Minimalist News

Trump Fires Pam Bondi As Attorney General, Blanche To Be Acting AG Update (1315ET): President Donald Trump has ousted Attorney General Pam Bondi, multiple outlets report. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is serving as acting AG in the interim. The move comes amid White House frustration with Bondi’s leadership at the Justice Department -  particularly her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and what Trump viewed as insufficient aggression in targeting his political opponents. Trump had privately discussed firing her and floated EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin (or Blanche) as a possible replacement. > Bondi met with Trump in the Oval Office Wednesday night ahead

Kremlin Asks US For Ceasefire At Bushehr Nuclear Plant To Get Remaining Russian Staff Out Russia is seeking approval from the US and Israel for a ceasefire for the Bushehr nuclear ⁠power plant in Iran, RIA news agency reported Thursday. Airstrikes across the country have reportedly been on the uptick in the past some 48 hours. "The travel routes will be communicated ‌to the relevant authorities in Israel and the United States, and we will use all channels to request strict adherence to the ceasefire ⁠during the convoy’s movement," the ⁠head of Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom, Alexei Likhachev, stated. Well over 500 Russian

Coinbase Exec Says Senate CLARITY Act Deal On Stablecoin Yield "Very Close" Authored by Amin Haqshanas via CoinTelegraph.com, Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal said the US Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is “moving toward” a markup hearing in the US Senate Banking Committee and could eventually move to a floor vote if senators resolve the stablecoin yield dispute and schedule a markup. Speaking in a Wednesday interview on Fox Business, Grewal said lawmakers are nearing agreement on core elements of the crypto market structure bill, even as debate continues over stablecoin yield. “I think we’re very close to a deal,” he said. The remarks point to

Private Credit Bank Run Begins: Blue Owl Gates After Shocking 41% Of OTIC Investors Ask For Their Money A week ago, in an attempt to calm the market, Goldman's economists published a lengthy, if at times disjointed, report discussing why a crisis in private credit would not lead to another financial crisis. We are about to find out if they were right.  Recall that in mid-March, while attention was understandably focused on the Iran war, we explained why Blue Owl's February decision to commence liquidations of loans in its three core private credit funds to fund current and future redemptions, was the industry's

CEO Of Largest Public Hospital System Says He's Ready To Replace Radiologists With AI By Marty Stempniak of Radiology Business, The chief executive of America’s largest public hospital system says he is prepared to start replacing radiologists with artificial intelligence in some circumstances, once the regulatory landscape catches up.  Mitchell H. Katz, MD, president and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, recently spoke during a panel discussion held by Crain’s New York Business. The trained internal medicine specialist noted how AI is increasingly being used to interpret mammograms and X-rays.  This presents an opportunity to save on how much hospitals spend on radiologists, who

Iran To Attack Logistical Hubs In Israel, Gulf After Its Tallest Bridge Destroyed Earlier we reported there are signs that the US and Israel are expanding attacks on Iran civilian infrastructure, after reports emerged Thursday that fresh airstrikes hit a highway bridge connecting Tehran and Karaj, according to Fars News Agency. Several people were injured, and multiple areas of Karaj were also struck. The bridge was actually just constructed, having been inaugurated earlier this year. Fars identified it as the B1 bridge, dubbed the highest bridge in the Middle East. Tehran also continues to get pummeled hard, amid reports that the prior 24

Trump Puts State Farm, Other Insurers On Notice Over Treatment Of California Wildfire Victims Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), President Donald Trump on March 31 told State Farm and other insurers to “get their act together” after meeting with California politicians and hearing about the difficulties facing the victims of last year’s wildfires. A home is engulfed in flames during the Eaton fire in the Altadena area of Los Angeles County, Calif., on Jan. 8, 2025. Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images Two areas outside Los Angeles were devastated by wildfires in January 2025. In the Palisades fire, the California

Gulf Energy Shock Spreads To Global Plastics As War Sparks Force Majeure Wave Building on our earlier "Global Demand Destruction" note, which mapped how the Gulf energy shock is spreading globally and the immediate effects of rationing, price controls, and fuel shortages, another second-order disruption is quickly emerging: supply chain disruptions in critical plastic feedstocks. Plastics are core to the modern economy, and a troubling new Bloomberg report indicates that several producers of monoethylene glycol (MEG) and purified terephthalic acid (PTA) have declared force majeure, as tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz remain heavily disrupted. For context, MEG and PTA are the

April Fools And The Last Supper By Benjamin Picton, senior market strategist at Rabobank Wednesday saw the unusual occurrence of three Anglosphere heads of government delivering televised addresses to their respective nations within 24 hours of each other. When news broke that Australia’s PM Albanese, Britain’s PM Starmer and US President Trump would all be interrupting regular programming to speak to their people, reactions ranged from jubilant speculation that the war is about to end all the way through to nervousness that Operation Iranian Freedom was about to be announced. Judging by the price action in markets, the latter was certainly seen as

"Everything About This Market Is Wild": European Diesel Futs Top $200 As Global Scramble Accelerates The global tug-of-war for fuel looks set to accelerate, with traders scrambling to secure supplies even more aggressively after President Trump showed no signs of an end to hostilities (and a reopening of the Strait) any time soon. The longer the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, the more intense the competition is likely to become. Traders have warned that Europe is at risk of diesel shortages in the coming weeks. > “Everything about this market is wild,” said Philip Jones-Lux, a senior oil analyst at energy analytics firm Sparta

"A Defining Moment": Nano Nuclear Submits Construction Permit For Kronos Reactor In Illinois Nano Nuclear submitted a Construction Permit Application (CPA) to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for their Kronos microreactor project at the University of Illinois. The filing marks the latest step in a project we’ve tracked since site characterization began last fall. > Watch: Modular Energy Pioneer Nano Nuclear Begins Drilling First Reactor In Illinois https://t.co/hUcFvtXfaD > > — zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 24, 2025 Kronos is a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) engineered for commercial deployment. It delivers 15 megawatts of carbon-free baseload power using meltdown-resistant TRISO fuel and helium coolant. The

