Author: AFP
US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he will buy a “brand new Tesla” to show support for his top campaign donor and advisor, Tesla CEO Elon Musk. “To Republicans, Conservatives, and all great Americans, Elon Musk is ‘putting it on the line’ in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform just after midnight on Tuesday. “But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby,’ in order to attack and do harm…
Cuba has granted early release to 553 prisoners, completing a deal struck in the final days of Joe Biden’s US presidency that his successor Donald Trump later abandoned, a Supreme Court official said Monday. “The process was successfully completed,” the court’s vice president Maricela Soza Ravelo said on state television, noting that 378 applications had been filed in January and 175 in February. In one of his final official acts, Biden on January 14 removed Cuba from a US list of state terror sponsors in return for the communist island agreeing to free 553 prisoners. But six days later marked…
The dollar fell sharply on Tuesday, particularly against the European currency, weighed down by fears about the health of the US economy. At around 1816 GMT, the greenback was down one percent against the euro, at $1.0944, its lowest level since mid-October. “In my experience, typically, such a sharp move happens because both sides of the blade are moving” in a scissor effect, Marc Chandler of Bannockburn Global Forex told AFP, describing a “growth scare” in the United States. Currency traders are especially worried about the economic impact of the tariffs imposed or threatened by President Donald Trump in recent…
China warned the United Kingdom on Tuesday against “provoking tensions” in the South China Sea after its foreign minister David Lammy called Beijing’s actions in the disputed waters “dangerous and destabilising”. “The UK should respect China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea and refrain from provoking tensions or sowing discord over regional disputes,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a daily news conference in Beijing.
Ukraine will present the United States on Tuesday with a plan for a partial ceasefire with Russia, hours after conducting what Moscow said was a “massive” drone attack on the capital and around the country. With US President Donald Trump pushing Ukraine for an agreement to end the war that began with Russia’s invasion in 2022, the Russian military has also ramped up its attacks. The meeting due later Tuesday between Ukrainian and US officials in the Saudi port city of Jeddah will be the most senior since a disastrous White House visit last month when Trump berated Kyiv’s President…
Kyiv will propose an aerial and naval ceasefire with Russia during talks with US officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, a Ukrainian official told AFP on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has floated the proposal as a way to initiate talks to halt more than three years of Russia’s full-scale invasion. “We do have a proposal for a ceasefire in the sky and ceasefire at sea because these are the ceasefire options that are easy to install and to monitor and it’s possible to start with them,” the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. Zelensky, whose officials are…
In their home in war-devastated Gaza City, Iman Farhat and her husband cherish the “paradise” brought by their newly-adopted baby, one of many orphans in the Palestinian territory after more than 15 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas. Wrapping five-month-old Jannah in a brightly coloured blanket, Farhat gently sang as she rocked her to sleep. “I chose Jannah just as she was,” the new mother said smiling, explaining the couple simply wanted to adopt a young child without preference for gender or physical appearance. “Her name was Massa, and I officially changed her name from Massa to Jannah,” which…
The Palestinian Authority on Monday said Israel’s decision to halt the electricity supply to Gaza was “an escalation in the genocide” in the war-ravaged territory. The Palestinian foreign ministry said in a statement that it “strongly condemns the Israeli Ministry of Energy’s decision to cut electricity to the Gaza Strip, considering it an escalation in the genocide, displacement and humanitarian disaster in Gaza”, which is controlled by Hamas and not the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.
The German government said Monday that Israel’s decision to halt aid deliveries and cut off the electricity supply to Gaza could prompt a fresh humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory. Referring to the decision to stop aid, foreign ministry spokeswoman Kathrin Deschauer told a regular press conference Gaza was “again threatened with a food shortage”. “We note with great concern the cutting off of electricity and the discussion about stopping the water supply,” she said. “Such steps are or would be unacceptable and incompatible with (Israel’s) obligations under international law,” Deschauer added. She said that Germany “calls on the Israeli…
US President Donald Trump, who wants to take over Greenland, is very erratic, the island’s premier said on Monday, the eve of the self-governing Danish territory’s legislative elections. “There is a world order that is faltering on many fronts — and a president of the United States who is very unpredictable — in such a way that makes people feel insecure,” Prime Minister Mute Egede told Danish public radio DR. In a speech to the US Congress last week, Trump reiterated his designs, arguing the US needed the vast Arctic island for reasons of national and international security and saying…