedberg, a Princeton University professor. “And the nature of the economic relationship between the United States and China is not going to be what it was.”

Trump’s Historic China Tariffs Spread Pain through U.S. and Global Economies

DUBAI, April 11 (Reuters) – Iran said on Friday it was giving high-level nuclear talks with the United States on Saturday “a genuine chance”, after President Donald Trump threatened bombing if discussions failed.

Trump made a surprise announcement on Monday that Washington and Tehran would begin talks in Oman, a Gulf state that has mediated between the West and the Islamic Republic before.

In a sign of the difficult road ahead for negotiators, the White House reiterated Trump’s threat on Friday, saying he wants Iran to know there will be “all hell to pay” if it does not agree to abandon its nuclear programme.

Special envoy Steve Witkoff, who will lead the U.S. delegation, was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying the administration’s “red line” is to stop Iran from being able to produce a nuclear weapon and that dismantling its nuclear program is the opening demand. But he suggested Washington would be open to “other ways to find compromise.”

The January return to the White House of Trump, who in his first term withdrew the U.S. from a 2015 big-power accord with Tehran, has again brought a tougher approach to a Middle Eastern power whose nuclear programme Washington’s ally Israel regards as an existential threat.

At the same time, Iran and allied groups have been weakened by the military offensives Israel has launched across the region, including air strikes in Iran, after being attacked from Gaza by Palestinian militant group Hamas in October 2023.

Iranian state media said the talks would be led by Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and Witkoff, with Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi as intermediary.

The Iranian foreign ministry said on Friday the U.S. should value the Islamic Republic’s decision to engage in talks despite what it called Washington’s “prevailing confrontational hoopla”.

“We intend to assess the other side’s intent and resolve this Saturday,” spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei posted on X. “In earnest and with candid vigilance, we are giving diplomacy a genuine chance.”

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-e Ravanchi was quoted by the semi-official news agency ISNA as saying: “Without threats and intimidation from the American side, there is a good possibility of reaching an accord.”

He added: “We reject any bullying and coercion.”

U.S. air attacks on Yemen’s Houthis, who are aligned with Iran and have hit international shipping lanes in the Red Sea in support of Hamas, have stirred speculation that Washington might be preparing to attack Iran.

Meanwhile, Israel has resumed its devastating military campaign against Hamas, which has also received support from Iran, after several weeks of truce, and its ceasefire with the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah militia remains brittle.

‘IMPORTANT AND PRACTICAL’ IRANIAN PROPOSALS

Iran had rejected direct negotiations with Washington before Trump announced on March 30: “If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing, and it will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.”

“Important and practical” Iranian proposals have been prepared in pursuit of “a real and fair” agreement, Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a post on X.

“If Washington comes to the talks with sincere intentions and genuine will to reach an agreement, the path to a deal will be clear and smooth,” Shamkhani added.

Since Trump pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 deal that curbed Iran’s uranium enrichment activity, deeming the accord deeply flawed, Tehran has accumulated a stockpile of uranium refined to levels close to what would be suitable for nuclear bomb fuel.

Iran had agreed in the deal, reached during U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, to strictly limit its enrichment activity in return for a lifting of global economic sanctions.

Tehran says its programme is purely for peaceful energy purposes, but the West says it goes far beyond any civilian requirements, and suspects Tehran of covertly seeking to develop nuclear weapons capability.

DIRECT-INDIRECT TALKS

Confusion arose after Trump announced that the talks between the longtime geopolitical adversaries would be direct, while Iran has insisted they would be indirect, with Omanis acting as mediators.

Shamkhani said Araqchi was heading to neighbouring Oman with “full authority” for indirect talks.

The U.S. and Iran held indirect talks during President Joe Biden’s term that ended in January but made little, if any, progress. The last known direct negotiations between the two governments were under Obama.

Iran Says It Will Give US Talks about Nuclear Plans a ‘Genuine Chance’

Washington Post

China is refusing to back down in its tariff standoff with the United States because Beijing believes it has the strength and strategy to endure what it sees as " economic bullying " from Washington.Chinese leaders have repeatedly told the public that they are capable of absorbing the impact, President Xi Jinping told visiting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez that China and the EU should jointly resist "unilateral bullying practices."“There are no winners in a trade war, and going against the world will only lead to self-isolation,” Xi said. He added, “For over 70 years, China’s development has relied on self-reliance and hard work — never on handouts from others.”China has imposed retaliatory tariffs of up to 125% on US goods and is actively expanding its trade partnerships with countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Xi is set to visit Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia—nations also affected by US tariffs—while his ministers continue outreach efforts to South Africa, Saudi Arabia and India. Simultaneously, China and the EU are reportedly negotiating a potential replacement of tariffs on Chinese cars with minimum pricing to address concerns of dumping.Chinese commerce minister Wang Wentao held a video call with EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefcovic on Tuesday to discuss US “reciprocal tariffs.” Wang said the tariffs “seriously infringe upon the legitimate interests of all countries” and warned that “if the US insists on its own way, China will fight to the end.”“It is a typical act of unilateralism, protectionism and economic bullying,” Wang said.Symbolically, Chinese state media and officials have turned to history to inspire national pride and resilience. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning sharing clips of Mao Zedong’s Korean War speeches, declaring China would “never yield.” On X , the spokesperson also invoked Mao’s “paper tiger” remark, suggesting that while the US projects strength, it is vulnerable to being pierced by firm resistance.Despite the tariff war between two of the world’s largest economies, trade between the US and China remains substantial. In 2024, total US goods trade with China reached $582.4 billion. Exports to China fell by 2.9% to $143.5 billion, while imports rose 2.8% to $438.9 billion. As a result, the US goods trade deficit with China widened to $295.4 billion—a 5.8% increase from the previous year.Even though Beijing has denounced the tariffs its impact is real. In Zhengzhou, home to major Apple supplier Foxconn, workers expressed concerns about reduced shifts and pressure on production.Thedescribed the fallout as a “historic rupture” in global commerce. US tariffs on Chinese goods now exceed 145%, pushing companies to halt shipments or reroute supply chains. Footwear maker Highline United, for instance, returned a container of shoes to China rather than pay a $60,000 tariff—ten times what it typically paid. “It’s going to be catastrophic,” said the firm’s COO, Kim Bradley. She echoed concerns that many US importers can’t quickly replace Chinese suppliers and must now bear the brunt of increased costs, often without support.

