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Moscow accuses Poland of Russophobia, pledges to respond by reducing Polish diplomatic and consular presence in Russia.

Poland has announced it will close its last remaining Russian consulate in the northern Polish city of Gdansk following the targeting of a railway line to Ukraine from Warsaw, blaming Moscow for the incident.

“I have decided to withdraw consent for the operation of the Russian consulate in Gdansk,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told journalists on Wednesday.

Sikorski said he had repeatedly warned Russia that its diplomatic and consular presence would be reduced further if it did not cease hostile actions against Poland, Polish news agency PAP reported.

The move means the only Russian diplomatic mission that will remain open in Poland will be the embassy in Warsaw.

The Kremlin responded to the allegation by accusing Poland of “Russophobia”.

“Relations with Poland have completely deteriorated. This is probably a manifestation of this deterioration – the Polish authorities’ desire to reduce any possibility of consular or diplomatic relations to zero,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked about the consulate closure.

“One can only express regret here … This has nothing to do with common sense.”

Later on Wednesday, Russia’s state news agency TASS quoted Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying Moscow will respond by reducing Poland’s diplomatic and consular presence in the country.

‘Unprecedented sabotage’

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has described the weekend explosion on a line linking Warsaw to the border with Ukraine as an “unprecedented act of sabotage”.

On Tuesday, Tusk told the Polish parliament that the two suspects had been collaborating with the Russian secret services for a long time.

As a result of the investigation, we now know it was the Russian Secret Services that commissioned the blast of the Polish railway and recruited two Ukrainians to do it. We also know the identities of the perpetrators who immediately fled Poland for Belarus.

— Donald Tusk (@donaldtusk) November 18, 2025

He said their identities were known but could not be revealed because of the ongoing investigation, and that the pair had already left Poland, crossing into Belarus.

Western officials have accused Russia and its proxies of staging dozens of attacks and other incidents across Europe since the invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago, according to data collected by The Associated Press news agency.

Moscow’s goal, Western officials say, is to undermine support for Ukraine, spark fear and divide European societies.

CJ Olive Young Corp., the distribution unit of South Korea’s food-to-cosmetics conglomerate CJ Group, said Wednesday it will open its first U.S. outlet in California in May next year.

The store will be located in Pasadena, a city about 18 kilometers northeast of Los Angeles, with several additional locations set to open in California by the end of next year, the company said in a press release.

“The location is expected to attract Younger consumers interested in K-beauty products, as well as high-income customers in an area near the California Institute of Technology and other research organizations,” the company said.

In February, CJ Olive Young established CJ Olive Young USA in Los Angeles to bolster its presence in the world’s largest beauty market.
The company views Japan and the United States as key strategic markets for its global expansion amid rising global interest in K-beauty.

Last year, it opened an office in Japan to supply its cosmetic products to local distribution channels.

CJ Olive Young currently sells products in global markets only through online platforms, without operating any offline stores overseas.

Copyright (c) Yonhap News Agency prohibits its content from being redistributed or reprinted without consent, and forbids the content from being learned and used by artificial intelligence systems.

Army blames armed opposition groups for allowing scam centres to operate under their protection.

Myanmar’s military says it has raided an internet scam hub on the Thai border, arresting nearly 350 people, as part of a highly publicised crackdown against the booming black-market compounds.

The army on Wednesday blamed armed opposition groups for allowing scam centres to operate under their protection but said it had taken action after wresting back territorial control.

Myanmar’s military descended on the gambling and fraud hub Shwe Kokko on Tuesday morning, according to state-run The Global New Light of Myanmar.

“During the operation, 346 foreign nationals currently under scrutiny were arrested,” the daily reported. “Nearly 10,000 mobile phones used in online gambling operations were also seized.”

It said the Yatai firm of Chinese-Cambodian alleged racketeer She Zhijiang was “the entity involved” in running the Shwe Kokko area.

She was arrested in Thailand in 2022 and extradited last week to China, where he faces allegations of involvement in online gambling and fraud operations. She and his company, Yatai, were previously under British and US sanctions.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the border regions linking Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia have emerged as centres for online fraud.

According to the United Nations, these areas have generated billions of dollars through the trafficking of hundreds of thousands of people coerced into working in scam compounds.

China pressure

Myanmar’s military government has long been accused of turning a blind eye but has trumpeted a crackdown since February after being lobbied by key military backer China, experts say.

Additional raids beginning last month were part of a propaganda effort, according to some monitors, choreographed to vent pressure from Beijing without badly denting profits that enrich the military government’s militia allies.