When Will This Sh*t Stop? Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, A career criminal with 23 prior arrests and 70 charges was allowed to roam free until she stabbed a pregnant woman in broad daylight outside a Harris Teeter in Charlotte’s Cotswold Village Shopping Center on March 18.  The 38-year-old victim was loading her car with her three-year-old child nearby when Marvina Marie Hardy (also known as Marvina Marie Hardy-Butler), 40, of Waxhaw, attacked her with a steak knife, stabbing her in the sternum.  The victim fought back. Both she and her unborn baby are expected to recover. > 🚨 HOLD JUDGES ACCOUNTABLE — RIGHT

Tesla Delivers 358,023 Vehicles In Q1, Missing Wall Street Expectations For Second Consecutive Quarter Tesla reported a disappointing first quarter, delivering 358,023 vehicles worldwide, falling short of Wall Street expectations of about 372,000, according to Bloomberg-compiled estimates and the company’s own release. The miss marks Tesla’s second consecutive quarter below forecasts, underscoring continued pressure on its core automotive business as it navigates slowing electric-vehicle demand and a more competitive global market. Despite the shortfall, deliveries were still up 6.3% year over year, benefiting from an easier comparison period when production of the Model Y was temporarily paused across multiple factories and the company

Globalstar Soars On Amazon Buyout Report Amid Satellite Constellation Race Globalstar shares surged 12% in premarket trading in New York... ...marking their biggest jump in nearly five months, after the Financial Times reported overnight that Amazon is in talks to acquire the satellite operator, a move that would certainly intensify the race to build satellite constellations.  The FT cited people familiar with the Amazon-Globalstar talks and said both sides are still negotiating over "some of the complexities," including the fact that Apple owns a 20% stake in the satellite communications company, which operates 24 satellites in low Earth orbit, arranged in a Walker-24 configuration,

Democrats Ask Judge To Block Parts Of Trump's Election Order Authored by Kimberley Hayek and Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times, Democrats asked a federal judge Wednesday to block parts of President Donald Trump’s executive order on federal elections. The lawsuit challenges Trump’s directive, signed a day earlier, that will create a list of eligible voters in every state and prohibit the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) from sending absentee ballots to those not included on the list. The order, titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” directs the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration to conduct voter information collection. Trump

'No Hire, No Fire' Economy Continues As Job Cuts Tumble, Claims Near Record Lows U.S.-based employers announced 60,620 job cuts in March, up 25% from 48,307 cuts announced in February. It is down 78% from the 275,240 cuts announced during the same month last year, according to a report released Thursday from global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “Removing the wave of federal layoffs announced in February and March of last year, job cut announcements in 2026 are closely following the pattern of 2025. Last year it was Government, Retail, and Technology. This year, it’s Technology, Transportation, and Healthcare,”

Futures, Bonds Tumble, Oil Soars After Trump Dashes Hopes For Early End To Iran War Global risk assets, including US equity futures and global markets, as well as Treasuries and precious metals, tumbled as oil soared with Brent hitting $110 this morning after Trump's late Wednesday speech refused to pivot and dashed hopes that the Hormuz Strait would reopen soon and the war in the Middle East is nearing a swift resolution. As of 8:00am ET, S&P 500 futures dropped 1.7%, reversing yesterday's short squeeze as investors refuse to add to risk positions ahead of the long weekend when many speculate a

Colonial Restarts Largest U.S. Gasoline Pipeline After Georgia Damage Summary: * Colonial Pipeline's Line 1 flows were restored after the damaged section was repaired in Georgia. * Colonial Pipeline's Line 1 halted operations on Thursday night after a third-party work crew caused damage in Paulding County, Georgia. COLONIAL PIPELINE'S LINE 1 FLOWS RESTART   The good news for U.S. East Coast drivers is that Colonial Pipeline's Line 1 did not suffer a prolonged shutdown. Flows on the nation's largest gasoline pipeline, which runs from Texas to New York, resumed within hours after a third-party work crew damaged a section of the line in Paulding County,

4 Million Children Have Been Signed Up For Trump Accounts: IRS Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times, American taxpayers have signed up over 4 million children to the tax-advantaged Trump Accounts, and more than 1 million of those accounts have elected to receive the $1,000 pilot contribution from the government, the IRS said in a March 31 statement. “Contributions to Trump Accounts can be made starting July 4, 2026. All eligible children may receive deposits from parents, relatives, friends, employers, state governments, philanthropic organizations, and individuals, subject to an annual limit,” the IRS said. The Trump Accounts, formally the Invest America accounts,

U.S. Alerts Goldman Sachs Paris After Iranian Group Threatens Terror Bombing Five days after French authorities foiled a terror plot targeting Bank of America's Paris headquarters, the threat environment facing U.S. financial institutions in the French capital appears to be worsening. New reporting from Le Parisien says Goldman Sachs' Paris headquarters was placed under police surveillance on Wednesday night following threats allegedly linked to Iranian terror networks.  Le Parisien outlines the rationale behind the heightened security posture: > It's 1:30 a.m. when the phone rings, shattering the night's calm. > > A security guard on duty at the American bank receives a call from his

Central American country to receive up to 25 migrants a day expelled as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown * Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox The Costa Rican government has agreed to receive up to 25 deported migrants a week from the United States, the latest deal in the Trump administration’s unprecedented efforts to deport scores of people to “third countries”. With the new agreement, Costa Rica seeks a closer alliance with Donald Trump’s government, which has been securing cooperation from other Central American countries in accepting deportees from other nations who have

US moves towards reestablishing working relations between two countries after abducting President Nicolás Maduro The US has lifted sanctions on Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, in the latest step towards normalising relations between the two countries after US forces abducted her predecessor, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife. The couple were taken to New York after their abduction in January to face charges of alleged drug trafficking, to which both have pleaded not guilty. Continue reading...

