Donald Trump

Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt remains closed as Trump threatens Hamas over gang clashes.

Oct. 16 (UPI) — With less than three weeks before New Yorkers head to the polls to select the city’s 111th mayor, candidates Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa and independent Andrew Cuomo squared off for a heated debate Thursday night in Manhattan.

Though a trio of candidates stood before lecterns at WNBC’s 30 Rockefeller Center studios, the debate was mainly a fight between Mamdani, the New York City assemblyman leading in the polls, and Cuomo, the former governor of New York State, leaving Sliwa, founder of the nonprofit crime prevention Guardian Angels organization, trying to enter the fray.

Leadership

Cuomo, who left the New York governor’s mansion in August 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations, was quick to attack Mamdani, saying the New York assemblyman’s inexperience makes him unfit to oversee a 300,000-employee city workforce and a multi-billion-dollar budget.

“This is no job for on-the-job training,” he said. “And if you look at the failed mayors they’re ones that have no management experience. Don’t do it again.”

Mamdani, in rebuttal, attempted to frame Cuomo as an out-of-touch politician backed by wealthy donors, while pointing to his successes in the state’s assembly as proof of his own experience.

The former governor said Mamdani’s answer was proof of his lack of experience — and a lack of experience in leading New York could have deadly consequences.

“This is not a job for a first timer,” Cuomo said. “Any day you could have a hurricane, God forbid, a 9/11, a health pandemic. If you don’t know what you’re doing people will die.”

“If we have a health pandemic, then why would New Yorkers turn back to the governor who sent seniors to their deaths in nursing homes?” Mamdani replied, referring to a public scandal over how Cuomo’s administration handled COVID-19 in nursing homes and other elder-care facilities.

Sliwa, who has taken a tough-on-crime stance, attempted to interject into the conversation, at one point telling the moderators that he was being “marginalized.”

He then attempted to set himself apart from the two men who have held political seats, by emphasizing that he is not a politican, and referring to Cuomo as the “architect” and Mamdani the “apprentice.”

“Thank God I’m not a professional politician because they have helped create this crime crisis in the city that we face and I will resolve [it],” he said.

President Donald Trump

President Donald Trump’s presence and ongoing immigration crackdown have loomed large over the race and ahve put a greater spotlight on Mamdani, who was recently little known outside of the city, as the American leader has called him and his left-leaning policies out on social media.

Asked what he would say to Trump in their first phone call, Mamdani said he would tell the American leader that he is willing to work with him to help raise the living standards of New Yorkers, but if that he seeks to cut funds to the city “he’s going to have to get through me as the next mayor.”

Cuomo similarly offered that he’d like to work with Trump “but Number One, I will fight you every step of the way if you try to hurt New York.”

Sliwa criticized both candidates for trying to act “tough” when doing so would only end up hurting New Yorkers.

“They want to take on Donald Trump. Look, you can be tough, but you can’t be tough if its going to cost people desperately needed federal funds,” he said, stating he would sit down with the president and negotiate.

“But if you try to get tough with Trump, the only people who are going to suffer from that are the people of New York City.”

Israel-Hamas

With the first phase of the Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal underway, moderators called on Mamdani to clarify previous statements he has made about the Palestinian militant group specifically about whether it should disarm.

In response, Mamdani said he was “proud” to be among the first New York elected officials to call for a cease-fire, which he defined as meaning “all parties have to cease fire and put down their weapons.”

Sliwa then jumped in to chastise Cuomo and Mamdani for neither applauding Trump for securing the cease-fire deal.

Cuomo then rebutted that he did applaud Trump and his administration, using the topic to accuse Mamdani and his stance against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank as coded language meaning “Israel does not have a right to exist as a Jewish state.”

Mamdani then clapped back that “occupation” is an international legal term that “Mr. Cuomo has no regard for” as he has joined the legal defense team of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in their fight against arrest warrants at the International Criminal Court.

He was then pressed on his previous reluctance to condemn the use of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which to some is a pro-Palestinian slogan of resistance against oppression and to others as encouragement of violence against Jews.

Sliwa also lashed out at Mamdani, stating “Jews don’t trust you’re going to be there for them when they are victims of anti-Semitic attacks.”

The second mayoral debate is scheduled for Oct. 22.

Early voting opens Oct. 25. The election is to be held Nov. 4.

Here are the key events from day 1,331 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Friday, October 17, 2025:

Fighting

• Russian war correspondent Ivan Zuyev has been killed by a Ukrainian drone strike while on assignment on the front line of the war in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, his publication, state news agency RIA said. Zuyev’s colleague, Yuri Voitkevich, was seriously wounded in the attack.

• Russia launched a large armoured assault with more than 20 armoured vehicles near the eastern Ukrainian town of Dobropillia, Ukraine’s Azov brigade said, adding that its forces repelled the attack.
• Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces carried out a massive overnight strike on Ukrainian gas infrastructure which supports Kyiv’s military, in retaliation for what it said were Ukrainian attacks on civilian infrastructure.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia launched a barrage of more than 300 drones and 37 missiles in that attack. Ukraine’s state grid operator, Ukrenergo, has also introduced emergency power cuts in every region of the country.
• Ukraine struck Russia’s Saratov oil refinery overnight, the Ukrainian military general staff said in a statement on Telegram.
• Some 84,000 people are still without power in the Russian-held part of Ukraine’s Kherson region after Ukrainian strikes this week on energy infrastructure, according to Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-appointed governor of the region.
• Alexei Likhachev, the head of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, said a decision could be taken as early as Friday on a pause in fighting to enable repairs to power lines at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine.
• North Korean troops based in Russia are operating drones across the border into Ukraine on reconnaissance missions, the Ukrainian military said, the first time Kyiv has reported a battlefield role for North Koreans in months.