China News: China is standing firm in its trade dispute with the US, asserting its economic resilience and denouncing what it views as American bullying. Despite

Tariff showdown: Can China outlast US? Beijing thinks so

Men walk past a mural depicting the Statue of Liberty with the torch-bearing arm broken, painted on the outer walls of the former US embassy in Tehran, colloquially-referred to as the "Spy Den," on April 8, 2025. Iran said on April 8 it will send its top diplomat to Oman for breakthrough talks with the United States, after President Donald Trump announced direct discussions on its nuclear programme. Iran ally Russia welcomed the prospect of negotiations for a new nuclear accord to replace the deal with major powers that was unilaterally abandoned by Trump in 2018. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP) (Photo by ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images) Atta Kenare | Afp | Getty Images

The stakes could hardly be higher for fresh nuclear talks between the United States and Iran planned for this weekend. Israel, which views Iran as an existential threat, and the U.S. see Iran as a rogue regime intent on pursuing weapons of mass destruction that will stop at little to undermine its opponents. Iran's leadership, meanwhile, faces a choice between giving up its nuclear aspirations, which would most likely render it more vulnerable in the long run, or continuing along the path of nuclear development and dramatically raise the risk of an attack from Israel and the U.S. While Iran has always denied that it wants to develop nuclear weapons, top officials have repeatedly said that if it is attacked, this will change and eventually push it toward building a nuclear bomb. President Donald Trump revealed the upcoming negotiations in a surprise announcement Monday while standing alongside the leader of Iran's arch enemy, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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While Trump touted the discussions as "direct" talks with Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi quickly countered by saying the negotiations would be indirect, at least for now. The White House has not responded to questions about the discrepancy. Indirect talks would likely function as a "starting point and a communication bridge" to help both sides understand each other's positions, according to Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi, an associate fellow at Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa program. "It's probably going to be more maximalist than any follow-up conversation that they might have," she said. "We have to remember there has not been any direct engagement between the U.S. and Iran for awhile."

Tough talk

The American team is taking a tough stance as it goes into talks this weekend, with the U.S. issuing fresh sanctions Wednesday. Hanging over discussions in the Gulf kingdom of Oman will be Trump's threat that if the talks fail to yield results, "Iran is going to be in great danger." Trump has threatened to bomb Iran if it refuses to strike a deal on the future of its nuclear program. The bid to end Iran's nuclear program is one that Trump has resumed from his first term, when he pulled the U.S. out of the landmark 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear program and allow inspections of its facilities in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump withdrew from the JCPOA because, he said, it was a "horrible one-sided deal" that did not address Tehran's ballistic missile program nor its network of proxies throughout the region. The U.S. move infuriated the Iranian government after it had adhered to the terms the agreement signed with the Obama administration and five other world powers.

Saturday's talks also come after repeated warnings from Rafael Grossi, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran was "dramatically" accelerating its enrichment of uranium up to 60% purity, inching closer to the around 90% level that constitutes weapons grade. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Araghchi maintained there was no evidence Tehran had violated its commitment not to seek nuclear weapons. It was "willing to clarify our peaceful intent and take the necessary measures to allay any possible concern." Meanwhile, the conflict in the Gaza Strip that has consumed the Middle East for the past year and a half has seen two of Iran's key nonstate allies in what's known as its axis of resistance, Hamas and Hezbollah, severely weakened by Israeli forces, with Washington increasingly taking aim at the Houthis in Yemen.

'Very high price'

Tehran has said the discussions in Oman over the weekend will be indirect after President Donald Trump made a surprise announcement earlier this week of “direct” negotiations.

As U.S. and Iran look to begin nuclear talks amid fresh sanctions, can there be a deal?

DUBAI (Reuters) -- Iran and the U.S. held "positive" and "constructive" talks in Oman on Saturday and agreed to reconvene next week, both sides said, a dialogue meant to address Tehran's escalating nuclear program with President Donald Trump threatening military action if there is no deal.

"I think we are very close to a basis for negotiations and if we can conclude this basis next week, we'll have gone a long way and will be able to start real discussions based on that," Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told state television.

DUBAI (Reuters) -- Iran and the U.S. held "positive" and "constructive" talks in Oman on Saturday and agreed to reconvene next week, both sides said,

Iran, U.S. hold 'positive' talks in Oman, agree to resume next week

Inter Milan cruised to a 3-1 win at home to Cagliari thanks to goals from Marko Arnautovic, Lautaro Martínez and Yann Aurel Bisseck to keep their grip on top spot in Serie A on Saturday.