Lewis’s son Avi Lewis was elected leader of progressive New Democratic party a day before his father’s death Stephen Lewis, the Canadian diplomat, politician and human rights advocate, who spent decades tirelessly working to focus global attention on the HIV/Aids epidemic, has died of cancer. Lewis, who served as the Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, as well as the head of Ontario’s New Democratic party (NDP), was 88. Continue reading...

Critics say exemption for fossil fuels exploits White House’s ‘self-made gas crisis’, and could doom the rare Rice’s whale * Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox A US government panel on Tuesday exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a move which critics say could doom a rare whale species and harm other marine life. The Endangered Species Committee – which had not convened in more than three decades – voted to approve the request for the ESA exemption at the request of the

Clowns in Bolivia are upset by mandate that stops schools hosting events from which they earn a living Dozens of clowns have marched through the streets of Bolivia’s capital to protest against a government decree that limits extracurricular activities in schools, threatening their livelihoods. Wearing full face paint and their signature red noses, the clowns gathered on Monday in front of the ministry of education in La Paz to oppose a decree published in February. The new mandate says schools must comply with 200 days of lessons each year – in effect banning them from hosting the special events where the entertainers

Quake with epicentre west-north-west of Ternate island shakes cities and prompts regional tsunami warning One person has been killed after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck Indonesia’s Ternate island, damaging buildings and triggering small tsunami waves. The quake, which had a depth of 35km, occurred on Thursday at 6.48am local time, according to the United States Geological Survey. Its epicentre was 127km (79 miles) west-north-west of Ternate, an island in Indonesia’s North Maluku province. Continue reading...

Agreement comes after Wellington halted millions in aid to its former colony after Cook Islands formed strategic partnership with Beijing New Zealand and the Cook Islands have signed a defence and security declaration, ending a year-long diplomatic row that erupted after the Cook Islands struck strategic agreements with China. The Cook Islands was a dependent New Zealand colony from 1901-65 but has since operated as a self-governing nation in “free association” with New Zealand. Its roughly 17,000 citizens hold New Zealand citizenship. There are obligations between the two nations to regularly consult on matters of defence and security. Continue reading...

Distressed riders who were stranded for hours say Apollo Go customer service agents offered ‘useless platitudes’ A “system malfunction” has caused several self-driving robotaxis to stall in the middle of the road in China, police have confirmed, after distressed riders were stranded for hours. Local authorities in the central Chinese city of Wuhan said they began receiving calls “one after another” on Tuesday night from riders reporting that autonomous vehicles operated by the Chinese internet company Baidu had frozen. Continue reading...

South Korea will delay the shutdown of coal-fired plants, while the Philippines also plans to boost the output of its coal-burning plants Governments across Asia are ramping up their use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, as they try to cover huge energy shortfalls triggered by the US-Israel war on Iran. The move has triggered warnings from climate experts who point to coal’s devastating environmental impact, and say the energy crisis should be a wake up call for governments to invest in renewables, which can offer a more stable supply that is not exposed to price shocks. Continue reading...

A rescue mission involving volunteer helicopter crew and public donations ended in joy after Molly was located and brought home A spot of furry black and white appears among the jagged rocks of New Zealand’s alpine backcountry. It is Molly the border collie, sitting near the foot of a waterfall where she had been separated from her owner one week earlier. Molly was rescued on Tuesday after an avalanche of donations from the public funded a volunteer team made up of former helicopter pilots and crew to mount a search in the wilderness. Continue reading...

Visa ban makes Iranian-Australian feel her adopted country is a ‘home that doesn’t support you’ * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Hedieh Jamshidian feared the window to see her mother, living in Tehran under waves of airstrikes, was closing. The Australian government had just announced it could block some visa holders from entering the country. So, Jamshidian, a 32-year-old Iranian Australian, decided to act quickly. Within a week she bought her mother, who held a three-month tourist visa, a ticket to Sydney. Continue reading...

Department says it’s received 834 requests for a review of tool’s assessments since it launched in November * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast There appears to be no legal barrier for a human to override a controversial algorithm that determines financial support for elderly Australians, a Senate inquiry has heard, despite government assessors being banned from doing so. The Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT), introduced in November as part of aged care Support at Home reforms, is used to assess eligibility and assign funding levels for aged care services. Continue reading...

Reversal of fortune comes just one week after she was dumped in favour of Dinesh Gourisetty, who then withdrew his nomination * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Moira Deeming will secure a top spot on the Victorian Liberal party’s upper house ticket unopposed – less than a week after members voted to dump her – after the withdrawal of candidates from a re-run ballot. Deeming was on Sunday ousted from the number one spot for the western metropolitan region by Dinesh Gourisetty. Continue reading...

Lawyers for accused had argued names of family members should be suppressed due to fears for their mental and physical safety * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast The alleged Bondi attacker has been denied a suppression order over his family member’s names and home and work addresses after a collective of media organisations won a challenge against the bid. In the Downing Centre local court on Thursday, judge Hugh Donnelly decided to deny the request for a 40-year suppression order, ending an interim suppression order that was granted for Naveed Akram’s mother, brother and sister in

Follow live updates * Track Australia’s fuel prices, service station outages and shipments in charts * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast ‘Might as well have told us what he was going to have for dinner’: shadow minister lambasts address to the nation The quips continue coming in thick and fast against Albanese’s address to the nation. The shadow minister for energy, Dan Tehan, tells ABC Radio: He might as well have told us what he was going to have for dinner last night. There was nothing new in it. He didn’t take the Australian people into his

Speaking in South Korea, the French president defended the transatlantic alliance and called for return to peace * Middle East crisis – live updates Emmanuel Macron has sharply criticised Donald Trump’s inconsistent and often contradictory pronouncements on the Iran war and Nato, saying if “you want to be serious” it was better not to come out with a something different every day. “There is too much talk … and it’s all over the place,” the French president said on Thursday during a state visit to South Korea. “We all need stability, calm, a return to peace – this isn’t a show!” Continue reading...