Since a 2021 coup led to a civil war, Myanmar’s loosely governed borderlands have proven fertile ground for scam hubs, which analysts say are staffed by thousands of willing workers as well as people trafficked from abroad.

In October, the military arrested more than 2,000 people in a raid on KK Park, an infamous scam centre on the border with Thailand.

In September, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned more than 20 companies and individuals in Cambodia and Myanmar for their alleged involvement in scam operations.

Nov. 19 (UPI) — Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott has designated two Muslim groups, including the United States’ largest, on accusations of being terrorist organizations.

The proclamation from Abbott, a Republican and President Donald Trump ally, designates the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations.

The designation puts both organizations and their members under “heightened enforcement” while prohibiting them from purchasing or acquiring land in the Lone Star State.

Abbott blacklisted them by claiming they want to “forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world.'” No proof of either claim was provided.

“These radical extremists are not welcome in our state and are now prohibited from acquiring any real property interest in Texas,” Abbott said in a statement.

CAIR, the United States’ largest Muslim advocacy group, was founded in 1994 with the mission to promote justice, protect civil rights and empower American Muslims. CAIR condemns all acts of terrorism by any group designated by the United States as a terrorism organization, including Hamas.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in the 1920s, renounced violence in the 1970s and now provides a mixture of religious teaching with political activism and social support, such as operating pharmacies, hospitals and schools, according the Council on Foreign Relations.

CAIR said its Texas chapter will continue its civil rights work and that its lawyers are considering legal action, calling Abbott’s designation “defamatory and lawless.”

In response, CAIR sent Abbott a letter refuting his accusations while accusing his office of spending months “stoking anti-Muslim hysteria” to smear those critical of Israel over its war in Gaza.

“Unlike your office, which has unleashed violence against Texas students protesting the Gaza genocide to satisfy you AIPAC donors, our civil rights organization answers to the American people, relies on support form the American people and stands up for American values,” Robert McCaw, director of government affairs at CAIR, said in the letter.

State Rep. Ron Reynolds, a Democrat, chastised Abbott’s designation as “discriminatory, dangerous and an attack on Muslim families.”

“I will not stay silent while innocent Texans are targeted,” he said in a statement. “This is the moment to stand up, speak our and make good trouble.”

Ministers implicated in scandal involving misused and stolen funds earmarked for anti-flooding infrastructure.

Two ministers in Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s cabinet resigned on Tuesday after being implicated in an ongoing investigation into “ghost” infrastructure and billions of dollars of missing government funds, deepening a crisis facing the country’s government over the corruption scandal.

Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin and Department of Budget and Management Secretary Amenah Pangandaman have both stepped down from their posts, presidential palace press officer Claire Castro said on Tuesday.

Castro said the pair chose to resign “after their departments were mentioned in allegations related to the flood control anomaly” and “in recognition of the responsibility to allow the administration to address the matter appropriately,” according to The Philippines Inquirer newspaper.

Bersamin and Pangandaman are the highest-ranking members of the Marcos government to be hit directly by the corruption scandal since it broke in July, according to Aries Arugay, an expert in Philippines politics and a visiting senior fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

Marcos himself has managed to stay above the fray – for now – although Arugay said that could change at any time.

“At the moment, the palace is trying to take the president out of this, and this is why you have the ‘resignations’ of the executive secretary, the budget secretary. They’re the ones accepting command responsibility over this,” he told Al Jazeera.

Arugay said Marcos Jr still has a “comfortable” majority in the legislature because many MPs still prefer him to leadership under Vice President Sara Duterte, but “all bets are off” should more evidence emerge.

Earlier this week, politician Zaldy Co – who is currently not in the Philippines – alleged that Marcos directed him to add $1.7bn to the budget for “dubious public works” while he headed an appropriations committee, according to The South China Morning Post, although the claims have not been verified.

Co was among the first group of officials to be charged this week for their role in the corruption scandal following a months-long investigation, according to The Philippines Inquirer.

The scandal has engulfed the Philippines since Marcos Jr revealed in a speech to Congress earlier this year that billions of dollars of public funds for anti-flooding infrastructure had been siphoned off by private contractors to build substandard infrastructure – and in some cases, none at all.

The Philippines is regularly hit by typhoons and other tropical storms, and flooding remains a perennial and often deadly problem.

The corruption scandal has set off mass protests across the Philippines, including a demonstration on Sunday that drew 500,000 people to Manila.

Nov. 19 (UPI) — The House voted Tuesday against censuring Delegate Stacey Plaskett and removing her from the Intelligence Committee following revelations she texted with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a congressional hearing.