Inter are six points clear of second-placed Napoli, who host lowly Empoli on Monday, with six rounds to go.

Arnautovic put the hosts ahead after 13 minutes by blasting the ball home from close range. Roberto Piccoli had the chance to pull Cagliari level when he found himself one-on-one with Inter keeper Yann Sommer. However, the Swiss goalkeeper reacted swiftly, parrying the effort away.

Seconds later, Martínez doubled Inter’s lead in the 26th minute, timing a perfectly weighted pass to break through the Cagliari defence before delicately chipping keeper Elia Caprile, who seemed to hesitate too long before rushing out.

Martínez could have made it a third goal before the break but his acrobatic bicycle attempt went just wide of the post.

Cagliari pulled one back three minutes into the second half when Piccoli was left unmarked and sent a header into the ground that bounced into the top left corner.

The visitors’ momentum was punctured in the 55th minute, however, when Inter’s Bisseck rose highest at a corner to head their third and effectively seal the match.

Piccoli came agonisingly close to cutting the deficit for the visitors late in the match, his close-range shot heading goalwards, only for Inter defender Stefan de Vrij to stretch and deftly nod the ball over the bar.

First-half goals by Teun Koopmeiners and Kenan Yildiz helped Juventus to a 2-1 win at home against relegation-threatened Lecce as new coach Igor Tudor remains unbeaten on Juve’s bench.

Koopmeiners gave Juventus the lead after two minutes, scoring with a low strike inside the far post, and Yildiz doubled the advantage after the half-hour mark as he capitalised on a brilliant team play.

Lecce pulled a goal back in the 87th minute through Federico Baschirotto, who scored with a powerful header following a free-kick.

Juventus moved provisionally up to third on 59 points from 32 games. They are one point above fourth-placed Atalanta, who host Bologna, in fifth and with 57 points, on Sunday. Lecce are two points above the relegation zone.

In Spain, Barcelona extended their lead at the top to seven points with a 1-0 win at Leganés thanks to an own goal by defender Jorge Sáenz that took their unbeaten La Liga run to 13 matches.

Following a tense first half with chances for both sides, Barça went in front after the break when Raphinha’s cross for Robert Lewandowski was inadvertently deflected into the net by Leganés defender Sáenz and it proved to be the winner.

Lewandowski, chasing his 100th goal for the Catalans, later saw his header from Raphinha’s cross go wide before he was replaced by Ferran Torres after 67 minutes.

The hosts looked to have levelled when Dani Raba headed home Adria Altimira’s cross but the goal was disallowed for offside.

Hansi Flick’s side moved to 70 points above second-placed Real Madrid, who have 63 and visit Alaves on Sunday. Leganés remain second-bottom on 28, two points off the safety zone.

Inter Milan moved six points clear at the top of Serie A with a 3-1 victory over Cagliari while Barcelona won at Leganés to stretch La Liga lead

European club football: Inter sink Cagliari to tighten grip at top

Multiple roads and airport operations affected after crash

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Witnesses report low-flying plane; pilot may have tried to return

FAA and NTSB investigating the Boca Raton crash

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A small aircraft crashed Friday morning near the Boca Raton Airport, causing widespread road closures and major disruptions in the area. The crash occurred around 10:30 am (ET) along Military Trail, a busy road near the airport and close to the Interstate 95 overpass. Emergency responders rushed to the scene as fire and smoke filled the area.The authorities verified the Boca Raton plane crash occurred with a twin-engine Cessna 310R aircraft that used propellers for flight. The plane began experiencing mechanical problems immediately after takeoff, which made its crew try to return to the airport, but the crew failed to prevent the crash. The aftermath of this plane crash covered both North Military Trail as well as railroad tracks next to it. The catastrophe caused a fire that consumed an automobile located near the accident site.North Military Trail faced a total closure from Boca Raton police across the area between Northwest 19th Street and Butts Road because of the severe aircraft accident. Shutdown operations blocked both eastern and western I-95 overpass lanes at Glades Road. Emergency operations proceeded at Boca Raton Airport due to the temporary closure of the airport. Neighborhood traffic was restricted through instructions to stay away from the entire closure zone.The School District of Palm Beach County officially stated that Boca Raton Community High School did not suffer any damage from the Boca Raton plane crash. The educational programs ran according to their normal schedule, yet parents received instructions to stay away from the facility because traffic was badly jammed in the vicinity.The people at the crash site heard both the loud noise and the low-flying aircraft before the plane crashed. Multiple times of aircraft flight tracking demonstrated the plane orbited the zone repeatedly after its departure until it crashed. News helicopter cameras captured the flaming aircraft as it distributed debris between the roads and railroad tracks.Dates from local reports indicate the airplane pilot stated a mechanical problem before attempting a flight return before the crash. The authorities have refrained from issuing official information regarding the number of casualties and injuries. The initial photographs from the scene featured what seemed like a deceased person, yet the authorities have refused to disclose any information about names.Two investigations were officially started by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) into the plane crash in Boca during Friday afternoon. The cleanup teams dedicated their work from morning until afternoon to eliminate the wreckage while restoring access to primary roads. Several hours passed before Boca Raton Airport received authorization to operate again after authorities completed the clearance of the area.The Boca Raton plane crash occurred following a New York City helicopter accident that caused widespread public safety concerns. People on social media platforms showed anxiety because of the consecutive catastrophic events.Authorities reported the pilot experienced mechanical issues shortly after takeoff. Flight data showed the plane circling before crashing. The FAA and NTSB are currently investigating to determine the exact cause.Boca Raton Airport was temporarily closed following the crash but is expected to reopen once the investigation and debris clearance are complete.

