WASHINGTON: The US trade deficit widened to a record high in March as businesses boosted imports of goods ahead of tariffs, which dragged gross domestic product into negative terrain in the first quarter for the first time in three years.
The trade gap jumped 14 per cent to a record US$140.5 billion from a revised US$123.2 billion in February, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) said on Tuesday (May 6).
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the trade deficit rising to US$137.0 billion from the previously reported US$122.7 billion in February.
President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, including raising duties on Chinese imports to a staggering 145 per cent, fueled a rush by businesses to bring in merchandise to avoid higher costs.
A right-wing Israeli minister says victory for Israel won’t come until Gaza is “entirely destroyed” and Palestinians are forced out into other countries.
Israeli Finance Minister Bazalel Smotrich made the statement during a Tuesday appearance at a conference on Jewish settlements in the West Bank. While Smotrich is a senior Israeli official, his statement does not represent the official policy of the Israeli government.
“Within a year we will be able to declare victory in Gaza,” he told attendees. “Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to… the south to a humanitarian zone without Hamas or terrorism, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries,” Smotrich said, according to the Agence France-Presse.
“Israel does not intend to withdraw from territories the IDF captures, not even as part of a deal to release hostages,” he added.
The House unanimously passed a bill on May 5 aimed at ending Beijing’s persecution of the spiritual group Falun Gong.
The bill, the Falun Gong Protection Act (H.R.1540), passed with broad bipartisan support and includes provisions to sanction individuals implicated in the forced harvesting of organs of Falun Gong practitioners.
The sanctions would draw from a list of foreign nationals that the president would supply to the relevant congressional committee within 180 days of the bill’s enactment into the law. The prescribed penalties include a civil fine of $250,000 along with criminal punishment of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison.
The sanctions would block an offender from entering the United States, invalidate their visa, and stop any immigration benefits the individual might otherwise enjoy.
The U.S. Department of Education informed Harvard University on Monday that it was freezing billions of dollars in future research grants and other aid until the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college concedes to a number of demands from the Trump administration, a senior department official said.
The move represents the latest salvo from a Trump administration willing to use the power of the federal purse to force institutions, from law firms to universities, to make sweeping policy changes or else lose billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts.
In a letter to Harvard, U.S. Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon said the university must address concerns about antisemitism on campus, school policies that consider a student’s race and complaints from the administration the university has abandoned its pursuit of “academic excellence” while employing relatively few conservative faculty members.
“This letter is to inform you that Harvard should no longer seek grants from the federal government, since none will be provided,” McMahon wrote.
Harvard University will receive no new federal grants until it meets a series of demands from President Donald Trump’s administration, the Education Department announced Monday.
The action was laid out in a letter to Harvard’s president and amounts to a major escalation of Trump’s battle with the Ivy League school. The administration previously froze $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard, and Trump is pushing to strip the school of its tax-exempt status.
In a press call, an Education Department official said Harvard will receive no new federal grants until it “demonstrates responsible management of the university” and satisfies federal demands on a range of subjects. It applies to federal research grants and not federal financial aid students receive to help cover tuition and fees.
A Japanese official issued a veiled threat amid trade talks with the Trump administration, then said the threat was merely a hypothetical conversation.
As with most foreign countries that do business with the United States, Japan has been in talks with Trump administration officials after President Donald Trump announced tariffs on imports. Some have called the tariffs a disaster for Japan.
On Friday, Japan’s finance minister said that Japan’s status as the largest holder of Treasury securities could be a tool in the talks, in what the Financial Times called a “rare baring of teeth by America’s closest ally in Asia.”
Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato was asked whether Japan would continue to hold its position of not selling its Treasury notes. The U.S. Treasury issues notes to cover the cost of borrowing to keep the country operating.
In a historic first, conservative leader Friedrich Merz ’s bid to become Germany’s 10th chancellor since World War II failed by six votes in parliament on Tuesday, a stunning defeat as he had been widely expected to win smoothly.
A candidate for chancellor has never failed to win on the first ballot since the end of the war. The loss triggered a stock market slide: the DAX, the index of major German companies, was down 1.8 per cent following the vote.
Merz needed a majority of 316 out of 630 votes. He only received 310 votes — well short of the 328 seats held by his coalition, which is also one of the slimmest postwar majorities. Because the vote was held by secret ballot, it was not immediately clear — and might never be known — who had defected from Merz’s camp.
Merz’s coalition is led by his center-right Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. They are joined by the center-left Social Democrats, outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party. The parties were now to regroup to discuss the next step but it was also unclear how long the process could take.
Taliban took in $3.4 billion in revenue over past year, boosting cash supply in wake of Biden admin’s Afghan withdrawal
Taliban parades U.S. military vehicles August 14, 2024 (@pagahindu/X)
The Taliban took in $3.4 billion in revenue over the last year, boosting its cash supply by 14 percent amid the return of Afghanistan as a central safe haven for terrorist organizations across the Middle East, according to a U.S. government watchdog group.
The repercussions of the Biden administration’s disastrous 2021 military withdrawal from Afghanistan continue to reverberate across the war-torn country, with multiple al Qaeda affiliates accessing American-supplied “weapons seized from the former Afghan National Army,” according to a new oversight report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
A Pakistani cleric has launched a scathing attack on his own government and has delcared that any war with India will be unislamic, in a video that has been widely circulated. In the video, Abdul Aziz Ghazi, a controversial cleric of Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, criticises the Pakistani government, calling it a “cruel, useless system”.
In a video going viral on social media, Abdul Aziz Ghazi can be heard asking his audience whether they would stand with Pakistan in the event of a war with India. He question is met with an unexpected silence. Noting the lack of response from the crowd, the cleric commented, “There are very few [hands]. This means many are enlightened now. The matter is, war between Pakistan and India is not an Islamic war.”
Abdul Aziz Ghazi goes on to denounce the Pakistan military, accusing it of widespread repression, claiming authorities in Pakistan have grown more oppressive- a bold and controversial take for someone associated with Lal Masjid, a place once synonymous with radical calls.