The late night 209-214 vote came hours after the House approved a bill directing the Justice Department to release the files from its investigation into Epstein. Three Republicans joined Democrats voting against the measure. Another three Republicans voted “present.”

Leading up to the vote to release the files, the House Oversight Committee began releasing troves of documents from Epstein’s estate that included his texts and other communications.

Those included copies of texts Epstein had with Plaskett as she was about to question Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer of President Donald Trump, during a 2019 congressional hearing, The New York Times reported.

Republicans seized on the revelation, and Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., introduced the censure resolution accusing Plaskett of having “inappropriately coordinated” with Epstein, receiving suggested lines of questioning and congratulations from him. The resolution also would have directed the House Ethics Committee to investigate her ties to Epstein.

Plaskett, a Democrat, represents the U.S. Virgin Islands as a delegate. That means that while she may participate in many of the chamber’s functions while representing the territory, she cannot vote on the House floor.

She defended herself in a House floor speech, explaining that Epstein was a constituent she had been in contact with to get information, reported Politico.

“I know how to question individuals. I know how to seek information. I have sought information from confidential informants, from murderers, from other individuals because I want the truth,” she said.

Norman, however, told The Washington Post that it was “beyond comprehension” that Plaskett would work with the disgraced financier on House business.

“The American people expect honesty, the American people expect integrity and judgment from their elected officials,” he said in a floor speech, according to the Post. “They expect members of Congress to conduct themselves with one word — decency — not to seek advice from a predator who exploited minor children.”

President Donald Trump has designated Saudi Arabia a major non-NATO ally of the United States during a visit by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Washington, DC, where the two leaders reached agreements covering arms sales, civil nuclear cooperation, artificial intelligence and critical minerals.

During a formal black-tie dinner at the White House on Tuesday evening, Trump made the announcement that he was taking “military cooperation to even greater heights by formally designating Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally”.

Trump said the designation was “something that is very important to them, and I’m just telling you now for the first time because I wanted to keep a little secret for tonight”.

The designation means a US partner benefits from military and economic privileges but it does not entail security commitments.

Saudi Arabia and the US also signed a “historic strategic defence agreement”, Trump said.

A White House fact sheet said the defence agreement, “fortifies deterrence across the Middle East”, makes it easier for US defence firms to operate in Saudi Arabia and secures “new burden-sharing funds from Saudi Arabia to defray US costs”.

The White House also announced that Trump had approved future deliveries of F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia while the kingdom had agreed to purchase 300 American tanks.

“I’m pleased to announce that we are taking our military cooperation to even greater heights by formally designating Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally.” – President Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸🇸🇦 pic.twitter.com/PXXGGCBPGU

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 19, 2025

Saudi F-35 deal raises questions about Israel’s ‘qualitative military edge’

Saudi Arabia’s purchase of the stealth fighter jets would mark the first US sale of the advanced fighter planes to Riyadh. The kingdom has reportedly requested to buy 48 of the aircraft.

The move is seen as a significant policy shift by Washington that could alter the military balance of power in the Middle East, where US law states that Israel must maintain a “qualitative military edge”.

Israel has been the only country in the Middle East to have the F-35 until now.

Asked by Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett about the impact of the jet fighter deal on Israel’s “qualitative military edge”, Trump said he was aware that Israel would prefer that Riyadh receive warplanes of “reduced calibre”.

“I don’t think that makes you too happy,” Trump said, addressing the crown prince, who was seated beside him in the White House.

“They’ve been a great ally. Israel’s been a great ally. … As far as I’m concerned, I think they are both at a level where they should get top of the line,” Trump said of the F-35 deal.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from the White House, said part of the almost $1 trillion investment in the US announced by Prince Mohammed included $142bn for the procurement of the F-35 fighter jets, “the most advanced of their kind in the world”.

Fisher also said the Israeli government and lobbyists had tried to block the sale of F-35s to Saudi Arabia.

The agreements announced were about “much more” than Saudi investment in the US, he added.

“It’s about helping each other’s economy, business and defence. Politics isn’t near the top of the agenda, but both countries believe these deals could create a political reset in the Middle East,” Fisher said.

‘A clear path’ for Palestinian state

The two countries also signed a joint declaration on the completion of negotiations on civil nuclear energy cooperation, which the White House said would build the legal foundation for a long-term nuclear energy partnership with Riyadh.

Israeli officials had suggested that they would not be opposed to Saudi Arabia getting F-35s as long as Saudi Arabia normalises relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords framework.