A small twin-engine plane crashed near Boca Raton Airport on Friday morning, prompting road closures and flight suspensions. The aircraft reportedly experienced mechanical issues and attempted to return before going down on Military Trail. The FAA and NTSB are investigating. No official confirmation on casualties yet, as authorities work to clear debris and assess damage.

Fiery plane crash in Boca Raton shuts down airport, roads; sparks safety concerns

Emergency personnel responded to a small plane crash near Interstate 95 in Boca Raton, Florida, US on April 11, 2025. Photo: CNN

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Three people were killed and one injured after a small aircraft crashed onto Tri-Rail tracks near I-95 in Boca Raton, Florida, US on Friday morning. The crash occurred around 10:20 am, shortly after the Cessna 310 departed Boca Raton Airport en route to Tallahassee International Airport, according to the FAA.

Assistant Fire Chief Michael LaSalle confirmed that all three people on board the aircraft died in the crash. One person on the ground was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, possibly after driving through the resulting fireball.

The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) have launched an investigation into the cause of the crash.

Following the incident, Boca Raton Police closed North Military Trail between Northwest 19th Street and Butts Road. The I-95 overpass at Glades Road was also shut in both directions, and authorities are urging the public to avoid the area. Police said road closures could last for an extended period.

Chopper footage showed debris scattered across the Tri-Rail tracks, with emergency crews and fire retardant visible at the crash site. A burnt-out vehicle was also spotted near a tree, though it remains unconfirmed if it’s linked to the injured person.

Tri-Rail service has been suspended in the area. A bus bridge is being arranged between Deerfield Beach and Boca Raton stations to assist affected commuters.

Aviation expert Willard Shepard said a witness saw the plane shortly after takeoff and noted it appeared to be in distress, possibly attempting to return to the airport before crashing. Investigators will examine all factors, including mechanical issues and flight path data.

One nearby office worker told CBS News he saw the plane flying unusually low before it disappeared below the treeline. “There was a loud boom, the windows shook, and then a cloud of smoke and fire,” he recalled. Others said the impact felt like an earthquake, shaking nearby buildings.

The investigation remains ongoing.

Small plane crashes onto Tri-Rail tracks near I-95 in Boca Raton shortly after takeoff, FAA confirms.

Three killed as small plane crashes near I-95 in Boca Raton

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Liverpool has finally confirmed that Mohamed Salah will continue with the English club until 2027. The Egyptian player, 32, would finish his contract in June, and it has been expected that he would not get a renewal, which frustrated fans because he was having one of his best seasons ever, and seemingly the player himself, who used to say that this was going to be his final year at Liverpool.

But that has changed this week, and the announcement has been made on Friday morning: Mo Salah has agreed on two more years. "I signed because I think we have a chance to win other trophies and enjoy my football", said Salah, who arrived at Liverpool as a transfer from Roma in the summer of 2017, and has since won one Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup, FIFA Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup, FA Cup, and two League Cups. He is also the third top scorer of all-time for the Reds.

Today is all about Salah, who has scored 32 goals in 45 appearances, but it is expected that Virgil van Dijk will also sign a similar new two year contract. Trent Alexander-Arnold will not follow, and plans to join Real Madrid continue unchanged.

The third top scorer of all-time at Liverpool will remain for two more years.

Liverpool announces new two-year contract for Mohamed Salah

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'Heartbreaking'





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Six people including three children were killed after a sightseeing helicopter crashed into the Hudson River in New York on Thursday, sparking a major water rescue operation, authorities said.The crash killed all those onboard the aircraft: the pilot and a family from Spain. Two of the victims were initially taken to a hospital, but later succumbed to their injuries."At this time, all six victims have been removed from the water. And sadly, all six victims have been pronounced deceased," Mayor Eric Adams told a briefing, after earlier calling it a "heartbreaking and tragic crash."The chopper's landing skids were seen protruding from the river beside a tunnel vent as several boats clustered around the impact site.Police from both New York and New Jersey, which is on the opposite side of the river from Manhattan, responded to the scene along with fire department vessels.The NBC4 channel reported that its own helicopter was unable to take off because of weather conditions, with the weather in New York on Thursday gusty under thick cloud cover.A witness told AFP it appeared like the helicopter's rotor blade "shattered in the sky.""And after it shattered, then we saw the helicopter just spiral... And then it just crashed into the water just like that," said fashion designer Belle Angel.The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement it was Bell 206 helicopter."The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate," it added.President Donald Trump took to social media to call the crash "terrible.""The footage of the accident is horrendous. God bless the families and friends of the victims," he wrote on Truth Social.The river is a busy shipping channel and the scene of a dramatic 2009 incident when a US Airways jet safely landed in the water. All 155 people on board escaped with their lives in an event dubbed "Miracle on the Hudson."The river is as deep as 200 feet (60 meters) at points, and an AFP correspondent saw what appeared to be floatation devices deployed on the helicopter's skids.The average temperature of the river is 46 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius) at this time of year, according to the US Geological Survey."Three adults and three children were on board a Bell 206 helicopter that had left from the downtown Skyport at just about 3 pm," Adams said, adding that the tourists were a family from Spain.Police and fire service (FDNY) divers raced to pull survivors from the wreckage, he said."NYPD divers pulled four people from the crash site, and FDNY Divers recovered an additional two. Immediate lifesaving measures were undertaken on the vessels at the scene, as well as the adjoining pier," police commissioner Jessica Tisch said."Four victims were pronounced dead on scene, and two more were removed to local area hospitals, where, sadly, both succumbed to their injuries."The chopper took off around 3 pm, flying south before heading up the Manhattan shoreline to the George Washington Bridge, turning back towards the downtown Manhattan heliport, losing control and hitting the water near a Hoboken pier, Tisch said.The police commissioner said the aircraft was operated by New York Helicopter, which did not respond to a request for comment but lists the Bell 206 among its fleet.There have been around 30 helicopter crashes in New York since 1980, Brooklyn Borough President Mark Levine told reporters, calling for tighter restrictions on helicopter traffic in the city.