Ceasefire talks

• In a surprise move, US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed to another summit on the war in Ukraine after the leaders held a more than two-hour phone conversation. Trump and Putin may meet within the next two weeks in Budapest, Hungary, Trump said after the conversation, which he called productive.
• The Kremlin confirmed plans for the meeting, adding that Putin told Trump on the call that supplying US Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine would harm the peace process and damage ties.
• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will speak in the coming days to prepare the summit, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said, adding that the timing would depend on how preparatory work progressed.
• The development came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was headed to the White House on Friday to push for more military support. Zelenskyy said on the eve of those talks that momentum in the Middle East peace process would help end his country’s more than three-year-old war with Russia.

Europe

• The European Commission has proposed four flagship European defence projects, including a counter-drone system and a plan to fortify the eastern border, as part of a drive to get the continent ready to defend itself by 2030.
• The proposals, in a defence policy “roadmap”, reflect fears fuelled by the war in Ukraine that Russia may attack an EU member in the coming years, and calls by President Trump for Europe to do more for its own security.

Sanctions

• Britain has targeted Russia’s two largest oil companies, Lukoil and Rosneft, and 44 shadow fleet tankers in what it described as a new bid to tighten energy sanctions and choke off Kremlin revenues. Lukoil and Rosneft were designated under Britain’s Russia sanctions laws for their role in supporting the Russian government. They are subject to an asset freeze, director disqualification, transport restrictions, and a ban on British trust services.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he would call for the European Union to use Russian assets frozen in the West to provide a large loan to Ukraine to finance its war effort at the upcoming EU summit on October 23.
• Canada and Britain have expressed interest in working on the EU idea of a reparations loan for Ukraine based on immobilised Russian assets, European Economic Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told the Reuters news agency on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington.
• Dombrovskis said he presented the idea of the EU loan, which could be up to 185bn euros ($216.5bn) over two years, to G7 finance ministers.

Oct. 16 (UPI) — President Donald Trump announced a deal Thursday between his administration and a pharmaceutical company that could reduce the cost of some fertility medications.

Administration officials say the deal between the government and EMD Serono will help millions of U.S. women who have trouble conceiving afford the cost of medications that could help.

“In the Trump administration, we want to make it easier for couples to have babies, raise children and start the families they’ve always dreamed about,” Trump said during his Oval Office announcement.

The president said during the announcement that EMD Serono, the world’s largest fertility drug manufacturer, has agreed to provide discounts for the drugs it sells in the United States, including Gonal-f, which is used to treat infertility by men and women.

A fertility drug cycle typically costs between $5,000 and $6,000, the administration said, and only about 30% of families have access to employer insurance that will cover the treatment. Women trying to conceive can require different amounts of the drug.

Trump said his administration is working with employers to make it easier for them to offer supplemental insurance coverage for fertility treatments.

“As a result of these actions, the per-cycle cost of drugs used in IVF will fall by an estimated 73% for American consumers, and the numbers are going to actually be very substantially higher as time goes by when it really kicks in,” Trump continued during the announcement.

Trump blamed inflated fertility drug prices as a reason for the high cost of IVF treatment, and claimed the cost for the procedure is 700% times more expensive in the United States than in the rest of the world.

Seroni said in its statement that IVF patients will be able to buy Gonal-f at an 84% discount.

It was a major talking point in the final months of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign: If re-elected, the Republican leader pledged to make in vitro fertilisation (IVF) free for those seeking to get pregnant.

“Under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment,” Trump told NBC News last year, adding that his plans would cover “all Americans that get it, all Americans that need it”.

“We’re going to be paying for that treatment. Or we’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay.”

While that campaign promise remains unrealised, the Trump administration took a step on Thursday to make the procedure more accessible.

Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump announced a collaboration with the company EMD Serono, a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical giant Merck, to offer lower-priced fertility drugs on his upcoming prescription marketplace, TrumpRx.

“ EMD Serono, the largest fertility drug manufacturer in the world, has agreed to provide massive discounts to all fertility drugs they sell in the United States, including the most popular drug of all, the IVF drug Gonal-F,” Trump told reporters.

Expanding TrumpRx project

The announcement marks the third major pharmaceutical company to agree to provide discounted products on TrumpRx, a direct-to-consumer website slated to launch in 2026.

Trump had threatened drug companies in September with a 100-percent tariff on their products unless they started to build manufacturing facilities in the US.

But that tariff was postponed after the pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer announced a deal with TrumpRx on September 30, a day before the tax hike was slated to hit. AstraZeneca, another power player in the industry, followed suit last week.

In Thursday’s news conference, Trump once again credited his tariff threats with bringing the companies to heel.