The Saudis, however, have said they would join the Abraham Accords but only after there is a credible and guaranteed path to Palestinian statehood, a position Prince Mohammed repeated in the meeting with Trump.

“We want to be part of the Abraham Accords, but we want also to be sure that we secure a clear path of a two-state solution,” he said.

“We’re going to work on that to be sure that we come prepared for the situation as soon as possible to have that,” he added.

Nov. 18 (UPI) — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday rebuffed the idea of the U.S. military intervening within her country’s borders to combat drug trafficking despite recent remarks from President Donald Trump.

Sheinbaum made the comments during a press conference Tuesday as the Trump administration pursues its increasingly militarized approach to drug trafficking.

Sheinbaum said Trump had offered during multiple phone conversations to send troops to Mexico to help authorities combat criminal groups. While Sheinbaum said she was willing to share information and work with the United States, she would not accept a foreign government intervening in her country.

“We don’t want intervention from any foreign government,” said Sheinbaum in Spanish. She noted that Mexico lost half its territory the last time the United States had a military presence in her country, a reference to the U.S.-Mexico war of the 19th century.

She added she was open to “collaboration and coordination without subordination” to the United States and had communicated the same message to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The Trump administration has launched a series of strikes targeting boats allegedly carrying drugs across the Pacific to the United States. Military officials have justified the strikes as legally permissible after the U.S. government designated drug traffickers as “terrorist organizations.”

Speaking to reporters Monday, Trump said the strikes had significantly reduced drug trafficking across waterways and prevented U.S. citizens from fatal overdoses. When asked if he was open to military strikes against Mexico, Trump indicated he was open to the idea, citing “big problems” in Mexico City.

“So let me just put it this way, I am not happy with Mexico,” he said.

Spain finish unbeaten at the top of Group E despite being given genuine scare by Turkiye, who will compete in playoffs.

Spain have booked their ticket to the 2026 World Cup with a 2-2 draw against Turkiye in their final qualifier to top Group E.

Turkiye finished second on Tuesday and will compete in the playoffs after they became the first team to force Luis de la Fuente’s Euro 2024 champions to drop points.

Dani Olmo fired Spain ahead, but Deniz Gul and Salih Ozcan struck for Turkiye as the hosts conceded their first goals in the qualification process.

Mikel Oyarzabal hit back to equalise in Seville for a Spanish team looking to win football’s biggest prize for the second time.

Spain scored 21 goals in qualifying while conceding just twice and have not tasted defeat in a national record 31 consecutive games.

However, that run includes a 2-2 Nations League final draw with Portugal after extra time in June with Spain losing on penalties.

Turkiye showed de la Fuente’s side are not flawless although Spain were missing several key players, including Lamine Yamal, Nico Williams and Rodri.

They knew to qualify all they had to do was avoid defeat by a seven-goal margin, which was never on the cards, and might have triumphed if not for some inspired goalkeeping by Manchester United stopper Altay Bayindir.

Marc Cucurella’s cross found Olmo in the box, and he controlled it well to bypass a defender before finishing lethally in the fourth minute.

The Barcelona playmaker twice came close to scoring a second from long range, but Bayindir tipped over both efforts.

Turkiye became the first team to score against Spain in qualifying just before the break when Gul levelled, reacting quickly to flick home a knock-down from a corner.

The visitors came out strongly in the second half and forced Spain’s goalkeeper Unai Simon into a pair of smart saves before taking the lead.

Borussia Dortmund midfielder Ozcan rifled home from the edge of the box after Orkun Kokcu had set the ball up nicely for him.

Spain bit back, and Oyarzabal finished from close range after Merih Demiral did brilliantly to block Yeremy Pino’s shot on the line, but it rebounded off another defender nicely for the Real Sociedad forward.

It was Oyarzabal’s sixth goal in a qualifying campaign in which he has staked his claim to being Spain’s starting striker at the World Cup.

Substitute Samu Aghehowa came close as Spain sought a winner, but Bayindir kept out his header and then denied Alex Baena to secure Turkiye an impressive point.

Barcelona’s Fermin Lopez found the net in stoppage time, but his goal was disallowed for offside.

Elsewhere, Scotland scored two dramatic stoppage-time goals to beat 10-man Denmark 4-2 on Tuesday and reach the World Cup for the first time since 1998.

A 1-1 home draw against Bosnia and Herzegovina was enough for Austria in Group H while Belgium routed Liechtenstein 7-0. Switzerland qualified after a 1-1 draw at Kosovo.

The 12 group winners qualified directly while the runners-up will participate in playoffs along with the four best-ranked group winners of the 2024-2025 Nations League that did not finish first or second in their groups.