Prosecutors unveil artefact linked to lost Dacian civilisation after it was stolen from Dutch museum last year A priceless ancient gold helmet from Romania that was stolen last year from a museum in the Netherlands, has been recovered as part of a plea deal reached with the suspects. Under the guard of balaclava-wearing police, prosecutors unveiled the 2,500-year-old Coțofenești helmet, which is considered a cultural icon of Romania, during a news conference on Thursday in the eastern Dutch city of Assen. Continue reading...

Brent crude rises 8% as US president vows to hit Iran ‘extremely hard’ over coming weeks * Business live – latest updates Oil prices have soared after Donald Trump vowed in a televised speech to hit Iran “extremely hard” over the coming weeks, knocking hopes of a near-term end to the conflict in the Middle East. Brent crude prices jumped by as much as 8% on Thursday to $109.74 a barrel, reversing Wednesday’s drop when hopes of a de-escalation in the Iran war pushed the international benchmark below the $100-a-barrel mark at one point. Continue reading...

This blog is now closed Back to Trump’s frustration with European allies – although it doesn’t involve a Nato member this time – Austria is the latest country to risk the US president’s wrath after a defence ministry spokesperson confirmed it denied all US requests for military overflights related to the Iran war. “There have indeed been requests and they were refused from the outset,” Col Michael Bauer told AFP, adding that every time a similar request “involves a country at war, it is refused.” Continue reading...

Lebanese-French man Ali Cherri demands investigation into Beirut bombing as possible war crime against civilians A Lebanese-French artist has filed a legal complaint in a Paris court about an Israeli bombing of his family home in Lebanon that killed his parents and a domestic worker, claiming the attack could constitute a war crime. The suit, filed with the French war crimes unit on Tuesday, is a rare instance of an individual pursuing war crimes charges for an Israeli bombing. It is also the first time a French court has taken a case over Israel’s bombing of Lebanon. Continue reading...

US president warns there was ‘much more to follow’ after B1 bridge on the Karaj northern bypass in western Tehran, Iran, was targeted on Thursday Trump has claimed that Iran was “right at the doorstep” of gaining a nuclear weapon. Earlier on Wednesday the president said he did not care about Iran’s stock of highly enriched uranium (HEU), arguing it was deep underground and could be monitored by satellite. From the very beginning my campaign for president in 2015, I said I would never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. This regime has been chanting death to America, death to Israel. Continue reading...

Yvette Cooper hosts virtual summit of more than 40 countries to consider coordinated action in face of closure of vital shipping lane * Middle East crisis live – latest updates More than 40 countries gathered to discuss “every possible diplomatic, economic and coordinated measure” to pressurise Iran into reopening the strait of Hormuz, the UK foreign secretary has said. After chairing a virtual summit on Thursday, Yvette Cooper said coordinated action was needed as Iran’s “reckless strikes” on international shipping and efforts to “hijack the global economy” were hitting nations from across the globe “who played no part in this conflict”. Continue reading...

Former UK foreign secretary among 3,000 signatories of open letter to Isaac Herzog after spate of killings The former British foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind is among leading members of the Jewish diaspora urging the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, to intervene to stop “attacks by Jewish extremists” on Palestinians in the West Bank. An open letter to Herzog facilitated by the London Initiative – a liberal Zionist network of 360 people, including eminent Jewish, Israeli and Israeli Palestinian figures – has attracted more than 3,000 signatories, including diplomats, philanthropists, rabbis and academics from Australia, Canada, across Europe, South Africa the UK and US.

US president’s 19-minute Wednesday address at the White House was met with bewilderment from commentators Donald Trump’s primetime nationwide address on the war with Iran caused widespread bewilderment, with commentators voicing shock at his vow to continue bombing to “bring them back to the stone ages”. Speculation before Wednesday’s speech from the White House Blue Room suggested that the president might be about to signal a winding up of the US military effort, which began on 28 February. Continue reading...

Dozens of videos have gone viral on TikTok and Instagram showing harassment of Palestinians and activists TikTok has removed an account belonging to an ultranationalist, pro-settlement Israeli influencer for breaching hate speech and bullying rules after the Guardian flagged videos showing him harassing activists in the occupied West Bank. The Guardian has reviewed dozens of videos posted by various social media figures that have gone viral on TikTok and Instagram documenting the harassment of Palestinians as well as physical attacks on Israeli and international activists. Continue reading...

At least 77 people killed in anti-corruption youth uprising in September, which began over a brief social media ban Nepal’s former prime minister KP Sharma Oli was arrested early on Saturday morning over his alleged role in the deaths of dozens of people who took part in the gen Z protest that toppled his government last year. Police detained the three-time former prime minister at his residence in the capital Kathmandu, and also arrested his former home affairs minister Ramesh Lekhak. Continue reading...

Balendra Shah, 35, is a symbol of change in country whose government was toppled last year in youth-led uprising Nepal’s rapper turned politician Balendra Shah, who is about to be sworn in as prime minister, has issued his first post-election message in the form of a rap urging unity. Hours before the release he swore an oath as a newly elected lawmaker, and he is due to become the Himalayan republic’s new prime minister on Friday. Continue reading...

Marco Rubio welcomes release of Dennis Coyle, who was detained in January last year for violating unspecified laws Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities have released the American academic Dennis Coyle after holding him for over a year, with the foreign ministry saying the release came on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. A statement from the ministry said the academic researcher had been released in Kabul on Tuesday, following an appeal from his family and after Afghanistan’s supreme court “considered his previous imprisonment sufficient”. Continue reading...

From a shop owner in India to a community worker in New South Wales, rising fuel prices are forcing people to ration oil usage * Middle East crisis – live updates Alagesan, 35, needs liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to run his roadside drink and snack shop in Coimbatore, India, but with the fuel shortage since the US-Israel attacks on Iran, he worries his business could fold. “I am far away from the Middle East, but my life is affected,” he said. “The gas cylinder is not available because of the war. I don’t know what to do.” Continue reading...