A sightseeing helicopter crashed into New York's Hudson River on Thursday, killing all six people on board, including three children and the pilot. The victims were a family from Spain. Witnesses reported seeing the helicopter's rotor blade shatter before the aircraft spiraled into the water. Authorities, including NYPD and FDNY divers, responded to the tragic scene.

Six, including three children, killed in 'tragic' Hudson River helicopter crash

A tourist helicopter plummeted upside down into New York City's Hudson River on Thursday killing all six people on board, including a Spanish family with three children and the pilot, Mayor Eric Adams said.

Agustin Escobar, an executive at Germany-based technology company Siemens, was among those killed according to the New York Times, which cited unnamed law enforcement sources.

New York City police referred requests for confirmation that Escobar was aboard the helicopter to the US Coast Guard. The Coast Guard said in a statement that it did not yet have the names of the victims. Siemens did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside normal business hours.

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Video of the crash showed what appeared to be a large object plunging into the river, followed seconds later by what appeared to be a helicopter blade. Afterwards, emergency and police boats were seen circling around a patch of river where the helicopter was submerged, with only what appeared to be the aircraft's landing gear poking above the water's surface.

The Bell 206 chopper, operated by New York Helicopter Tours, departed at about 3 p.m. ET (1900 GMT) from a downtown helicopter pad and flew north over the Hudson River, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.

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It turned south when it reached the George Washington Bridge and crashed minutes later, hitting the water upside down and getting submerged near Lower Manhattan at around 3:15 p.m., just off Hoboken, New Jersey, Tisch added.

Divers helped remove the victims from the water. Four were pronounced dead at the scene, while two others were taken to area hospitals where they died.

The airspace around Manhattan is crowded with helicopters offering tourists a bird's-eye view of the sights, with at least two dozen operators listed on tour website Viator. Many of the operators also offer helicopter shuttle services to the area airports.

New York Helicopter Tours, which offers sightseeing flights for as little as $114 per person on its website, did not respond immediately to a request for comment about the crash.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the tour helicopter was in Special Flight Rules Area established in New York that means no air traffic control services were being provided when it crashed.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate, with the NTSB leading the investigation.

Duffy said the FAA was also launching a Safety Review Team on Thursday evening. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy and a team from the board will arrive in New York later on Thursday and plan to hold a press briefing on Friday.

New York City has a history of accidents involving helicopters. In 2018, five passengers aboard a helicopter died when it crashed into the East River, while the pilot survived.

The helicopter was on a charter flight that featured an open door to allow passengers to take photographs of the skyline.

A New York City Police spokesperson said that police boats had assisted in Thursday's rescue efforts.

Helicopter safety has been a topic of discussion in the US Congress after 67 people were killed in a crash between an American Airlines regional jet and Army helicopter on Jan. 29 near Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. The FAA has since permanently restricted helicopter traffic near that airport and is reviewing helicopter operations near other major airports.

Siemens executive, his family among those killed: New York Times.

3 children among 6 dead as helicopter crashes into New York's Hudson River

Luo Jie/China Daily

Faced with an onslaught of tariffs from the US, nations are deliberating on their responses. The situation is complex because Trump's accusation of unfair treatment of the US by trading partners evidenced by other nations' trade surpluses is false.

Economists have asserted that trade imbalances often result from structural differences between countries and not from trade barriers. Consider two large economies of similar GDP with free trade - there should be no trade imbalances. Completely wrong. Say, in one, households have a high propensity to consume out of income and low savings - this is a fair description of the US where many homeowners use equity from rising property prices to refinance, making their home into an ATM. According to the US Federal Reserve, the personal savings rate was under 4 percent of income in 2024.

Assume on the other, citizens choose to save much more out of caution and are less happy to take on debt - they would consume much less of all goods including imports and run a trade surplus with the consumption-hungry country. No malicious treatment is involved. China is a good example of such a country with official household savings rates estimated at around 45 percent - hence highly likely to be a net exporter.

Trump has used the medical analogy of a sick patient enduring nasty medicine in order to be healthy in the future. The problem is that if the doctor has made an incorrect diagnosis, the wrong medicine will be given and the patient won't do well. This is the difficulty of responding to "reciprocal" tariffs which bear no relationship to real situations.

Trump has vigorously attacked the EU as "set up to harm the US", but in fact that large grouping of European nations may well have reduced the desire of individual members to seek export growth to America because there is a barrier-free large market locally that they can export to. It is true that the EU is a Customs Union that has a Common External Tariff but how often do we hear the true data on this, listening to Trump one would imagine it runs at 20 percent - official recent European Commission data shows that the true figure on average was just 1 percent tariff rates by both sides. Trump has made a huge distortion and fair-trading nations need to join together to support the true value of free trade.