“They’ll bring a significant portion of their drug manufacturing back to the United States,” Trump said of EMD Serono. “That’s for a lot of reasons, but primarily because of the election result, November 5th, and maybe most importantly because of the tariffs.”

In addition to the forthcoming discounts from EMD Serono, Trump indicated he would encourage insurance companies to expand coverage for IVF treatments.

In the US, laws vary by state as to whether health insurance must cover fertility treatments like IVF. Trump touted the guidance as a breakthrough in making reproductive healthcare more accessible and affordable.

“Effective immediately, for the first time ever, we will make it legal for companies to offer supplemental insurance plans specifically for fertility,” Trump said.

“ Americans will be able to opt in, do specialised coverage, just as they get vision and dental insurance.”

Those plans typically come at an extra fee, on top of regular health insurance rates. That raises questions about how effective the new insurance guidance will be.

More than 26 million Americans – roughly 8 percent of the population – are uninsured, according to US census data. Even more lack access to supplemental policies for dental and vision care.

The American Dental Association, an industry professional group, estimates more than 22 percent of US adults lacked dental insurance as of 2021.

Trump seemed to acknowledge gaps in coverage during his remarks, but he maintained that the new government guidance would offer some adults a pathway to parenthood.

“They’re going to get fertility insurance for the first time,” he continued. “So I don’t know.  I don’t know how well these things are covered.”

A campaign-trail controversy

The Republican leader also credited a 2024 court decision with propelling him to focus on IVF treatments.

IVF involves removing eggs from a patient’s ovaries and fertilising them in a laboratory environment. These eggs are then inserted into the patient’s uterus or frozen for future use.

The use of such treatments is on the rise in the US: In 2023, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine found that 95,860 babies were born as the result of an IVF procedure.

But in February the following year, a ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court prompted fears about whether IVF would remain widely available.

In a novel decision, the court – located in a strongly conservative state – ruled that embryos created through IVF could be considered children under state law, thereby making the destruction of such embryos potentially a criminal act.

The decision sent shockwaves throughout the IVF industry, with clinics in Alabama temporarily suspending services. Discarding embryos is standard practice in IVF: Generally, more eggs are collected than will ultimately be used, and not all fertilised eggs will be suitable to start a pregnancy.

Within weeks, the Alabama state legislature stepped in to shield IVF providers from prosecution. But the ruling created lingering concerns that IVF could be targeted by anti-abortion rights advocates.

On Thursday, Trump revisited that controversy, which happened in the midst of his re-election bid. He called the court’s ruling a “bad decision” and credited it with helping to make him aware of IVF.

“I wasn’t that familiar with it,” Trump said. “Now I think I’ve sort of become the father.”

Senator Katie Britt, who represents the state of Alabama, echoed that evaluation, praising Trump for taking steps to protect IVF.

Thursday was not the first time Trump has gestured at lowering costs for the fertility procedure. In February, he also issued a presidential order calling on his administration to start “protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs”.

“ Mr President, this is the most pro-IVF thing that any president in the history of the United States of America has done,” Britt told Trump on Thursday. “You are the reason why the Republican Party is now the party of parents.”

Addressing the US birthrate

Trump, who previously called himself the “fertilisation president”  during a Women’s History Month event, also framed the new measures as progress towards increasing the US birthrate.

In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that fertility remained at a historic low, rising slightly in 2024 to 1.6 births per woman.

Those numbers have fuelled a push within the Republican Party to ignite a new baby boom, with right-wing figures like tech billionaire Elon Musk going so far as to call the low birthrate “the biggest danger civilization faces by far”.

At Thursday’s meeting, top figures in the Trump administration echoed those concerns, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.

“We are below replacement right now,” he said, referencing the number of births needed to outpace deaths in the US. “That is a national security threat to our country.”

Mehmet Oz, who serves under Kennedy as the administrator for Medicaid services, took a more positive approach, framing the new IVF guidance as the beginning of a reversal of that downward trend.

“There are going to be a lot of Trump babies,” Oz quipped. “I think that’s probably a good thing. But it turns out the fundamental creative force in society is about making babies.”

But it remains to be seen if insurance companies and employers will follow through with Trump’s guidance to offer supplemental fertility benefits for adults seeking to get pregnant.

Most Americans receive health insurance as part of their workplace benefits. Senator Britt argued the guidelines would put employers “in the driver’s seat”, allowing them to shape the benefits they offer to their workers.

“Employers are going to be able to decide how to cover the root causes of infertility, things like obesity and metabolic health, and other things that are impacting infertility,” she said. “We want employers to be the ones that can make those decisions, not the government.”

But for Democrats, the guidance fell far short of what Trump promised on the campaign trail.

“Donald Trump lied when he pledged to make IVF available to every family for FREE,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts posted afterwards on social media. “It’s insulting – a broken promise.”

A federal grand jury in Maryland has indicted John Bolton, United States President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, over his handling of classified documents, charging him with retaining and transmitting national defence information.

The indictment, filed in federal court in Maryland on Thursday, charges Bolton with eight counts of transmission of national defence information and 10 counts of retention of national defence information, all in violation of the Espionage Act.

Each count is punishable by up to 10 years in prison if Bolton is convicted, but any sentence would be determined by a judge based on a range of factors.

Bolton’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a statement that his client “did not unlawfully share or store any information.”