At least 400 killed in Pakistan’s strike on drug rehab centre, Taliban say, with families searching unmarked mass graves Sohrab Faqiri spent Eid, the Muslim festival to mark the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, looking for the grave of his brother, killed in a massive Pakistan airstrike on Kabul this week. Pakistan’s bombardment campaign, on what it says is terrorist and military infrastructure in neighbouring Afghanistan, appeared to have gone catastrophically wrong. A rehabilitation centre for drug addicts was hit on Monday night, according to the United Nations and the Afghan authorities. The UN’s preliminary death toll is 143 people,

Government must ‘come down very hard’ on online trade in knives and weapons, says policing and crime minister Sarah Jones Children are setting up online businesses selling knives in the same way they trade clothes, the policing and crime minister Sarah Jones has said. Jones heard how children as young as 12 were buying and selling the weapons on the internet and social media at the opening of the new National Knife Crime Centre in Bloomsbury, central London, on Thursday. Continue reading...

London mayor says more arrests will be made after young people stormed into shops as part of social media trend Sadiq Khan has warned against any repeat of “utterly unacceptable” scenes of disorder in Clapham earlier this week, saying culprits who assault and intimidate shop workers will face the full force of the law. The mayor of London said more arrests would be made in the coming days, and urged anyone considering more violence over the Easter weekend to think again. Continue reading...

Daniel Kebede tells his members that detail in new policies ‘just does not deliver’ and schools are ‘running on empty’ The leader of the UK’s biggest education union has torn into the government’s record on schools, accusing Labour of letting down the nation’s children and failing to deliver on its promises for education. Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), was unsparing in his criticism of the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson’s policies in a speech to delegates at the NEU’s annual conference in Brighton on Thursday. Continue reading...

Former government adviser Polly Billington urges bigger steps to shield people in UK from effects of Iran war * Middle East crisis – live updates Keir Starmer should convene a global energy summit of the same order as Gordon Brown’s response to the 2008 financial crisis and put Britain on a “war footing” to reduce its exposure to fossil fuels, a Labour MP and former government adviser has said. Polly Billington, who was an aide in Brown’s government, warned that economic pain was “hurtling down the tracks” and a bigger response was needed to protect the British people from the consequences of

Sacking of Simon Dudley is latest distraction at a time when party is keen to show it is serious contender for government It was a week that started with a candid admission from Nigel Farage. When asked if Reform UK’s vetting process was finally up to scratch, the party leader said: “I accept that at the last general election basically there was no vetting really.” He was speaking after the latest of what a senior colleague had described as a “series of abhorrent incidents”. That latest incident had involved a Welsh Senedd candidate, Corey Edwards, who was forced to step down last

Todd Blanche to serve as acting attorney general; Trump was reportedly frustrated with Bondi over the justice department’s handling of the Epstein files * Trump fires Pam Bondi as attorney general * Sign up for Breaking News US email alerts During its brief pro forma session today, the US House took no action on the funding bill to end the historic DHS shutdown, after the Senate-passed legislation was sent to the lower chamber earlier today. The House’s next procedural meeting will be on Monday, meaning the lapse in funding for several subagencies will continue until at least next week. However, Republican House

Blessing from NCPC comes just days after judge ruled work on project cannot proceed without congressional approval * Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project received the approval of Washington’s planning authorities on Thursday, two days after a judge ruled work cannot proceed without Congress’s approval. The National Capital Planning Commission, which is chaired by one of Trump’s former lawyers, gave the green light to the “East Wing Modernization Project” on Thursday, describing the ballroom as just the latest stage over two centuries of continuous changes. Continue reading...

Bondi earned president’s ire over handling release of Epstein files and failing to prosecute his political enemies * US politics live – latest updates * Sign up for the Breaking News US email Donald Trump has fired Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, dismissing a loyalist who reshaped the justice department, but still failed to please a president fixated on prosecuting political enemies and frustrated with the politically explosive release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. “Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year. Pam did a tremendous job

Federal agency, which normally supports state and local public health labs, has been hobbled by staff departures * Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox The US federal agency responsible for monitoring diseases has temporarily halted certain diagnostic testing, including those for rabies, human herpesvirus and several other infectious illnesses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a list on Monday showing that more than two dozen types of testing are now unavailable. Continue reading...

Finding Harry: The Craft Behind the Magic features interviews with cast members and will air on 5 April HBO has more Harry Potter magic up its sleeve – today, the company announced a standalone, behind-the-scenes special to accompany its upcoming TV adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Finding Harry: The Craft Behind the Magic will offer “an in-depth look at the making of the first season”, including plenty of production footage and details on the lengthy, UK-wide casting process for Harry, Ron and Hermione, played by Dominic McLaughlin, Alastair Stout and Arabella Stanton. Continue reading...

The suspected leader of an isolated forest community on the Mediterranean island of Sicily has been arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting child abuse, Italian news agencies ANSA and Adnkronos reported on Thursday. The suspect is a man of German-Indian origin. He is said to have led a community of 15 people, including two children, who lived in a forest near Cefalu on Sicily’s northern coast. The two children, aged 7 and 11, were reportedly not vaccinated, did not attend school and had to...

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that a military operation to liberate the Strait of Hormuz is “unrealistic”, while lamenting Donald Trump’s differing daily statements on the Iran war and Nato. “There are those who advocate for the liberation of the Strait of Hormuz by force through a military operation, a position sometimes expressed by the United States,” Macron said during a visit to South Korea. “I say sometimes because it has varied, it is never the option we have chosen...

A month into the Iran war, Washington still says it expects to achieve its objectives in weeks, not months. That may prove optimistic. The terms on offer from the United States and Iran barely overlap, and markets remain unconvinced a durable settlement is close. But one fact is clear: the war’s most consequential effects may be felt not only in the Middle East but across East Asia. It would be a mistake to see this as only an oil story. It is also about hierarchy. In East Asia, the war is...