Regional trading groups will need to enhance cooperation both within members and between them in order to reduce the importance of US exports to their economies - this will take time and will be constrained if a global recession results in the short term. Hence nations need to decide now how to de-rail Trump's tariff train.

China and the EU can lead the way and Chinese Premier Li Qiang earlier this week reached out to the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyden, to urge both sides to maintain free and open trade. There is clearly an opportunity for more collaboration between these large trading entities.

There seem to be two main options, one of which Trump will likely present as a victory - the many smaller nations he claims are calling him to do a deal. It may make sense for a nation like Malaysia or Vietnam to offer to eliminate their limited tariffs that probably won't lead to large increases in US imports, reflecting the size of their economies, but equally, this won't reduce the balance of trade issue. Governments cannot make their citizens buy more from America, especially when its own citizens may now have a negative view of that country.

Governments can of course redirect their own spending, so possibly a country might re-equip its national airline with new Boeing jet orders - although these would be unfair to Airbus without competitive tendering. It would be a risky step as it is likely to alienate other, more reliable trading partners.

Trump's latest development is an offer to such nations that have not retaliated to pause and lower tariffs against them as a reward, but it remains to be seen what deals can be done.

For large economies and trading blocs, standing up to and the US with counter-measures sends a message that they will not be bullied by the US for baseless reasons. China has already done this and stated they will not hesitate to go further if needed. The US has not paused tariffs on China, nor on Canada and Mexico who have been retaliating.

On Wednesday the EU announced its members have agreed to impose retaliatory tariffs of Euro 21 billion on US imports with 25 percent tariffs on many selected goods. The European Commission stated that US tariffs are unjustified and damaging, causing economic harm to both sides as well as the global economy. This is entirely correct.

More needs to be done and it may be a forlorn hope, but we need to see other actors in the US, including opposition politicians, business leaders, respected academics and even some of Trump's own supporters, stand up and communicate to the American people that his policy is flawed, a false diagnosis and harmful to the US. It is too early to tell if Trump's sudden, temporary rollback of some tariffs is a sign of greater understanding.

Colin Speakman is an economist from the UK and an international educator specializing in China. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of China Daily and China Daily website.

If you have a specific expertise, or would like to share your thought about our stories, then send us your writings at opinion@chinadaily.com.cn, and comment@chinadaily.com.cn.

We need to see other actors in the US stand up and communicate to the American people that his policy is flawed, a false diagnosis and harmful to the US.

US should reflect on its flawed tariff policies

With the dust now settled on the euphoric market rebound following U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war climb-down, investors are realizing that the global economy still faces the most punishing U.S. tariffs in nearly 100 years.

The picture is marginally brighter than it was before Trump blinked at 1:18 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday and announced a 90-day hiatus and a reduction to 10% for most of his ’reciprocal' tariffs. Washington is now pursuing negotiations with its trading partners and most retaliatory measures have been put on ice.

But the big picture remains pretty dim.

Analysis published by the non-partisan Budget Lab at Yale on Thursday suggests U.S. consumers will face an overall average effective tariff rate of 25.3%, only “slightly different” from before Trump’s pullback, and the highest since 1909. Even accounting for likely consumption shifts away from Chinese goods the average tariff rate will be 18.1%, the highest since 1934.

“It’s clear the U.S. economy hasn’t seen a shock like this since the 1920s and 1930s,” PIMCO economist Tiffany Wilding wrote on Thursday.

She estimates that every percentage point increase in the average effective tariff rate shaves about 0.1 ppt off U.S. growth and adds a similar amount to inflation. She says U.S. recession is now likely, as is core inflation surging to 4.5%. That’s a dismal picture.

Tightening grip

By some measures, the trade war’s vice-like grip on the global economy has tightened, particularly because of the pain being inflicted on China.

Essentially, any semblance of a truce in Trump’s broad trade war is being offset by the ratcheting up of tensions with China. Levies on Chinese goods are now an eye-popping 145%, the White House on Thursday.

As Pictet Wealth Management’s Frederik Ducrozet notes, the global trade war narrowed on Wednesday, but it also deepened. A “full decoupling” between the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest economies, is playing out in front of our eyes.

Little wonder that China’s stock market significantly lagged its regional and global peers on Thursday, although eking out a 1.3% rise was an achievement given the increasingly alarming U.S.-China standoff.

TD Securities strategist James Rossiter calculates that the import-weighted average U.S. tariff has actually risen to 26.2% from 23.9% on April 2, Trump’s ’Liberation Day'. Of course, if U.S.-China trade collapses, as could happen if neither Washington or Beijing backs down, the average effective rate will be closer to the global 10%.

But freezing the two-way flow of nearly $600 billion in annual trade isn’t exactly bullish, as investors realize – in U.S. trading hours on Thursday stocks plunged again, and ’safe-havens’ like the Swiss franc, gold and short-dated Treasuries surged.

Cue the Yuan deval?

So what are China’s options? Policy-makers in Beijing were already facing an unenviable domestic situation – a real estate crash, deflation and moribund demand and investment – and Trump’s belligerence can only make that more difficult.

If the economic battle lines between the world’s two economic superpowers are being marked by tariffs, the market battle lines are being drawn by the dollar/yuan exchange rate. In bright Technicolor, too.

