Category Archives: World News

White House to take choice of Pentagon chief of staff out of Hegseth’s hands

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Exclusive: The intervention to marginalize Ricky Buria is aimed at insulating the Pentagon from any more missteps

Exasperated by the turmoil that has dogged Pete Hegseth’s office in recent weeks, the White House will block the US defense secretary’s choice of chief of staff and select a candidate of its own, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Hegseth had suggested giving the chief of staff position to Marine Col Ricky Buria after the first person in the role, Joe Kasper, left last month in the wake of a contentious leak investigation that brought the ouster of three other senior aides.

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US considers special status for Greenland amid Trump push for control

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Officials float idea of compact of free association (Cofa), used by US to keep close ties with Pacific Island nations

US officials are discussing a plan to pull Greenland into America’s sphere of influence using a type of agreement that the United States has used to keep close ties with several Pacific Island nations, according to two US officials and another person familiar with the discussions.

Under the plan being considered, the Trump administration would propose to Greenland’s leaders that the island enter into a so-called compact of free association, or Cofa, with the United States.

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Simon Mann, mercenary behind failed ‘wonga coup’, dies aged 72

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Former SAS officer led a group of 70 who attempted to overthrow Equatorial Guinea’s president

Simon Mann, an Eton and Sandhurst-educated ex-SAS officer, who led a botched coup involving Margaret Thatcher’s son to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea, has died aged 72.

Mann led a group of 70 fellow mercenaries who were arrested in Zimbabwe in 2004 for attempting to topple Equatorial Guinea’s despotic president, Teodoro Obiang.

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Immigrants set for Libya deportation sat on tarmac for hours, attorney says

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Any Trump administration efforts to send non-Libyans to the north African country would violate a prior court order

Immigrants in Texas who were told they would be deported to Libya sat on a military airfield tarmac for hours on Wednesday, unsure of what would happen next, an attorney for one of the men has said.

The attorney, Tin Thanh Nguyen, told the news agency Reuters that his client, a Vietnamese construction worker from Los Angeles, was among the immigrants woken in the early morning hours and bussed from an immigration detention center in Pearsall, Texas, to an airfield where a military aircraft awaited them.

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Clergy molestation survivors concerned and insulted by election of Pope Leo XIV

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Pope faced questions about his handling of clerical sexual abuse cases earlier in his career after a survivors group filed a complaint

Groups supporting clergy-molestation survivors say they are gravely concerned and insulted by the election of Pope Leo XIV after he overcame questions about his handling of clerical sexual abuse cases earlier in his career to become the Roman Catholic church’s first-ever US-born leader.

Before Robert Prevost’s ascent to the papacy at age 69, he was leading a chapter of the Augustinian religious order in his home town of Chicago when allegations surfaced that a priest and Catholic high school principal under his jurisdiction had molested at least one student as well as kept child-abuse imagery.

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Mexico sues Google over changing Gulf of Mexico’s name for US users

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President Claudia Sheinbaum says lawsuit has been filed after US lawmakers voted on name change

Mexico has sued Google for changing the Gulf of Mexico’s name to “Gulf of America” for Google Maps users in the United States, Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, said on Friday.

“The lawsuit has already been filed,” Sheinbaum said at her morning news conference, without saying where and when it was submitted.

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Slovakian and Serbian leaders defy EU to attend Russian military parade

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Robert Fico and Aleksandar Vučić accept Vladimir Putin’s invitation to attend Victory Day celebrations

Despite warnings from European Union officials, Slovakia’s Moscow-friendly prime minister, Robert Fico, shook hands with Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin before becoming the only EU leader to attend Russia’s 9 May parade of military forces waging war on Ukraine.

The Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, whose country aspires to join the 27-nation union, also accepted the Russian president’s invitation to attend the annual Victory Day celebrations marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in the second world war.

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Bulgarian woman in Russian spy ring is no George Blake, Old Bailey told

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Katrin Ivanova’s barrister says her sentence should reflect her admin duties and not equate her with ‘classic spy cases’

A woman said to be “chief minion” in a ring of Bulgarians convicted of spying for Russia in Britain should not be treated like George Blake, the double agent sentenced to four decades in jail in the 1960s, the Old Bailey has heard.

Katrin Ivanova was said by her barrister, Rupert Bowers KC, to have been manipulated by her partner, Biser Dzhambazov, and to then have endured the discovery of his affair with a fellow member of the spy ring while in prison.

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Aid groups voice alarm as US pushes Israeli plan for Gaza assistance

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Groups say plan to resume limited humanitarian assistance under strict Israeli rules ‘risks enabling war crimes’

Aid groups have voiced alarm at US moves to pressure them into accepting an Israeli proposal to resume limited humanitarian assistance to the war-ravaged territory under strictly controlled conditions.

The Trump administration has attempted to strong-arm international agencies – including the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) – into accepting Israel’s stringent rules for resuming deliveries, according to sources familiar with the discussions and news reports.

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Trump floats cutting Chinese tariffs from 145% to 80% before weekend talks

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Meeting aimed at de-escalating trade war after Chinese exports beat expectations despite slump in trade

Donald Trump has floated cutting tariffs on China from 145% to 80% before a weekend meeting as he looks to de-escalate the trade war.

Top US officials are expected to meet a high-level Chinese delegation this weekend in Switzerland in the first significant talks between the two nations since Trump provoked a trade war with stiff tariffs on imports.