US President Donald Trump tried to sell the war on Iran to sceptical Americans in a televised address, saying that the conflict was “nearing completion” and that there was no need to worry about the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to shipping. The US would hit Iran “extremely hard over the next two to three weeks”, Trump said on Wednesday from the White House. “We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages,” he said. He didn’t give a specific deadline for the end of operations during the...

Violence by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank has reached unprecedented levels since the start of the war with Iran, with NGOs and opposition figures denouncing an environment of impunity. While so-called “Jewish terrorism” has drawn widespread condemnation both in Israel and abroad, little has been done to curb it. Assaults by violent settlers against Palestinians have been carried out for years, often to the indifference of mainstream Israeli...

Students across Russia are being offered large financial incentives ⁠to join drone units fighting in Ukraine as operators and engineers, while companies in Russia’s central Ryazan region have been given quotas to sign up workers for the army, documents show. The recruitment effort, which comes as Russian forces continue to grind forwards on the battlefield in Ukraine and as US-brokered peace talks are on ice due to the Iran war, suggests Moscow is diversifying its push to replenish its army’s...

Andrew Tilton, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Goldman Sachs, speaks to the South China Morning Post about the long-term future of China’s economy after the “two sessions” in Beijing and ahead of an expected Xi-Trump summit – all during an oil crisis sparked by the US-Israel war against Iran. SCMP Plus readers get early access to articles in the Open Questions series. What impact will the oil shock arising from the Iran war have on the growth of Asian economies this year? Asia is greatly...

More than 200 years after being sunk by Admiral Horatio Nelson and the British fleet, a Danish warship has been discovered on the seabed of Copenhagen Harbour by marine archaeologists. Working in thick sediment and almost zero visibility 15 metres (49 feet) beneath the waves, divers have been working against the clock to unearth the 19th century wreck of the Dannebroge before it becomes a construction site in a new housing district being built off the Danish coast. Denmark’s Viking Ship Museum,...

The United States on Wednesday lifted sanctions on Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez, according to an Office of Foreign Assets Control entry on the Treasury Department website. The newly announced sanctions relief is the latest US recognition of Rodriguez as a legitimate authority in Venezuela ever since the US military captured her predecessor, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife on January 3 in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. The pair have since been taken to New York to face drug...

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday declared the US‑Israel war against Iran had delivered “decisive, overwhelming victories”, even as he signalled that key military objectives were still “nearing completion” and that further strikes could inflict heavy damage on targets in the country. “We are going to hit them extremely hard. Over the next two to three weeks, we are going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing,” he said in a...

Four astronauts blasted off from ⁠Florida on Wednesday on Nasa’s Artemis II mission, a high-stakes voyage around the moon that marks the United States’ boldest step yet toward returning humans to the lunar surface later this decade in a race with China. Nasa’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, topped with its Orion crew capsule, roared to life just before sunset at the agency’s Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying its debut crew - three US astronauts and a Canadian astronaut...

Utah officials announced on Wednesday that they were ⁠closing a five-decade-old ⁠case after finding “definitive proof” that American ⁠serial killer Ted Bundy killed a 17-year-old Utah girl. The girl, Laura Ann Aime, went missing on the night of October 31, 1974, after leaving a party alone to make a purchase from a convenience store, the ‌Utah County Sheriff’s Office said. Her body was found by two college students on Thanksgiving Day that year, according to authorities, who added that her body...

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian criticised the US war against his country in an open letter to the people of the United States on Wednesday, calling it an absurd operation that is costly for their nation. “Today, the world stands at a crossroads,” the president wrote in his message. “Continuing along the path of confrontation is more costly and futile than ever before.” While Iran had seen many aggressors throughout its history, “All that remains of them are tarnished names in history, while...

⁠The Russian defence ministry said on Wednesday that its ⁠forces had taken full control of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, suggesting they had wrested control of a small sliver of land which had remained beyond their reach since 2022. Reuters could not independently verify the ‌battlefield report and a Ukrainian military spokesman said there had been no battlefield changes in the area in the last six months. More than 99 per cent of Luhansk, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia claimed as...

With one of the world’s highest benchmark interest rates among major economies, Brazilian importers who buy from China are turning to a state-owned Chinese credit insurer to sustain trade flows that reached US$158 billion in 2024. Facing working capital lines that cost upwards of two per cent a month, equivalent to roughly 27 per cent a year according to market calculations, mid-sized importers are securing deferred payment terms directly from Chinese suppliers through credit limits backed by...

We have selected seven of the most interesting and important news stories covering Latin American relations from the past few weeks. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. As Trump ramps up pressure on Cuba, China has ‘very limited options’ As Washington stepped up rhetoric and pressure on Cuba after the start of its campaign in Iran, Beijing found itself torn between geopolitical reality and ideological affinity. Read the full story here. 2. US threats...

France suspects a pro-Iranian group known as HAYI to be behind a foiled attack on Bank of America’s Paris offices, its anti-terrorism prosecutor said on Wednesday, while stressing the link has not yet been formally established. HAYI, which stands for Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya, or ‌Movement of the Companions of the Right Hand of Islam, had posted a video on social media on March 23 targeting Jewish interests and communities in France and Europe, the prosecutor’s office said in a...

The BBC defended on Wednesday its handling of a DJ sacked years after he was the subject of a police investigation into allegations of sexual offences against a teenage boy. The controversy surrounding former radio host Scott Mills, 53, is the latest involving a high-profile presenter to roil the publicly funded broadcaster. London’s Metropolitan Police said this week that it questioned Mills in 2018 over allegations of “serious sexual offences” against a boy under the age of 16. The case was...