Bolton served as US ambassador to the United Nations as well as White House national security adviser during Trump’s first term before emerging as one of the president’s most vocal critics. He described Trump as unfit to be president in a memoir he released last year.

The charges come two months after FBI agents searched Bolton’s home and office, seeking evidence of possible violations of the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to remove, retain or transmit national defence records, according to partially unsealed search warrants filed in federal court.

In his Maryland home, agents seized two cellphones, documents in folders labelled “Trump I-IV” and a binder labelled “statements and reflections to Allied Strikes”, according to court documents.

In Bolton’s office, agents found records labelled “confidential”, including documents that referenced weapons of mass destruction, the US mission to the United Nations, and other materials related to the government’s strategic communications, according to court records.

The indictment levied Thursday alleges Bolton transmitted confidential information via personal email, used private messaging accounts to send sensitive documents that were classified as top secret and illegally retained intelligence documents in his home, according to the Department of Justice.

Bolton is accused of sharing more than 1,000 pages of information about government activities with relatives, according to the indictment.

The indictment says the notes Bolton shared with the two people included information he gleaned from meetings with senior government officials, discussions with foreign leaders, and intelligence briefings.

Prosecutors said a “cyber actor” tied to the Iranian government hacked Bolton’s personal email after he left government service and accessed classified information. A representative for Bolton told the government about the hack but did not report that he stored classified information in the email account, according to the indictment.

“These charges stem from portions of Amb. Bolton’s personal diaries over his 45-year career – records that are unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as far back as 2021,” Bolton’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said in an emailed statement. “Like many public officials throughout history, Amb. Bolton kept diaries – that is not a crime.”

Trump, who campaigned for the presidency on a vow of retribution after facing a slew of legal woes once his first term in the White House ended in 2021, has dispensed with decades-long norms designed to insulate federal law enforcement from political pressures.

In recent months, he has actively pushed Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department to bring charges against his perceived adversaries, even driving out a prosecutor he deemed to be moving too slowly in doing so.

Asked by reporters at the White House about the Bolton indictment on Thursday, Trump said: “He’s a bad guy.”

Bolton served as national security adviser during Trump’s first term from 2018 to 2019. In that time, he clashed with the president over Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea before getting fired in 2019.

He has subsequently criticised Trump’s approach to foreign policy and government, including in a 2020 book titled The Room Where it Happened, which portrayed the president as ill-informed on foreign policy.

The search warrant affidavit said a National Security Council official had reviewed the book manuscript and told Bolton in 2020 that it appeared to contain “significant amounts” of classified information, some at a top-secret level.

Earlier this month, New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led a legal case against Trump over alleged fraud in his businesses, was charged with lying on a mortgage application, drawing accusations of political vindictiveness by the White House.

Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted on September 25 on charges of making false statements and obstructing a congressional investigation, which he denies. Trump has feuded with Comey since the Russia investigation, which examined possible ties between Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Moscow.

The Justice Department has also launched investigations into US Senator Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Schiff and Cook have not been charged, and both reject any suggestion of wrongdoing.

Jose Raul Mulino says the visa-removal policy is ‘not coherent’ with the ‘good relationship’ he hopes to have with the US.

Panama President Jose Raul Mulino said that someone at the United States Embassy has been threatening to cancel the visas of Panamanian officials.

His statements come as the administration of US President Donald Trump pressures Panama to limit its ties to China.

Responding to a reporter’s question at his weekly news conference, Mulino said — without offering evidence — that an official at the US Embassy is “threatening to take visas”, adding that such actions are “not coherent with the good relationship I aspire to maintain with the United States”. He did not name the official.

The US Embassy in Panama did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration has previously declined to comment on individual visa decisions.

But in September, the US Department of State said in a statement that the country was committed to countering China’s influence in Central America. It added that it would restrict visas for people who maintained relationships with China’s Communist Party or undermined democracy in the region on behalf of China.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration revoked the visas of six foreigners deemed by US officials to have made derisive comments or made light of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last month.

Similar cases have surfaced recently in the region. In April, former Costa Rica President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias said the US had cancelled his visa. In July, Vanessa Castro, vice president of Costa Rica’s Congress, said that the US Embassy told her her visa had been revoked, citing alleged contacts with the Chinese Communist Party.

Panama has become especially sensitive to the US-China tensions because of the strategically important Panama Canal.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Panama in February on his first foreign trip as the top US diplomat and called for Panama to immediately reduce China’s influence over the canal.

Panama has strongly denied Chinese influence over canal operations but has gone along with US pressure to push the Hong Kong-based company that operated ports on both ends of the canal to sell its concession to a consortium.

Mulino has said that Panama will maintain the canal’s neutrality.

“They’re free to give and take a visa to anyone they want, but not threatening that, ‘If you don’t do something, I’ll take the visa,’” Mulino said Thursday.

He noted that the underlying issue — the conflict between the US and China — “doesn’t involve Panama”.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Statement appears to signal about-face from US president, who previously backed Hamas’s crackdown on Gaza gangs.

United States President Donald Trump has threatened to break the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas if the Palestinian group continues to target gangs and alleged Israeli collaborators in Gaza.

“If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Thursday. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

The statement appears to signal an about-face from Trump, who earlier this week expressed support for Hamas’s crackdown on gangs in the Palestinian territory.