It’s hard to envisage how China withstands or fights back against such punitive tariffs without a significant depreciation of its tightly controlled yuan, or perhaps a much bigger devaluation.

The currency market is leaning heavily that way: onshore spot dollar/yuan is a whisker from levels last seen in December 2007; Thursday’s central bank dollar/yuan fixing of 7.2092 yuan was the highest since September 2023; the offshore ’CNH' dollar/yuan rate touched a record peak of 7.4287 on Tuesday.

Economists at Goldman Sachs on Thursday slashed their Chinese GDP growth forecasts to 4.0% this year and 3.5% next year from 4.5% and 4.0%, respectively. They also said that they expect “significant” monetary and fiscal policy easing from Beijing.

No matter who blinks first in the coming months – Trump or President Xi Jinping – the rest of the global economy probably won’t like what it sees.

Washington is now pursuing negotiations with its trading partners and most retaliatory measures have been put on ice. But the big picture remains pretty dim

U.S. still facing 1930s tariff shock, vice tightens around China, analysts say

Open this photo in gallery: U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during a Make America Great Again rally in October, 2020, in Goodyear, Ariz.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

This week marked the realization among Donald Trump’s business supporters that the fantasy version of Mr. Trump they had been carrying around in their minds bore no relationship to reality.

The fantasy Mr. Trump was only kidding when he said, as he did throughout the 2024 election campaign, that he would impose double-digit tariffs on the whole world, and even heavier tariffs on China. It was all part of his shtick, a carnival show for the rubes. Savvy investors knew that Mr. Trump would never do anything so manifestly idiotic, that economic rationality would prevail in the end. Then tax cuts and deregulation sing them sweetly to bed.

How supposedly sophisticated business leaders persuaded themselves of this is a mystery, except as it implies business leaders are not very sophisticated at all, or at least that their eyes are easily misted over with greed. Since when did rationality ever prevail with Mr. Trump? The first Trump presidency many now recall with a kind of nostalgia was in fact a nonstop whirligig of insanity, a never-ending dance with disaster.

True, the worst did not happen – unless you count the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of people owing to COVID – largely thanks to the interventions of the President’s advisers at the time. But those advisers are no longer with us. Rather, Mr. Trump is now surrounded by people who amplify his insanity and exploit his vast stupidity. Mr. Trump wants to destroy America purely as an expression of his hideous id, to be revenged on his enemies, to make himself feel large. His advisers want to do so in order to create a revolutionary right-wing utopia from the ashes.

Hence the events of the past week. Leave aside the crude fallacies that underlay it – that the United States, the wealthiest country on Earth, was in fact the impoverished victim of decades of predatory trade practised by other countries (U.S. tariffs are in fact rather higher than average), that its manufacturing sector had been decimated (no it hasn’t), that the result was massive trade deficits that were sapping the country of its precious bodily fluids (trade deficits are neither good nor bad in themselves).

American hypocrisy: Trump attacks countries for ‘cheating’ on trade – but the U.S. does it too

Leave aside all that. Just think of the monstrous hubris, the childlike naïveté, the millenarian fantasy of thinking you could reorder the entire world trading system at a stroke, simply by imposing confiscatory taxes on every other country’s exports, without doing irreparable harm to the global economy. Think, further, of the blind fanaticism that could look upon the resulting mayhem – at one point stocks, bonds and the U.S. dollar were all plummeting at the same time – and think, not “my God, my God, what have I done?” but “well, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.”

At the last moment the President was deterred by the prospect of a global financial meltdown of 2008 proportions, abruptly cancelling the order he had issued just hours before. Tariffs were merely hiked to levels not seen in decades – or ever, in the case of China. But no one should think this marks an end to it. The tariffs that remain will do immense harm on their own; the ones that were lifted were only postponed for 90 days. More to the point, the deep thinkers responsible for this farce are still in place, presumably plotting their next calamity.

They will have learned nothing from this, that much is certain: if they were capable of learning from their mistakes they would not make so many of them. And their public declarations on the intent of the tariffs are such a mess of contradictions as to offer no reassurance whatever to investors. Should we locate a plant in the United States, at significant increased cost, to avoid the tariffs? But presidential adviser A insists these are mere bargaining chips, to be negotiated away in exchange for other countries’ concessions. Should we, then, locate in another country, in anticipation of the promised bilateral free trade agreements? But adviser B declares that tariffs are the heart of the President’s economic plan and will be reimposed after a breathing spell.

To say the result is uncertainty does not begin to describe the situation. It is blind terror. No one, after this, can have any illusions that there is some sort of method to the President’s madness. Just as no one has any faith in Mr. Trump’s word, neither should anyone trust that he has the faintest understanding of what he is doing. There is a lunatic at large in the White House, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop him. (Well, the Republicans could, but they won’t.) We are in for several years, at least, of global economic paralysis. And it is only going to get worse.

Mr. Trump, as I’ve written before, is on an exponential behavioural spiral, obliged to constantly outdo himself to provoke the outrage on which he, and his followers, thrive – prisoner, in his own way, of the same dumbing-down of expectations that bedevils all attempts to hold him to account. The assault on civil liberties and the rule of law, accordingly, will get worse. The erosion of the separation of powers, the elimination of all legislative or judicial checks on the power of the White House, will get worse. The attempts to undermine free and fair elections will get worse. The attacks on NATO, and Ukraine, and other democracies will get worse.

