03 World

U.S. Moves To Indict Infamous Dictator– trendingpoliticsnews.com

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The United States is taking steps to pursue a federal indictment against Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old former president of Cuba and brother of the late Fidel Castro, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the situation.

The potential charges center on his alleged role in ordering the 1996 shootdown of two civilian aircraft operated by the Miami-based humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue, according to a report from CBS News.

The 1996 incident occurred on February 24, when Cuban MiG fighter jets shot down two unarmed Cessna aircraft flying in international airspace north of Cuba. The planes were part of Brothers to the Rescue, a nonprofit organization that conducted search-and-rescue missions for Cuban rafters attempting to reach the United States and dropped leaflets over Cuba.

Israel and Lebanon meet for third round of direct talks in Washington– www.euronews.com

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Lebanon and Israel are set to hold a second day of direct talks on Friday in Washington following a round of discussions on Thursday, which a US State Department official described as “productive and positive”.

“We look forward to continuing this tomorrow [Friday] and hope to have more to share then,” the official added.

The third round of negotiations comes just days before the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is due to expire. Lebanese officials hope the two-day negotiations will lead to a renewed ceasefire.

They also hope to tackle key sticking points, such as the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah.

Clashes erupt in Bolivia as miners set off dynamite and police fire tear gas– www.washingtontimes.com

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LA PAZ, Bolivia — Clashes erupted Thursday in Bolivia’s capital as police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of miners trying to breach the government palace and setting off small dynamite charges, a tactic that has become increasingly common during this second week of nationwide unrest.

It was the latest incident in growing social unrest challenging the administration of President Rodrigo Paz, who was sworn in as president late last year, ushering a new era for the Andean nation after nearly 20 years of one-party rule.

Thousands of miners descended on downtown La Paz to demand labor refo

Protesters In The Netherlands Allegedly Light Immigration Asylum Center On Fire– dailycaller.com

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Protesters in The Netherlands allegedly set fire to an asylum center Tuesday and attacked firefighters amid waves of ongoing anti-asylum protests across the country, prompting arrests on suspicion of arson and other charges from authorities.

The 300–400 protesters allegedly threw torches and fireworks at the disused town hall in the town of Loosdrecht in North Holland, setting fire to the shrubs and trees against the wall of the building Tuesday evening just as more asylum seekers arrived to join the 15 asylum seekers and staff already in the building, DutchNews.nl reported.

The protesters also allegedly pelted officers and momentarily prevented firefighters, according to the outlet.

Body language expert spots Xi Jinping’s subtle ‘power move’ in Trump handshake | World | News– www.express.co.uk

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As Donald Trump and Xi Jinping came face to face outside China’s Great Hall of the People, the pair exchanged a historic handshake, with this opening moment laying bare the nature of their relationship — a body language expert asserting that Xi holds the upper hand.

The two leaders sat down for two hours of talks on Thursday, May 14, with the entire world looking on as Xi hailed US-China relations as the world’s “most important” and Trump declared the discussions “extremely positive”.

From the very beginning of the visit, the power dynamic between the two men has been unmistakable, according to body language expert Louise Mahler, who argued “if life is a competition, for me, Xi won.”

Trump says China ‘impressed’ by Iran war, hints at Beijing buying US oil– www.washingtonexaminer.com

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President Donald Trump claimed that Chinese President Xi Jinping was “impressed” by the U.S.’s performance in its war with Iran and that it may soon resume imports of oil from the United States.

Speaking with Fox News’s Sean Hannity after his meeting with the Chinese leader, Trump expressed his belief that a good relationship with the other superpower was a good thing and that positive relationships with “very powerful” countries are desirable. He then suggested the view was mutual vis-a-vis China and that Beijing gained further respect for the U.S. during the war with Iran.

After boasting of successes in Venezuela and Iran, Trump said he and Xi spoke about the matter at their meeting.

The Alternative for Germany Party Is A Catastrophe For Germany, Europe And The World– www.truthdig.com

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Germany’s federal system of government makes the country’s politics seem so complicated that most people outside Germany give up trying to understand it. At the federal level, there is the parliament (the Bundestag), a ceremonial president and a chancellor. At the moment, all of those branches of power seem normal enough, and are run by the same few democratic parties that have been there since the fall of the Berlin Wall. But if you look the next level down, at the individual states (or länder), the picture that emerges is terrifying.