“They did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad, very, very bad gangs,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “And they did take them out, and they killed a number of gang members. And that didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you. That’s OK.”

More to come…

Oct. 16 (UPI) — Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford said he received an assurance from Jeep maker Stellantis’ Canadian chief the company will keep its Canadian plant open for future manufacturing.

Ford said Wednesday that the company’s Brampton auto plant will continue running despite Tuesday’s revelation that Jeep Compass production will shift to an American facility.

“I want to keep the Brampton plant open, no matter what,” Ford said following talks with Stellantis Canada president Jeff Hines. “He’s given me his word, they are going to keep it open.”

Stellantis, the parent company of multiple auto brands including Jeep and Chrysler, announced this week plans to invest billions in the United States to reopen facilities and add roughly 5,000 U.S. jobs plants in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana over the next four years.

In April, Stellantis put a hold on production of its new electric SUV at its Canadian plant on Williams Parkway in the wake of tax-like tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

It was set to move forward with production later this year.

“Our government will continue to use every tool we have, including through our $20 million investment in POWER Centers to support displaced workers, including through retraining to re-enter the workforce as quickly as possible,” Ford posted Wednesday on X.

On Tuesday, Ford spoke with Canada’s Stellantis chief who reportedly said the company is “going to postpone it for a year” and claimed Stellantis will “find a new model” to build at the Canadian site.

“They are going to see what products they are going to put in there,” said Ford.

Ford, the leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party, added plans exist to add a third shift to a Windsor plant to possibly transfer up to 3,000 or less workers.

A Stellantis spokesperson pointed to its 100-year history in Canada and said Britain’s fellow commonwealth nation was “very important” to Jeep’s parent owner.

“We have plans for Brampton and will share them upon further discussions with the Canadian government,” the company stated.

Meanwhile, Canada’s Industry Minister Melanie Joly reminded CEO Antonio Filosa in a letter that Stellantis made critical commitments to Canadians.

“While the current U.S. tariff environment is creating complex challenges, Stellantis has made important commitments to Canada and to its workforce,” Joly wrote.

Joly said if Stellantis chooses not “to respect its obligations,” the Canadian government would “act in the interests of all Canadians and hold the company to full account, and exercise all options, including legal.”

Israel says Hamas is failing to meet commitments under Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan, while Hamas says Israel’s destruction makes recovering captives’ bodies nearly impossible. With 11,000 Palestinians also still under rubble, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh says tensions threaten the fragile truce.

Oct. 16 (UPI) — Brown University has rejected a Department of Education proposal offering priority access to federal funds in exchange for agreeing to terms that critics say target left-leaning ideology in higher education.

On Oct. 1, the Trump administration sent nine universities a 10-part “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” that reportedly demands reforms to hiring practices and student grading and a pledge to prohibit transgender women from using women’s changing rooms.

It also requires the creation of a “vibrant marketplace of ideas,” among other changes, including a tuition freeze for five years.

Brown University President Christina Paxson rejected the offer in a letter addressed to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, writing she was “concerned that the Compact by its nature and by various provisions would restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown’s governance, critically compromising our ability to fulfill our mission.”

Since returning to the White House in January, President Donald Trump has targeted dozens of universities, particularly so-called elite institutions, with executive orders, lawsuits, reallocation of resources and threats over a range of allegations, from anti-Semitism to having diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

Critics have accused Trump of trying to coerce schools under threat of stringent punishments — from losing their accreditation to paying hefty fines sometimes in excess of $1 billion — to adopt his far-right policies.

In late July, Brown reached a $50 million settlement with the federal government over 10 years to unfreeze federal funding and to resolve federal allegations of violating anti-discrimination laws.

As part of the agreement, which also unfroze federal funds, Brown agreed to adhere to government requirements concerning male and female athletics, codify its commitment to ensuring a “thriving Jewish community” and maintain nondiscrimination compliance, among others.

In her letter Wednesday, Paxson said the July agreement includes several of the principles included in the compact while also affirming “the governments lack of authority to dictate our curriculum or the content of academic speech.”

“While we value our long-held and well-regarded partnership with the federal government, Brown is respectfully declining to join the Compact,” she said. “We remain committed to the July agreement and its preservation of Brown’s core values in ways that the Compact — in any form — fundamentally would not.”

Brown’s rejection comes days after MIT similarly declined to join the compact.

“America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence. In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth wrote in a letter to the Department of Education on Friday.

“Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.”

Conservatives and the Trump administration have alleged that university are founts of left-wing indoctrination that exclude right-leaning thought. However, critics have described the Trump administration’s attempt to address these concerns as government overreach and a violation of free speech rights.

“The White House’s new Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education raises red flags,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said in a statement earlier this month.

“As Fire has long argued, campus reform is necessary. But overreaching government coercion that tries to end-run around the First Amendment to impose an official orthodoxy is unacceptable.”

“A government that can reward colleges and universities for speech it favors today can punish them for speech it dislikes tomorrow,” FIRE continued. “That’s not reform. That’s government-funded orthodoxy.”