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday claimed that Iran’s leader wanted a ceasefire, in a social media post that Tehran called “false and baseless”. Trump claimed that “Iran’s New Regime President” was seeking a ceasefire, which he said would happen only once the Strait of Hormuz was “open, free, clear”. It was not immediately clear who Trump was referring to in Iran, which still has the same president. The US president, who is scheduled to address the nation later in the day, had earlier said...

The United States attacked Iran without consulting its European allies. President Donald Trump assumed the operation would be a quick win, over before anyone had to take a position. Instead, Washington answered a question Western governments had long avoided. After years of pushing Nato towards confrontation with China, would the transatlantic alliance fight a war it had not chosen together? The answer was no. Iran and Taiwan are different cases. One sits on Europe’s wider periphery and carries...

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed on Wednesday to design a road map for critical minerals supply as they seek to deepen cooperation in the sector amid China’s dominance of global rare earths. The two leaders also affirmed that Japan and France will maintain close communication in support of efforts to de-escalate tensions in the Middle East and establish a high-level dialogue on artificial intelligence, Takaichi said at a joint press appearance...

The risks of environmental calamity in the Strait of Hormuz are mounting with each passing week of the Iran conflict, conservationists have warned, as giant tankers filled with fuel are trapped in a small area and Iran continues to fire missiles and drones at Gulf oil assets. The potential for catastrophe in the waterway was sharpened on Monday when a Kuwaiti crude tanker was set ablaze at Dubai Port in an Iranian attack that damaged its hull, sparking warnings of a possible oil spill. The...

Lawmakers in the United States have urged the administration of US President Donald Trump to take action against China’s alleged sanctioned oil imports by blacklisting port operators and blocking complex settlement networks. Despite Washington’s temporary easing of sanctions on Russian and Iranian oil to relieve price pressures from the US-Israeli war in Iran, the “House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party” has released a 41-page...

US President Donald Trump said attacks on Iran could stop within two or three weeks even without an agreement, leaving a question mark over the reopening of the vital Strait of Hormuz. “We’ll be leaving very soon,” US President Donald Trump told reporters in the White House on Tuesday. “Iran doesn’t have to make a deal.” The president was scheduled to address the nation and “provide an important update on Iran” at 9pm New York time on Wednesday (9am on Thursday in Hong Kong). Brent crude held...

At a petrol station in the Washington suburbs, drivers confronted the harsh domestic repercussions of the war on Iran, as spiking fuel prices hit household budgets hard. Jeanne Williams, 83, had just driven 160km from Richmond, Virginia, where she was visiting her elder sister. “That is horrible,” she said, stunned by the prices visible on the Liberty petrol station’s LED board. “I’m not angry. I’m just bewildered, confused, unhappy,” she said. “Because we didn’t ask for the war.” On Tuesday,...

Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz has thrown the global economic system into turmoil, yet Israel, which launched attacks on Tehran alongside the United States, has emerged as a rare exception. Since Israel and its US ally started the Middle East war on February 28, economies from Asia to Europe and the US have come under pressure from surging oil and natural gas prices that have driven up fuel and electricity costs. Israel, however, has remained largely insulated from the shock. Central...

Amid ongoing talks between the Trump administration and Cuban leaders, Sandro Castro, the controversial grandson of Fidel Castro, told a major US television news network that most Cubans on the island want to embrace capitalism and that the country’s hand-picked president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, has done a poor job. His statements to CNN’s Havana correspondent, Patrick Oppmann, echoed earlier calls by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio for a change of leadership in Havana, and seem to suggest that...

Pakistan is hoping that its role in building a diplomatic off-ramp from the US-Israel war on Iran will enable it to become a key actor in the Middle East after the conflict ends, analysts say. If Islamabad can deliver without being sucked into the maelstrom, it can capitalise on its position as peacemaker by signing defence deals with Gulf monarchies and attracting investment from them to strengthen its weak economy. This will help finance Pakistan’s military expansion for its envisioned new...

China and Pakistan unveiled a joint five-point plan on Tuesday to restore peace in the Persian Gulf after five weeks of US-Israeli bombardment of Iran. China, Pakistan five-point initiative for restoring peace in the Middle East by scmp

Why didn’t China develop its own scientific and industrial revolutions when it made so many discoveries and advances over millennia? That is often called “Needham’s question”, named after the historian of Chinese science and tech Joseph Needham. Why didn’t China develop capitalism during the Song dynasty when it was so close to achieving a breakthrough with trade, commerce, currency and semi-industrialisation, and an emerging merchant class? The Hungarian-French sinologist Etienne Balazs, among...

A ⁠Russian An-26 ⁠military transport plane ⁠crashed into a cliff in Crimea, killing 29 people on board, due to a possible technical malfunction, Russia’s defence ministry said early on Wednesday, according to news agencies. Tass news agency, quoting the ministry, said communication with the aircraft was lost at about 6pm local time on Tuesday on a planned flight over Crimea. The peninsula, covered in sweeping mountains leading down to the coast of the Black Sea, was annexed by Russia from...

Global oil supplies are expected to be hit twice as hard this month as in March, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday, underlining the urgent need to resolve the conflict ‌over Iran that US President Donald Trump said could end soon. While Trump signalled he could wind down the war within weeks even without a deal, he also scaled up threats to pull the United States out of the Nato defence alliance if European states did not help stop Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz. “I was never...

Almost three years ago, New York City joined governments across the country in banning TikTok from its phones over security concerns about the Chinese social media site. On Tuesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a bona fide social media star, took to the app to announce a reversal: “TikTok, we’re back.” The city will now allow agencies to start posting again on the short-form social media site as long as departments follow a set of security precautions, according to a memo from city cybersecurity...

As with any conflict, the war in Iran has driven people to choose sides and adopt partisan positions. This includes the view that, despite the acts of aggression by the US and Israel, the Islamic Republic somehow “deserves” the attacks due to years of regional instability caused by its Axis of Resistance. This is not to suggest that the Iranian regime has always been a victim. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ transgressions through the Quds Force have been well documented. But let’s be...