Germany is still culturally and economically split in two by the old Iron Curtain. Nearly 40 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the promised reunification has still not been completed. People living in the former East look at the Berlin government and see policies that seem to ignore them. There are five states in the eastern part of the country, and opinion polls show majority support for the radical right party Alternative for Germany in all of them. This September, two of these states, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, will be holding elections in which AfD candidates are expected to win, putting them in charge of state governments for the first time. They are hoping for absolute majorities. That would give them sole control of the education system, the prisons and the police force.

Trump touts “fantastic trade deals” after meeting with China’s Xi– www.cbsnews.com

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President Trump said Friday that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping made some “fantastic trade deals” and both want the Iran conflict to end during this week’s summit in Beijing, as both countries look to claim the visit as a win — and aim to keep their relationship on a stable footing after last year’s trade war.

The leaders of the two superpowers are holding a bilateral meeting and lunch at China’s seat of power — the Zhongnanhai Garden compound — late Friday morning local time, before Mr. Trump leaves China and heads back to Washington. They met for tea and walked around the centuries-old gardens, mostly out of earshot of reporters.

Can a New Methodology Give Us “Headlights” on AI Work Disruption? | American Enterprise Institute– www.aei.org

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A new working paper by Philip Moreira Tomei and Bouke Klein Teeselink, posted to arXiv in early May, makes claims that, if correct, should reorient the workforce policy conversation. In short, the authors argue that the AI exposure indices that have shaped most current thinking are looking at an incomplete subset of digital work. They identify which jobs and tasks current language models can already accelerate but they miss the jobs with features that make them amenable to automation later.

Tomei and Klein Teeselink build a new index that scores all 17,951 task statements in the federal O*NET database. The authors propose a measure what they call “reinforcement learning feasibility” which asks whether a task has the structural features (e.g., verifiable outcomes, use environments amenable to simulation, discrete decision/feedback loops) that allow AI systems to be trained on it through the post-training methods that are becoming the main drivers of AI capability. They then compare their index to the most-cited existing measure, from Eloundou and colleagues, which looks at whether tasks can be automated with current technology.

Trump Says China Agreed To Buy 200 Boeing Jets– www.ndtv.com

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President Donald Trump said Thursday that China had agreed to purchase 200 Boeing jets, speaking of an order for “200 big ones” in a broadcast interview.

“It was sort of like a statement but I think it was a commitment,” Trump said, describing his conversation with President Xi Jinping in a Fox News interview.

“That’s a lot of jobs,” Trump told Fox host Sean Hannity in excerpts released by the broadcaster.

Shares fell after the spots were released.

Iran’s small businesses collapse under war, inflation and internet blackout– www.france24.com

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Even before the war, Iran’s economy had been spiralling for years under international sanctions tied to the regime’s nuclear activities, alongside deep corruption and chronic mismanagement, making daily life increasingly difficult for millions.

Over the past decade, Iranians have staged several large local and nationwide protests triggered by economic grievances, including in 2019 and January 2026, leaving tens of thousands of protesters dead, arrested or injured.

Since April 28, when the US and Israel attacked Iran and the Iranian regime shut down the internet, the economy has worsened sharply.

Middle-class Iranians we spoke to said the situation was becoming unsustainable, and that they feared they may no longer be able to afford food in the coming months if the situation continues.

Nigel Farage bought £1.4m property in cash shortly after receiving £5m gift | Nigel Farage– www.theguardian.com

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Nigel Farage bought a £1.4m property in cash shortly after receiving a £5m personal gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.

The revelation came as the Reform UK leader appeared to change his line on the reason for the £5m gift, saying in an interview on Thursday that it was a “reward” for campaigning for Brexit for 27 years.

Since it was revealed last month by the Guardian, Farage had maintained that the money was given to cover his personal security.

Both developments came on a day when parliament’s standards watchdog confirmed that the MP was under a formal investigation over the gift from the Thai-based businessman.