Meanwhile, Trump over the weekend suggested that more universities would be invited to join the compact, saying in an online statement that “those Institutions that want to quickly return to the Pursuit of Truth and Achievement, they are invited to enter into the forward looking Agreement with the Federal Government to help bring about the Golden Age of Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”

In the statement, he railed against universities, saying “much of Higher Education has lost its way, and is now corrupting our Youth and Society with WOKE, SOCIALIST and ANTI_AMERICAN Ideology that serves as justification for discriminatory practices by Universities that are Unconstitutional and Unlawful”

“They’re digging.” US President Donald Trump appeared to acknowledge Hamas’s struggle to recover Israeli captives’ bodies from beneath Gaza’s ruins. Israel says it will not move to the next phase of the Gaza peace plan until Hamas returns the remains of all 28 captives.

A federal judge said the layoffs by the administration of US President Donald Trump seem politically motivated and ‘you can’t do that in a nation of laws’.

A United States federal judge in California has ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to halt mass layoffs during a partial government shutdown while she considers claims by unions that the job cuts are illegal.

During a hearing in San Francisco on Wednesday, US District Judge Susan Illston granted a request by two unions to block layoffs at more than 30 agencies pending further litigation.

Her ruling came shortly after White House Budget Director Russell Vought said on “The Charlie Kirk Show” that more than 10,000 federal workers could lose their jobs because of the shutdown, which entered its 15th day on Wednesday.

Illston at the hearing cited a series of public statements by Trump and Vought that she said showed explicit political motivations for the layoffs, such as Trump saying that cuts would target “Democrat agencies”.

“You can’t do that in a nation of laws. And we have laws here, and the things that are being articulated here are not within the law,” said Illston, an appointee of Democratic former President Bill Clinton, adding that the cuts were being carried out without much thought.

“It’s very much ready, fire, aim on most of these programs, and it has a human cost,” she said. “It’s a human cost that cannot be tolerated.”

Illston said she agreed with the unions that the administration was unlawfully using the lapse in government funding that began October 1 to carry out its agenda of downsizing the federal government.

A US Department of Justice lawyer, Elizabeth Hedges, said she was not prepared to address Illston’s concerns about the legality of the layoffs. She instead argued that the unions must bring their claims to a federal labour board before going to court.

‘Won’t negotiate’

The judge’s decision came after federal agencies on Friday started issuing layoff notices aimed at reducing the size of the federal government. The layoff notices are part of an effort by Trump’s Republican administration to exert more pressure on Democratic lawmakers as the government shutdown continues.

Democratic lawmakers are demanding that any deal to reopen the federal government address their healthcare demands. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson predicted the shutdown may become the longest in history, saying he “won’t negotiate” with Democrats until they hit pause on those demands and reopen.

Democrats have demanded that healthcare subsidies, first put in place in 2021 and extended a year later, be extended again. They also want any government funding bill to reverse the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill that was passed earlier this year.

About 4,100 workers at eight agencies have been notified that they are being laid off so far, according to a Tuesday court filing by the administration.

The Trump administration has been paying the military and pursuing its crackdown on immigration while slashing jobs in health and education, including in special education and after-school programmes. Trump said programmes favoured by Democrats are being targeted and “they’re never going to come back, in many cases.”

The American Federation of Government Employees and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees claim that implementing layoffs is not an essential service that can be performed during a lapse in government funding, and that the shutdown does not justify mass job cuts because most federal workers have been furloughed without pay.

Oct. 15 (UPI) — The CIA is authorized to conduct operations in Venezuela and likely has been for at least a couple of months, President Donald Trump confirmed on Wednesday.

Trump commented on a possible CIA deployment in Venezuela when a reporter asked why he authorized the CIA to work in the South American nation during a Wednesday news conference.

The president said he has two reasons for authorizing the CIA to be involved in Venezuela.

“They have emptied their prisons into the United States,” Trump said. “They came in through the border because we had an open-border policy.”

“They’ve allowed thousands and thousands of prisoners, people from mental institutions and insane asylums emptied out into the United States,” Trump said. “We’re bringing them back.”

The president said Venezuela is not the only country to do so, “but they’re the worst abuser” and called the South American nation’s leaders “down and dirty.”

He said Venezuela also is sending a lot of drugs into the United States.

“A lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea, so you see it,” the president explained. “We’re going to stop them by land, also.”

Trump declined to answer a follow-up question regarding whether or not the CIA is authorized to “take out” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The president called the question a fair one but said it would be “ridiculous” for him to answer it.

The president’s answer regarding CIA deployment in Venezuela comes after he earlier said the U.S. military obtains intelligence on likely drug smuggling operations in Venezuela.

Such intelligence enabled the military to strike a vessel carrying six passengers off the coast of Venezuela on Tuesday.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narco-terrorist networks and was transiting along a known [designated terrorist organization] route,” Trump said in a Truth Social post announcing the military strike.

All six crew members were killed in the lethal kinetic airstrike on the vessel, and no U.S. forces were harmed.

Trump told media that Venezuela and a lot of other countries are “feeling heat” and he “won’t let our country be ruined” by them, ABC News reported.

The president in September notified several Congressional committees that the nation is in “active conflict” with transnational gangs and drug cartels, many of which he has designated as terrorist organizations.

Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua is among those so designated, and the United States has a $50 million bounty on Maduro, whom Trump says profits from the drug trade.

During Trump’s first term in office, the CIA similarly worked against drug cartels in Mexico and elsewhere in Central and South America.