The playoffs will be played on March 26 and March 31.

The World Cup will be played in the United States, Mexico and Canada from June 11 to July 19.

Nov. 18 (UPI) — A federal court ordered Texas on Tuesday to throw out its redrawn Republican-friendly congressional maps for the 2026 election after finding it constituted an illegal racial gerrymander.

The 2-1 order by the three-judge panel in the U.S. District Court of Western Texas is a significant setback for Republicans after they pushed through an unusual redistricting of Texas’ congressional seats to insulate their slim House majority ahead of next year’s midterms.

President Donald Trump openly urged Texas state lawmakers to adopt the new congressional map in order to help the party’s prospects in Washington. Democratic lawmakers responded by fleeing the state in what was ultimately an unsuccessful attempt to deny Republicans the quorum needed to pass the new maps.

State Rep. Gene Wu, a Democrat who led the quorum break, welcomed the court’s ruling in a post on X.

“Texas House Dems stood up to Abbott & Trump,” he wrote. “We broke quorum & we fought in the courts! We did not back down.”

However, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote in a post on X that he would appeal the order to the U.S. Supreme Court. He criticized what he called partisan gerrymandering in Democratic-led states, including California, Illinois and New York. He added that he expects the Supreme Court to “uphold Texas’s sovereign right to engage in partisan redistricting.”

Republicans currently hold 25 of Texas’ 38 House seats, and the now-scrapped redistricting was expected to give the party an edge by diluting Democratic strongholds.

But U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, instead focused on how the new map would affect the racial makeup of Texas’ congressional districts.

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” Brown wrote. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map.”

In his ruling, Brown cited a July letter from U.S. Department of Justice officials to Paxton and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, directing the state to correct four districts because they were illegal racial gerrymanders.

Brown wrote that the letter was difficult to assess because it contained “so many factual, legal and typographical errors.” But Brown pointed out that Abbott cited the letter as the reason he added congressional redistricting to the legislature’s special session earlier this year.

Israel continues to attack Lebanon on a near-daily basis in violation of a yearlong ceasefire with Hezbollah.

At least 13 people have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.

The drone strike hit a car on Tuesday in the car park of a mosque in the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp on the outskirts of the coastal city of Sidon, the Lebanese state-run National News Agency reported.

At least four people were wounded in the attack, the ministry said, adding that “ambulances are still transporting more wounded to nearby hospitals.”

Israel said it struck members of the Palestinian armed group Hamas who were operating in a training compound in the refugee camp.

“When we say we will not tolerate any threat on our northern border, this means all terrorist groups operating in the region,” the Israeli military’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a statement. “We will continue to act forcefully against Hamas’s attempts to establish a foothold in Lebanon and eliminate its elements that threaten our security.”

Hamas denied Israel’s claim, calling it a “fabrication” and stressing the group doesn’t have training facilities in Lebanon’s refugee camps.

“The Zionist bombardment was a barbaric aggression against our innocent Palestinian people as well as Lebanon’s sovereignty,” it said in a statement.

Earlier on Tuesday, Lebanon said Israeli strikes on cars elsewhere in the country’s south killed two people.

Israel has killed several officials from Palestinian factions including Hamas in Lebanon since it launched its war on Gaza in October 2023 after Hamas led an attack on southern Israel

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 69,483 Palestinians and wounded 170,706. A total of 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive.

A day after Israel launched its war on Gaza, Hezbollah began firing rockets towards Israel, which responded with shelling and air strikes in Lebanon, and the two sides became locked in a conflict that Israel escalated into a full-blown war in late September 2024.

Israel’s war killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of civilians. In Israel, 127 people were killed, including 80 soldiers.

The war halted in late November 2024 with a United States-brokered ceasefire, but since then, Israel has carried out dozens of air attacks on Lebanon, accusing Hezbollah of trying to rebuild its capabilities.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry has reported more than 270 people killed and about 850 wounded by Israeli military actions since the ceasefire.

“There are daily violations of the ceasefire by Israel in Lebanon, and it would be unfair at this stage to pin the blame on the Lebanese government,” Lebanese political analyst Karim Emile Bitar told Al Jazeera. “The Lebanese government went above and beyond what was required … and took a historic decision to ask the Lebanese army to disarm Hezbollah.”

However, Bitar said, Israel has not lived up to its end of the bargain. Under the terms of the ceasefire signed on November 27, 2024, Israel was meant to withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon by January 26, a deadline it missed.