Ukraine says Russia launches “massive and virtually nonstop” strikes on Kyiv, killing at least 7– www.cbsnews.com

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Entire residential buildings were demolished in Ukraine’s capital as Russian launched a “massive and virtually nonstop” aerial barrage on Kyiv and other major cities over the last two nights, according to Ukrainian officials. They said more than 1,500 drones and over 50 missiles were launched in the last two days.

At least seven people were killed in Kyiv, many in a strike that leveled an apartment building overnight, while 20 more remain missing, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy said he had met with his top staff on Thursday about “a massive and virtually nonstop Russian attack that lasted nearly 48 hours.”

“This is a deliberate terrorist tactic by the Russians, who amassed drones and missiles over a period of time and intentionally calculated the strike so that its scale would be significant, creating the greatest possible difficulties for our air defense,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.

The New Era of Air and Missile Defense– warontherocks.com

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Modern air and missile defense is approaching a structural limit. The model that protected forces over the past two decades remains effective, but only within a narrower envelope than current threats demand. A new approach is required, built on fire-control-level integration, disaggregated survivable architectures, affordable magazine depth, and the integration of offensive action as the central element of defense.

I am a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general and now lead international business development and strategy for Northrop Grumman in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. I previously served as chief operating officer of DEFCON AI. As a defense industry executive, I have a direct commercial interest in the integration and command-and-control issues covered here. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor for the Integrated Battle Command System, the U.S. Army program most closely associated with the fire-control-level integration concepts discussed, so readers should weigh that overlap most carefully in the procurement section, where my analytical argument and my employer’s commercial position are closest. The argument is not for my company’s solution specifically, but for any architecture or federated set of systems that can deliver sensor-shooter integration, disaggregation, survivability, and coalition interoperability.

The reason is simple: The threat has changed faster than the defensive architecture. Ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, one-way attack drones, and loitering munitions are no longer niche capabilities employed in small numbers. They are becoming routine instruments of coercion and war, used in combinations designed to overwhelm decision-making, exhaust magazines, expose seams between sensors and shooters, and force defenders into bad cost exchanges. Recent combat has shown that even capable defenses can perform well tactically while still revealing strategic fragility. It is time to invest in systems that are not just able to intercept threats, but do so at the scale, speed, cost, and survivability required for a sustained campaign.

Trump pauses US troops deployment in Lithuania in ‘revenge’ plot against NATO | World | News– www.express.co.uk

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US President Donald Trump has paused the rotation of US soldiers in Lithuania in a move likely to alarm NATO allies. The US Army has cancelled the planned deployment of around 4,000 troops from the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, to central and eastern Europe, while Lithuanian officials say the United States has also paused its troop rotation to the region.

Lithuanian Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas told LRT RADIO, Lithuania’s state-funded public broadcaster: “The rotation was paused to evaluate how the US will distribute its capabilities in Europe. This is the information we have so far, and we are awaiting clarification; once we have more news, we will be able to provide further information.”

The decision is expected to fuel growing concern among NATO allies over America’s long-term military commitment to Europe amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. However, Kaunas insisted Lithuania, Poland and the Baltic states remain “exemplary allies” that continue to meet both NATO and US defence expectations.

Who are the Japanese? Huge DNA discovery rewrites history– www.sciencedaily.com

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For decades, scientists believed the Japanese population largely descended from two ancient groups: the Jomon hunter-gatherers who lived in the archipelago for thousands of years, and later migrants from East Asia who brought rice farming and new technologies to Japan.

But a major genetic analysis from researchers at RIKEN’s Center for Integrative Medical Sciences suggests the picture is far more complicated.

Using whole-genome sequencing on more than 3,200 people from across Japan, the team found evidence supporting a third ancestral group tied to northeastern Asia and possibly linked to the ancient Emishi people. The findings, published in Science Advances, add powerful support to the increasingly discussed “tripartite origins” theory of Japanese ancestry.

Trump to Confront Xi as China Provides Iranian Military Aid, Helping Them Target US Forces– www.cbn.com

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TAIPEI, Taiwan – President Trump is in Beijing for high-stakes talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The president is expected to confront Xi over China’s support of Iran.