The Biden administration continued those efforts, including flying drones over suspected cartel sites in Mexico to identify possible fentanyl labs.

United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday confirmed that he has authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to carry out covert operations in Venezuela.

He added that his administration was also mulling land-based military operations inside Venezuela, as tensions between Washington and Caracas soar over multiple deadly US strikes on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean Sea in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, Trump held a news conference with some of his top law enforcement officials, where he faced questions about an earlier news report in The New York Times about the CIA authorisation. One reporter asked directly, “Why did you authorise the CIA to go into Venezuela?”

“I authorised for two reasons, really,” Trump replied. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America.”

“The other thing,” he continued, was Venezuela’s role in drug-trafficking. He then appeared to imply that the US would take actions on foreign soil to prevent the flow of narcotics and other drugs.

“We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela,” Trump said. “A lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.  So you get to see that. But we’re going to stop them by land also.”

Trump’s remarks mark the latest escalation in his campaign against Venezuela, whose leader, Nicolas Maduro, has long been a target for the US president, stretching back to Trump’s first term in office.

Already, both leaders have bolstered their military forces along the Caribbean Sea in a show of potential force.

The Venezuelan government hit back at Trump’s latest comments and the authorised CIA operations, accusing the US of violating international law and the UN Charter.

“The purpose of US actions is to create legitimacy for an operation to change the regime in Venezuela, with the ultimate goal of taking control of all the country’s resources,” the Maduro government said in a statement.

Earlier, at the news conference, reporters sought to confront Trump over whether he was trying to enforce regime change in Caracas.

“Does the CIA have authority to take out Maduro?” one journalist asked at the White House on Wednesday.

“Oh, I don’t want to answer a question like that. That’s a ridiculous question for me to be given,” Trump said, demurring. “Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer?”

He then offered an addendum: “But I think Venezuela’s feeling heat.”

Claiming wartime powers

Trump’s responses, at times meandering, touched on his oft-repeated claims about Venezuela.

Since taking office for a second term, Trump has sought to assume wartime powers – using laws like the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – by alleging that Venezuela had masterminded an “invasion” of migrants and criminal groups onto US soil.

He has offered little proof for his assertions, though, and his statements have been undercut by the assessments of his own intelligence community.

In May, for example, a declassified US report revealed that intelligence officials had found no evidence directly linking Maduro to criminal groups like Tren de Aragua, as Trump has alleged.

Still, on Wednesday, Trump revisited the baseless claim that Venezuela under Maduro had sent prisoners and people with mental health conditions to destabilise the US.

“Many countries have done it, but not like Venezuela.  They were down and dirty,” Trump said.

The authorisation of CIA operations inside Venezuela is the latest indication that Trump has been signing secret proclamations to lay the groundwork for lethal action overseas, despite insisting in public that he seeks peace globally.

In August, for instance, anonymous sources told the US media that Trump had also signed an order allowing the US military to take action against drug-trafficking cartels and other Latin American criminal networks.

And in October, it emerged that Trump had sent a memo to the US Congress asserting that the country was in a “non-international armed conflict” with the cartels, whom he termed “unlawful combatants”.

Many such groups, including Tren de Aragua, have also been added to the US’s list of “foreign terrorist organisations”, though experts point out that the label alone does not provide a legal basis for military action.

Strikes in the Caribbean Sea

Nevertheless, the US under Trump has taken a series of escalatory military actions, including by conducting multiple missile strikes on small vessels off the Venezuelan coast.

At least five known air strikes have been conducted on boats since September 2, killing 27 people.

The most recent attack was announced on Tuesday in a social media post: A video Trump shared showed a boat floating in the water, before a missile set it alight. Six people were reportedly killed in that bombing.

Many legal experts and former military officials have said that the strikes appear to be a clear violation of international law. Drug traffickers have not traditionally met the definition of armed combatants in a war. And the US government has so far not presented any public evidence to back its claims that the boats were indeed carrying narcotics headed for America.

But Trump has justified the strikes by saying they will save American lives lost to drug addiction.

He has maintained the people on board the targeted boats were “narco-terrorists” headed to the US.

On Wednesday, he again brushed aside a question about the lack of evidence. He also defended himself against concerns that the bombings amount to extrajudicial killings.

“When they’re loaded up with drugs, they’re fair game,” Trump told reporters, adding there was “fentanyl dust all over the boat after those bombs go off”.

He added, “We know we have much information about each boat that goes. Deep, strong information.”

Framing the bombing campaign in the Caribbean as a success, Trump then explained his administration might start to pivot its strategy.

“ We’ve almost totally stopped it by sea. Now, we’ll stop it by land,” he said of the alleged drug trafficking. He joked that even fishermen had decided to stay off the waters.

“ We are certainly looking at land now because we’ve got the sea very well under control.”

Israel continues to restrict aid entering Gaza, saying Hamas has not met its end of deal to release all bodies of captives.

Stellantis announced a $13bn investment in the US, which will see production of the Jeep Compass move to the US from Canada.

Canada has threatened legal action against carmaker Stellantis NV over what Ottawa says is the company’s unacceptable plan to shift production of one model to a United States plant.