Nov. 18 (UPI) — The National Transportation Safety Board announced Tuesday that an incorrectly labeled wire caused a containership to collide with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last year.

The federal agency released the key finding of its investigation into the catastrophic collision that killed six highway maintenance workers, destroyed a major regional transportation artery and upended trade at one of the country’s busiest ports.

Jennifer Homendy, the board’s chair, said, “This tragedy should’ve never occurred” in her opening remarks at a public meeting.

“As with all accidents we investigate, this was preventable,” she said.

Federal investigators determined that the Dali containership crashed into the bridge after losing electricity. The cause of the blackout was a loose signal wire connection to a terminal block that investigators traced back to improperly installed wire-label banding.

The Dali lost its propulsion and steering, and the crew had little time to recover before the ship struck a southern pier that was supporting the bridge’s central span, investigators concluded. As a result, a “substantial portion” of the bridge collapsed into the Patapsco River.

Additionally, the investigation also faulted Maryland officials for not assessing the bridge earlier for potential vulnerabilities to collisions with ships. The “lack of effective and immediate communications” also contributed to the deaths of the highway workers, investigators found.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge was constructed before 1994, when bridges were mandated to meet safety criteria to reduce the risk of a collapse. State officials have since announced plans for a replacement bridge over the Patapsco River, which is estimated to cost at least $1.7 billion and be twice as high as the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

The city of Baltimore filed a lawsuit against Grace Ocean Private and Synergy Marine, the owners of the Dali, arguing that the 985-foot container ship was “a clearly unseaworthy vessel” and the companies “were grossly and potentially criminally negligent.”

Nov. 18 (UPI) — Facebook owner Meta can keep the WhatsApp mobile messaging app and the Instagram social media site in a federal trial first brought by the Federal Trade Commission in 2020.

Washington D.C.-based Judge James Boasberg ruled Tuesday that the FTC did not prove its claim that Meta has maintained a monopoly on social media platforms, CNBC reported.

“Whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power in the past, though, the agency must show that it continues to hold such power now,” Boasberg wrote.

“The court’s verdict today determines that the FTC has not done so,” he added.

Meta officials said in a statement to NPR that Boasberg’s ruling affirms that social media remains competitive.

Boasberg in 2021 dismissed the case citing a lack of evidence that Facebook held “market power” over social media.

The FTC amended and refiled its complaint in August 2021, providing more detail on user data and comparisons to competitors, including Snapchat, the discontinued Google+ social network and Myspace.

The FTC also argued Meta engaged in a “buy or bury” strategy to monopolize social media when it paid more than market value to buy Instagram in 2012 and when it bought WhatsApp in 2014, according to NPR.

The only way to resolve the alleged monopoly was to require Meta to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp as independent companies, the FTC argued.

The social media marketplace has changed greatly over the past five years since the federal agency first accused Meta of monopolizing social media, Boasberg wrote.

“While it once might have made sense to partition apps into separate markets of social networking and social media, that wall has since broken down,” Boasberg wrote.

He cited the rise of TikTok and called it “Meta’s fiercest rival,” which he called evidence of a competitive social media marketplace.

During the trial that concluded in May, Meta’s legal team argued it faced plenty of competition and only bought WhatsApp and Instagram because they are quality products that were easier to buy instead of replicating.

During the trial, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified that buying Instagram was easier than creating a new product that would compete with it.

Paramount Skydance is reportedly preparing a bid to acquire Warner Bros Discovery.

Variety, an entertainment industry trade magazine in the United States, first reported the looming proposal on Tuesday, quoting sources familiar with the talks.

The publication said the company formed an investment consortium with the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi to submit a $71bn bid for Warner Bros Discovery.

The report said Paramount Skydance would contribute about $50bn towards the proposed acquisition with the remainder coming from the wealth funds.

Paramount Skydance has described the involvement of the sovereign wealth funds as “categorically inaccurate”.

Paramount Skydance is now led by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, cofounder of Oracle and a close ally of US President Donald Trump. Warner Bros Discovery previously rejected a bid from the Ellison family, which holds all board voting power at Paramount Skydance.

Neither Paramount nor Warner Bros Discovery responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Under the proposed structure, the wealth funds would take small minority stakes and each would receive “an IP, a movie premiere, a movie shoot”, the report said.

Warner Bros Discovery – home to the DC film universe and television studios, HBO, CNN, TNT and Warner Bros Games – is on the verge of breaking up, crippled by declines in its television business.

The company said in October that it has been considering a range of options, including a planned separation, a deal for the entire company or separate transactions for its Warner Bros or Discovery Global businesses.