The Chinese leader is sending a strong message of his own, challenging U.S. policies on Taiwan.

But the war with Iran especially looms large as the two leaders meet, with President Trump expected to press Xi over China’s support for Tehran.

“You’ve got to remember, China is supporting everything to Iran that it needs in this war except combat personnel. It is a comrade in arms. It is an enemy combatant,” said Gordon Chang, with Gatestone Institute.

Trump-China visit live: Xi calls for US and China to be ‘partners not rivals’ as high-stakes summit begins– www.independent.co.uk

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Xi Jinping warned Donald Trump that tensions over Taiwan could push the US and China towards “clashes and even conflicts”, according to Chinese state media reports on their closed-door meeting in Beijing.

According to a readout published by Xinhua, Xi told Trump that if the Taiwan issue is “handled well”, relations between the two countries could maintain “overall stability”.

But he cautioned that mishandling the issue would place the wider US–China relationship in “great jeopardy”.

China’s Xi warns Trump about “conflicts” if Taiwan isn’t “handled properly”– www.cbsnews.com

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Chinese President Xi Jinping had stern words for President Trump on Taiwan as they met in Beijing on Thursday, warning of potential “clashes and even conflicts” if the issue isn’t “handled properly,” according to Chinese state media.

During their summit, the two leaders are seen as aiming to stabilize their trading relationship after last year’s trade war. They’re also grappling with uncertainty over the United States’ war with Iran. But the issue of Taiwan loomed large.

The closed-door session lasted roughly two hours and 15 minutes. The White House characterized the meeting as “good.”

British PM Starmer tells cabinet meeting he intends to remain leader despite calls to resign– www.cbc.ca

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The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer defied calls to resign on Tuesday, telling ministers he would “get on with governing” despite a “destabilizing” 48 hours of growing calls to set out ​a timetable for his departure after an election drubbing.

At ​a meeting of his cabinet team of ministers, Starmer, in the top job for less than two years, repeated that ​while he took responsibility for one of his Labour Party’s worst ⁠election defeats, there had ⁠been no official move to trigger ‌a leadership contest.

“The past 48 hours have been destabilizing for government and that has a real economic cost for our country and for families,” Starmer told ministers, according to his Downing Street office.

“The country expects us ⁠to get on with governing. That is what I am doing and what we must do as a Cabinet.”

Top Aerospace Scientist Executed by Iranian Regime– slaynews.com

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Iran’s regime has executed a renowned 29-year-old aerospace scientist, as Tehran’s increasingly brutal internal crackdown intensifies amid growing fears of infiltration, sabotage, and covert warfare targeting the country’s military and scientific infrastructure.

Erfan Shakourzadeh was accused of spying for the CIA and Israel’s Mossad.

Iranian authorities hanged Shakourzadeh on Monday after convicting him on espionage charges.

However, human rights groups say Shakourzadeh’s conviction was based on forced confessions extracted through torture.

Iran Launches Surprise Attack On Middle Eastern Country– trendingpoliticsnews.com

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Kuwait accused Iran of attempting a covert strike on a strategically vital island earlier this month, alleging that operatives linked to Tehran’s Revolutionary Guard tried to infiltrate a Chinese-backed port project in a move that threatens to reignite the already volatile Middle East conflict.

The explosive accusation surfaced Tuesday just hours before President Donald Trump was set to depart for Beijing for high-stakes talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, where the ongoing Iran war and global energy turmoil are expected to dominate discussions.

Iran has not publicly responded to Kuwait’s allegations. But the accusation adds to mounting fears that the fragile ceasefire in the region could collapse at any moment as tensions continue boiling across the Persian Gulf.

Video. Tens of thousands march in Brussels during Belgium national strike– www.euronews.com

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Tens of thousands of workers marched through central Brussels on Tuesday as unions staged a nationwide strike against the Belgian government’s fiscal reform plans.

Protesters carried banners opposing pension reforms, rising fuel prices and austerity measures while chanting and making noise through the city centre.

Demonstrators were also seen holding signs criticising Prime Minister Bart De Wever and other government figures.

The strike disrupted public transport and air travel across Belgium as unions called for pressure on the government over planned economic measures.