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‘The whole country is proud’: Chinese snooker fans hail Zhao Xintong triumph

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Crowning of country’s first world champion set to give fresh boost to sport that has boomed in popularity in China

Chain smoking under the fluorescent lights of a cavernous billiards hall in Beijing, Brother Yuan can’t stop smiling. The previous day, along with 150 million other people across China, he had been at home watching the snooker world championships final. Now he’s with his fellow cue-heads, celebrating the win of China’s first snooker world champion, Zhao Xintong.

“He’s a great role model for young people in China,” Yuan, 55, says of the generation Z upstart who on Monday claimed snooker’s top prize. “He’s bringing the excitement back.”

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Vance says US won’t intervene in India-Pakistan conflict: ‘None of our business’

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Vice-president says US will seek to de-escalate but cannot force either nuclear power to ‘lay down their arms’

JD Vance has said that the US will not intervene in the conflict between Pakistan and India, calling fighting between the two nuclear powers “fundamentally none of our business”.

The remarks came during an interview with Fox News, where the US vice-president said that the US would seek to de-escalate the conflict but could force neither side to “lay down their arms”.

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‘The pope is Peruvian’: elation in country where pontiff served as bishop

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Leo XIV celebrated as second Latin American pope having spent many years in Peru’s church

The election of Pope Leo XIV has been celebrated across Latin America, where many hailed him as the second pontiff from the region, after his Argentinian predecessor, Francis.

The news prompted particular elation in Peru, where he lived and worked for more than 20 years and was granted citizenship in 2015. In the capital, Lima, the bells of the cathedral rang in celebration.

In his first appearance from the Vatican balcony, Leo XIV briefly switched from Italian to Spanish to address the faithful “from my beloved diocese of Chiclayo, in Peru”, where he served as bishop for more than a decade.

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Trump hails trade deal with ‘oldest ally’ UK – but what about the details?

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President’s announcement receives favorable political reaction but experts warn much remains unresolved

There was plenty of congratulatory backslapping in the Oval Office as Donald Trump unveiled his “major” trade deal with the United Kingdom on Thursday, but many of the details of that agreement have been left to later discussions.

Trump’s rush to claim a win for his controversial tariffs policy left many grasping just what to call this: a deal, an agreement, a framework? Observers predict that the coming negotiations could take months.

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Stockholm rejects ‘bizarre’ US letter urging city to scrap diversity initiatives

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City official says it will not comply with request seeking to impose Donald Trump’s rollback of diversity measures

A city official in Stockholm has said the municipality has no plans to comply after one of its offices received a letter seeking to impose Donald Trump’s rollback of diversity measures, in what is believed to be the first such missive sent to a foreign government.

“It’s so bizarre,” said Jan Valeskog, Stockholm’s vice-mayor for planning. “It’s our political priorities that count, not the ones from this embassy or any other embassies.”

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Netherlands museum rethinks lending works to US amid Trump arts cuts

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Mauritshuis in The Hague says guarantees would be needed of artworks’ safety amid uncertainty caused by US funding cuts

A leading museum in the Netherlands has said it is reconsidering lending works from its collection to museums in the US amid the uncertainty wreaked by Donald Trump’s funding cuts and ideological impositions.

Martine Gosselink, the director of the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, whose collection includes Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring and Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, said the turmoil had left her team wary of lending pieces to the US.

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Trump administration invokes state secrets privilege in Kilmar Ábrego García case

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Lawyers say they’re ‘still in dark’ about government’s efforts to free the man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador

The Trump administration is invoking the “state secrets privilege ” in an apparent attempt to avoid answering a judge’s questions about its erroneous deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García to El Salvador.

US district judge Paula Xinis disclosed the government’s position in a two-page order on Wednesday. She set a Monday deadline for attorneys to file briefs on the issue and how it could affect Ábrego García’s case. Xinis also scheduled a 16 May hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland, to address the matter.

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Meta blocks major Muslim Instagram page in India amid rising conflict

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Company referred to policy for restricting content when governments say material goes ‘against local law’

Meta has banned a prominent Muslim news page on Instagram in India at the government’s request, the account’s founder said on Wednesday, denouncing the move as “censorship” as hostilities escalate between India and Pakistan.

Instagram users in India trying to access posts from the handle @Muslim – a page with 6.7 million followers – were met with a message stating: “Account not available in India. This is because we complied with a legal request to restrict this content.”

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EU targets US aircraft and car exports in new list of potential tariffs

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Move would hit Boeing, as Brussels also starts consultation on possible litigation over Trump’s blanket 20% tariffs

The EU is considering imposing tariffs on US aircraft and car exports in a fresh attempt to persuade Donald Trump to drop his current and proposed tariffs against the EU.

If acted on they will hit Boeing hard but also include further categories of US exports including chemicals, electrical equipment including cameras, health-related products and some foods such as sweet potato and nuts.

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From snail slime to salmon sperm: the K-beauty boom hits UK high streets

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South Korean skincare retailers want to capitalise on viral sales of beauty ranges by opening stores across the UK

Korean beauty products are moving from phone screens to UK high streets as social media drives sales of skincare with the help of eye-catching ingredients such as snail slime and salmon sperm.

Retailers are looking to capitalise on the TikTok and Instagram trend for skincare and makeup ranges from South Korea – known as K-beauty – by opening physical stores and launching brands in a push to get consumers to pick up products that havegone viral online.

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