On Wednesday, Minister of Industry Melanie Joly sent a letter to Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa noting that the company had agreed to maintain its Canadian presence in exchange for substantial financial support.

“Anything short of fulfilling that commitment will be considered a default under our agreement,” she said. If Stellantis did not live up to its commitment, Canada would “exercise all options, including legal”, she said.

Stellantis announced a $13bn investment in the US on Tuesday, a move that it said would bring five new models to the market. As part of the plan, production of the Jeep Compass will move to the US state of Illinois from a facility in Brampton in the Canadian province of Ontario.

A copy of the letter was made available to the Reuters news agency. The existence of the letter was first reported by Bloomberg.

Stellantis had paused retooling of the Brampton plant in February, shortly after US President Donald Trump announced tariffs against Canadian goods, upending the highly integrated North American auto industry.

In a statement on Tuesday night, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said Ottawa had made clear it expected Stellantis to fulfil the undertakings it had made to the workers at the plant.

“We are working with the company to develop the right measures to protect Stellantis employees,” he said.

Ontario is Canada’s industrial heartland and accounts for about 40 percent of its national gross domestic product (GDP).

“I have spoken with Stellantis to stress my disappointment with their decision,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said on social media on Wednesday.

Stellantis spokesperson LouAnn Gosselin said the company was investing in Canada and noted plans to add a third shift to a plant in Windsor, Ontario.

“Canada is very important to us. We have plans for Brampton and will share them upon further discussions with the Canadian government,” she said in an emailed statement.

Spain argues NATO funding should address real threats, not arbitrary targets, amidst Trump’s tariff retaliation plans.

The European Commission and Spain’s government have dismissed US President Donald Trump’s latest threat to impose higher tariffs on Madrid over its refusal to meet his proposed NATO target for defence spending.

Trump said on Tuesday that he was “very unhappy” with Spain for being the only NATO member to reject the new spending objective of 5 percent of economic output, adding that he was considering punishing the Mediterranean country.

“I was thinking of giving them trade punishment through tariffs because of what they did, and I think I may do that,” Trump added. He had previously suggested making Spain “pay twice as much” in trade talks.

Trade policy falls under the remit of Brussels, and the European Commission would “respond appropriately, as we always do, to any measures taken against one or more of our member states”, commission spokesperson Olof Gill said in a press briefing on Wednesday.

The trade deal between the European Union and the United States signed in July was the right platform to address any issues, Gill added.

“The defence spending debate is not about increasing spending for the sake of increasing it, but about responding to real threats,” Spain’s Economy and Trade Ministry said in a statement.

“We’re doing our part to develop the necessary capabilities and contribute to the collective defence of our allies.”

Spain has more than doubled nominal defence spending from 0.98 percent of gross domestic product in 2017 to 2 percent this year, equivalent to about 32.7bn euros ($38bn).

Defence Minister Margarita Robles said allies weren’t discussing the 5 percent target for 2035 in Wednesday’s meeting because they were prioritising the present situation in Ukraine, but wouldn’t completely rule out a shift in Spain’s position.

Targeted tariffs by the US against individual EU member states are rare, but there are precedents, said Ignacio Garcia Bercero, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based economic think tank Bruegel.

In 1999, the US hit the EU with 100 percent punitive tariffs on products such as chocolate, pork, onions and truffles in retaliation for an EU import ban on hormone-treated beef. But those tariffs excluded Britain, which at the time was still a member of the trade bloc.

The US could impose anti-dumping penalties on European products that are mostly produced in Spain, said Juan Carlos Martinez Lazaro, professor at Madrid’s IE business school.

In 2018, Washington imposed a combination of duties of more than 30 percent on Spanish black table olives at the request of Californian olive growers. Spain’s share of the US market plummeted from 49 percent in 2017 to 19 percent in 2024.

Another option would be moving the naval and air bases the US has in southern Spain to Morocco – an idea floated by former Trump official Robert Greenway – which would damage the local economies through the loss of thousands of indirect jobs.

Oct. 15 (UPI) — The U.S. Senate is expected to vote Wednesday afternoon on a measure that would fund the government, and President Donald Trump said he plans to release a list Friday of “Democratic” programs he’s eliminated.

Today’s vote will be the 10th Senate vote to open the government, which has now been shut down for 15 days. Democrats and Republicans are still at odds on bills to reopen.

The ninth vote on Tuesday to fund the government until Nov. 21 failed 49-45 with six senators absent. To pass, it needs 60 votes.

Trump’s list of cut programs is scheduled to be released Friday.

“We are closing up Democrat programs that we disagree with, and they’re never going to open up again,” Trump said. “We’re able to do things that we’ve never been able to do before. The Democrats are getting killed.”

Though Trump has made funding available for service members to get their next paychecks, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., said it’s a temporary measure.

“If the Democrats continue to vote to keep the government closed as they have done now so many times, then we know that U.S. troops are going to risk missing a full paycheck at the end of this month,” Johnson said at his daily press conference.

Democrats are holding out for healthcare subsidies from the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans recently cut from the appropriations bill, and approval for Medicaid funding. Millions of Americans are expected to see their health insurance premiums skyrocket when the subsidies expire at the end of the year.

The longest shutdown lasted 35 days in December 2018 and January 2019. Johnson said that “we’re barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history unless Democrats drop their partisan demands.”