Nonbinding, first-round bids are due on Thursday.

Paramount is the only company currently considering a full buyout according to the US news website Axios. Warner Bros Discovery also wants to have a deal by the end of the year, according to Axios’s reporting.

Political pressures

The looming deal is shaped in part by how the Trump administration views coverage by the news outlets owned by Warner Bros Discovery.

Netflix and Comcast are also reportedly exploring bids, but any Comcast-led effort would need regulatory approval.

Trump has also repeatedly attacked Comcast over its TV news coverage, saying the company “should be forced to pay vast sums of money for the damage they’ve done to our country”.

Comcast owns NBC News and its subsidiary Versant Media, the parent company of MS-Now – formerly MSNBC – and CNBC.

CBS, owned by Paramount Skydance, has taken a more conciliatory posture towards the administration, including hiring a Trump nominee as an ombudsman to investigate bias allegations after settling a Trump lawsuit claiming its flagship programme 60 Minutes deceptively edited an interview with 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump.

Paramount Skydance also recently tapped Bari Weiss, a right-leaning opinion journalist with no television background, to lead the CBS broadcast news division.

Any of the deals that are being discussed raise antitrust concerns. But if Paramount Skydance, which already owns CBS, now purchases CNN as part of Warner Bros Discovery, “that would create an added civic risk”, Rodney Benson, professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, told Al Jazeera.

“Such a deal would put two leading news outlets under the roof of the same large, multi-industry conglomerate with avowed close relations to the party in power – and that could lead to more conflicts of interest, less independent watchdog reporting and a narrowing of diverse voices and viewpoints in the public sphere,” Benson said.

Warner Bros Discovery remains the parent company of CNN.

On Wall Street, Paramount Skydance shares were up 1.7 percent in midday trading. Warner Bros Discovery was also up 2.8 percent from the market open. Comcast gained 0.5 percent, and Netflix climbed 3.5 percent.

Nov. 18 (UPI) — Two more defendants have been sentenced for their roles in a $16 million California hospice scam that billed Medicare for medical services that never were provided.

The U.S. District Court for Central California on Monday sentenced Juan Carlos Esparza, 33, of Valley Village, to 57 months in prison and ordered him to pay $1.83 million in restitution, according to the Justice Department.

The court on Monday also sentenced Susanna Harutyunyan, 39, of Winnetka, to 15 months in prison and to pay $2.82 million in restitution

Their sentences are in addition to that of Karpis Srapyan, 35, of Winnetka, who was sentenced to 57 months in prison and to pay $3.2 million in restitution in October.

Mihran Panosyan, 47, of Winnetka, in September also was sentenced to 57 months and was ordered to pay $4.7 million in restitution.

The court in May also sentenced Petro Fichidzhyan, 44, of Granada Hills, to 12 years in prison and ordered him to pay $17.13 million in restitution.

Their scheme ran from July 2019 until January 2023 as the five defendants “operated four sham hospices” that billed Medicare for unnecessary medical procedures that never were provided, according to the DOJ.

Esparza owned the House of Angels Hospice and, with the help of Fichidzhyan and Srapyan, “concealed the scheme by using foreign nationals’ names and personally identifiable information to act as straw owners for the hospices and to open bank accounts, submit information to Medicare and to sign property leases,” the DOJ said Tuesday in a news release.

The defendants also obtained cell phones in the names of foreign nationals and controlled them to further the scheme that netted $16 in payments from Medicare.

The DOJ said they conspired with Harutyunyan, Panosyan and others to launder the proceeds by maintaining fraudulent identification documents, bank documents, checkbooks, credit cards, debit cards and other records associated with the sham hospices in the names of the “purported foreign workers.”

After defrauding Medicare, the defendants transferred the money among different accounts and assets, including bank accounts in the names of shell companies, to launder the proceeds and conceal the scheme, according to the DOJ.

Esparza in July pleaded guilty to healthcare fraud and transactional money laundering.

That same month, Harutyunyan also pleaded guilty to transactional money laundering, and Srapyan pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and transactional money laundering.

Panosyan in June pleaded guilty to concealment money laundering, and Fichidzhyan in February pleaded guilty to healthcare fraud, aggravated identity theft and concealment money laundering.

The federal court in May also ordered forfeiture of two homes the defendants bought with the fraudulent proceeds, and the federal government seized $2.92 million from associated bank accounts.

The US House of Representatives voted 427 to 1 to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which if enacted will require the Department of Justice to release documents related to sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein. It still needs to pass the Senate and be signed by President Trump into law.