And so will the campaign against the economy. Mr. Trump’s next target will likely be the Federal Reserve, which he will blame for the state of the economy and attempt to control by various means. So at a time of rising prices (thanks to the tariffs) and exploding public debt, Mr. Trump will pile on inflationary monetary policy. And after that? Probably the statistical agencies, to make it impossible for anyone to know the true state of the economy.

What does all this mean for Canada? It means that the situation we are in is much, much worse than we had feared. Even if we were not the target of our own unique set of tariffs – on our cars, on our steel and aluminum, on whatever the hell the punitive “fentanyl” tariffs are supposed to apply to – there is the simple fact of our exposure to an American, and to a lesser extent global, economy that the President of the United States is doing everything in his power to collapse.

Until now the focus of our political leaders, as in this surprisingly listless election campaign, has been on the ways we might escape the tariffs. Thus we are told we can divert our trade, or significant sections of it, away from the United States, to which 75 per cent of our current exports are directed, to other countries. We are dazzled by tales of the pipelines we will build, east and west, to other markets. And we are regularly assured that interprovincial trade barriers are a thing of the past.

But the reality is that none of these things is about to materialize any time soon; they may never. They were comforting things to say – to soothe wounded Canadian pride, to get through an election campaign. But there is very little reason to believe that the obstacles that prevented progress on them before have suddenly melted away. And if they did, we would still have a growth crisis on our hands: flatlining productivity and declining per capita GDP, even as an aging population and mounting international instability imply huge increases in public spending.

Sorry, did I say growth “crisis”? After this week, we should perhaps say growth emergency. The only way we are going to protect our economy from Mr. Trump is not by diverting it this way and that, but by strengthening it: by so increasing our underlying rate of growth that we can maintain our momentum even against the force of Trumpian gravity. But to do that – to achieve “escape velocity,” if you will – will require much more radical solutions than any of the parties have been willing to contemplate so far.

It has, in fact, been a campaign notably lacking in serious pro-growth proposals. The only one of note has been the Conservative plan to defer capital-gains tax on the sale of any asset where the proceeds are reinvested in Canada. This has been massively oversold – the tax is deferred, not eliminated – but in principle it should help so far as it removes the tax impediment that might now deter investors from moving out of one asset and into another. That is, it is about improving the allocation of existing investment, rather than stimulating more of it.

That, however, is not going to generate anything like the kind of investment, or the kind of growth, we are going to need. We are currently growing at roughly 1.5 per cent annually, after inflation. To reach escape velocity we will need to at least double that rate of growth, and keep it there, year after year after year. Incrementalism will not get us there. We will have to “shock” investors, in the positive direction, in the same way that Mr. Trump’s antics have shocked them in the negative – not only as a matter of improving incentives here or there, but as a signal of our larger intentions: that we mean to be the most hospitable location for investors in the developed world, the most hotly competitive, the most sublimely efficient.

That will involve a wide range of tools: radical tax reform, dismantling the decrepit monopolies and oligopolies that now stifle competition across much of the economy, an open door to foreign investment, and yes, lots and lots of immigration. We can explore some of these in more detail at another time. For now the point is only to emphasize the size of the undertaking, and how far we are from a serious discussion of it.

We are in for several years, at least, of global economic paralysis. And it is only going to get worse

Opinion: Trump’s chaotic rule means we need a growth strategy more than ever. Somebody tell our political leaders

The European Union will pause its first countermeasures against US tariffs after President Donald Trump temporarily lowered the hefty duties he had just imposed on dozens of countries, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday.

The bloc was due to launch counter-tariffs on about 21 billion euros ($23.25 billion) of US imports from next Tuesday in response to Trump's 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium. It is still assessing how to respond to US car tariffs and the broader 10% levies still in place.

"We want to give negotiations a chance," von der Leyen said on X. "While finalising the adoption of the EU countermeasures that saw strong support from our Member States, we will put them on hold for 90 days."

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Trump's sudden decision on Wednesday to pause most of his hefty new duties brought relief to battered global markets and anxious global leaders, even as he ratcheted up a trade war with China.

His turnabout, which came less than 24 hours after steep new tariffs kicked in, followed the most intense episode of financial market volatility since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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US stock indexes shot higher on the news, and the relief continued into Asian and European trading on Thursday.

Before Trump's U-turn, the upheaval had erased trillions of dollars from stock markets and led to an unsettling surge in US government bond yields that appeared to catch the US president's attention.

Trump kept the pressure on China, the world's No. 2 economy and second-biggest provider of US imports with an increase of tariffs on Chinese imports to 125% from the 104% level that kicked in on Wednesday.

He also signed an executive order aimed at reducing China's grip on the global shipping industry and at reviving US shipbuilding.

EU pauses countermeasures following Trump's tariff reprieve

Barcelona thumped visiting Borussia Dortmund 4-0 in their Champions League quarterfinal first leg on Wednesday after Robert Lewandowski scored twice against his former club to earn the Catalans a sizeable lead ahead of next week's return visit to Germany.

Undefeated since late December, treble-chasing Barca predictably dominated the opening stages and grabbed the lead with Raphinha's strike in the 25th minute. A string of saves from Dortmund goalkeeper Gregor Kobel frustrated Barca for the remainder of the first half.

Barcelona emerged more determined after the break, and it took only three minutes to score the second goal, with Raphinha assisting Lewandowski, who nodded home from close range.

Barcelona is enjoying a superb 23-game unbeaten run across all competitions.