A US judge blocked Donald Trump on Tuesday from proceeding with construction of a US$400 million ballroom on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing, halting for now one of the Republican president’s most visible efforts to reshape the seat of American power. US District Judge Richard ‌Leon granted a request for a preliminary injunction by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a non-profit organisation that brought a lawsuit alleging Trump exceeded his authority when he razed...

Iran has the “necessary will” to end the war with the US and Israel, President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Tuesday, stressing that Tehran was seeking guarantees the conflict would not flare up again. The comment by the head of state – which boosted markets in the US – came after a day of heavy strikes on Iran and followed a tough warning from the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Guards threatened to retaliate against leading US tech firms such as Google, Meta and Apple from...

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Tuesday that they would target leading US technology firms like Apple, Google and Meta if more Iranian leaders were killed in “targeted assassinations”. “These companies, starting from 8pm Tehran time on Wednesday, April 1, should expect the destruction of their relevant units in exchange for every assassination in Iran,” the Guards said in a statement listing the names of 18 companies it alleged were complicit in the killing of officials. “We advise the...

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ kids in Colorado, one of about two dozen states that ban the discredited practice. An 8-1 High Court majority sided with a Christian counsellor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide if it meets a legal standard that few laws pass. Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the...

King Charles III will visit the United States in late April, Buckingham Palace said on Tuesday, despite some calls for the trip to be cancelled or delayed amid the Iran war. Confirmation of the monarch’s first state visit to the US comes at a rocky time for the so-called US-UK “special relationship”, with US President Donald Trump repeatedly criticising Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s reticence over the US-Israel war against Tehran. The trip by the king and Queen Camilla would “celebrate the...

President ⁠Donald Trump on Tuesday urged countries that did not help in the US-Israeli strikes on Iran to buy American oil and go to ‌the Strait of Hormuz and “just TAKE it”. Trump singled out Britain and France as unhelpful in the month-long war that has roiled global markets, driven up energy prices and seen Iran effectively close oil ⁠tanker traffic through the Strait. “All of those countries that can’t ‌get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which ‌refused...

As global energy supplies are put under strain by Iranian disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, state-owned Chinese oil giant PetroChina has said its overall operations remain stable because most of its imports do not pass through the strait. However, the company’s investment operations in the Middle East had been “impacted to varying degrees”, as crude oil and natural gas imported through the strait accounted for about 10 per cent of its total operating volume, PetroChina...

A woman was bitten by a wolf in a shopping centre in the German city of Hamburg, the city’s deputy mayor said Tuesday, in the first such attack in modern times. The wolf entered the complex in the northern city’s Altona area on Monday evening after being repeatedly spotted in different parts of Hamburg over several days, Katharina Fegebank told journalists. The incident is the first of its kind since the species began returning to Germany almost 30 years ago, according to the Federal Agency for...

Geopolitical competition has long been understood in territorial terms. Power was measured by control over land, resources and populations. Rivalry was expressed through military confrontation, alliance formation and the defence of borders. As economic interdependence deepened in the 20th century, globalisation was seen as an arena within which states competed, but not itself the object of competition. That assumption no longer holds. Increasingly, the infrastructure of globalisation is becoming...

China’s military mouthpiece accused Japan of “dangerously expanding” its defence industry – in capacity, technology and international engagement – and said it had “crossed the red line”. In a rare full-page report on Monday, PLA Daily claimed Japan possessed an “astonishing” stockpile of nuclear materials and that it had the technology to produce nuclear weapons. It said 44.4 tonnes of plutonium had already been separated by the end of 2024 – enough to make about 5,500 nuclear warheads. The...

European governments breathed a sigh of relief in October when the US and China sealed a fragile trade truce that paused more sweeping Chinese rare earth restrictions and papered over a Sino-Dutch row over chipmaker Nexperia. Now, however, the European Union is being urged to come up with a battle plan should the ceasefire fail or expire. A spike in superpower tensions could expose the EU to Chinese export controls, potentially pulverising its military support for Ukraine, its own efforts to...

Judges have cited attacks on the press by the president and his appointees when ruling against the government in at least three court cases.

Ms. Peters, a former county clerk, received a nine-year sentence after being convicted of tampering with voting machines. An appeals court overturned the sentence but did not immediately free her from prison.

Patrick Radden Keefe’s carefully applied ambition has propelled him to a rarefied perch.

The board had been expected to vote to approve the project last month, but it was delayed after about 32,000 mostly negative comments rolled in from across the country.

A coalition of legal groups claims the Homeland Security Department adopted an unconstitutional policy allowing its agents to enter homes without a judicial warrant.

The move drew praise from leaders of the Make America Healthy Again movement who had recently criticized the agency’s handling of toxic chemicals.

Officials are said to be examining whether a controller had to use an emergency phone just before the crash at LaGuardia. They have yet to determine the cause of the crash and are also focusing on other avenues.

Some women with complex chronic illnesses are using chatbots to search for diagnoses or relief from their symptoms.

Who needs more than two employees when artificial intelligence can do so many corporate tasks? It’s super efficient — and a little bit lonely.

After years of antisemitic behavior, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West performed his first full live show in the United States since 2021.

The stars of the new film, “The Drama,” debate the pros and cons of dredging up the past.

Zendaya and Robert Pattinson play a couple upended when one confesses to coming close to committing a horrific crime.

His speech told us very little, at least explicitly, but revealed quite a lot.

Removing child sexual abuse material from the internet exacts a heavy toll on the workers tasked with reviewing it.

The announcement of a second shipment follows the arrival of a first oil tanker sent by the Kremlin earlier this week.

The crew, three Americans and a Canadian, are the first humans to travel to the moon in more than 50 years. They will not land on the surface, but the mission will pave the way for future visits.

Pope Francis washed and kissed the feet of prisoners and refugees. On Thursday, his successor performed the rite of humility and service for priests.

The golden helmet of Cotofenesti, a highly regarded artifact from Romania, and two elaborate golden bracelets were taken in January 2025.