The dip comes amid doubts about future US interest rate cuts and a risk-averse mood in broader markets.

Bitcoin fell below $90,000 for the first time in seven months in the latest sign that investor appetite for risk is drying up across financial markets.

The cryptocurrency began to rebound as United States markets opened on Tuesday. However, Monday’s steep drop in the risk-sensitive asset had already wiped out all of its gains for the year.

It is now nearly 30 percent below its peak of $126,000 in October.

It was down 0.5 percent at $91,338.47 during European trading hours, after slipping as low as $89,286.75.

About $1.2 trillion has been wiped off the total market value of all cryptocurrencies in the past six weeks, according to market tracker CoinGecko.

Market participants said that a combination of doubts around future interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve and the risk-averse mood in broader markets, which have wobbled after a long rally, was dragging down crypto.

“The cascading selloff is amplified by listed companies and institutions exiting their positions after piling in during the rally, compounding contagion risks across the market,” said Joshua Chu, co-chair of the Hong Kong Web3 Association.

“When support thins and macro uncertainty rises, confidence can erode with remarkable speed.”

Speculators who had put money into crypto in the hopes of supportive US regulation have started to pull back, causing steady outflows from exchange traded funds (ETFs) and similar instruments in recent weeks, said Joseph Edwards at Enigma Securities.

“The sell pressure here isn’t extraordinary, but it’s coming at a relative weak point on the buy side … a lot of retail buyers were stung during the flash crash last month,” he said, referring to an October crash in which there were $19bn in liquidations across leveraged positions.

Crypto stockpilers such as Strategy, miners such Riot Platforms and Mara Holdings, and exchange Coinbase have all slid with the souring mood.

‘Underwater’

There has been a boom in public crypto treasury companies this year, with small companies in unrelated sectors becoming crypto proxies by announcing plans to buy and hold cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets.

But Standard Chartered has estimated that a drop below $90,000 for Bitcoin could leave half of these companies’ Bitcoin holdings “underwater” – a term that typically refers to assets worth less than what was paid for them.

Listed companies collectively hold 4 percent of all the Bitcoin in circulation, and 3.1 percent of the ether, Standard Chartered said.

The cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) has also been under pressure for months, and has lost nearly 40 percent of its value from an August peak above $4,955.

“All in all, sentiment is pretty low in crypto and has been since the leverage wipeout of October,” said Matthew Dibb, chief investment officer at Astronaut Capital.

Brazil’s proposal

The issue is set to come to a head next week, as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) holds its 20th meeting.

Heightened restrictions on brazilwood are scheduled to be raised for a vote at the conference.

Since 1998, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has classified the tree as endangered.

But a proposal authored by the Brazilian government would increase CITES protections for brazilwood, placing it in the highest tier for trade restrictions.

CITES regulates the international trade of endangered species, and it classifies animals and plants in three appendices.

The third is the least restrictive: If a species is endangered in a given country, then export permits are required from that country.

The Appendix II has tighter standards: Export permits are required from wherever the species is extracted. Most endangered species, including brazilwood, fall into this category.

But Brazil hopes to bump brazilwood up to appendix one, a category for species faced with extinction.

Trade of plants and animals in that appendix is largely banned, except for non-commercial use. But even in that case, both import and export licences are required.

In its proposal, Brazil argues the upgraded restrictions are necessary to fight the plant’s extinction.

Only about 10,000 adult brazilwood trees remain. The population has shrunk by 84 percent over the last three generations, and illegal logging has played a dominant role in that decline, according to the proposal.

“Selective extraction of Brazilwood is still active, both inside and outside protected areas,” the proposal explains.

“In all cases recently detected, the destination of these woods is the bow-making industry for musical instruments.”

It adds that “520 years of intense exploitation” have led to the “complete elimination of the species in several regions”.

One operation launched by Brazilian police in October 2018 resulted in 45 companies and bowmakers being fined.

Nearly 292,000 bows and blanks — the unfinished blocks of wood destined to become bows — were seized.

Another investigation, between 2021 and 2022, led police to conclude that an estimated $46m in profits had come from the illegal brazilwood trade.

“The majority of bows and bow blanks sold by Brazilian companies over the past 25 years probably originated from illegal sources,” Brazil wrote in its proposal.

Follow the build-up, analysis, and live text commentary of the game as Spain and Turkiye vie for top spot in Group E.

US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse sharply criticised President Donald Trump for previously attempting to block a House vote on the release of files related to Epstein. Trump on Sunday dropped his opposition and the measure now is expected to overwhelmingly pass.