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SEOUL, Nov. 7 (UPI) — After the inauguration of the Donald Trump in January, the South Korean government and its corporations were pressed to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States to avoid high tariffs.

Observers expressed concern Friday that such large-scale overseas investments could end up harming Asia’s fourth-largest economy, which heavily depends on the manufacturing industry.

Late last month, Seoul agreed to invest $200 billion in cash and $150 billion in shipbuilding and other industrial projects in the United States over the coming years, with an annual ceiling of $20 billion.

In return, Washington would reduce tariffs on Korean exports to 15% from 25%, honoring the terms agreed upon in late July. Trump also vowed to provide propulsion technology to help the key U.S. ally in East Asia build a nuclear-powered submarine.

The deal coincided with Trump’s visit to Korea to meet his counterpart, President Lee Jae Myung, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit.

“Beginning next year, our annual investments in the United States are expected to double compared to 2025. When corporate funds move abroad, companies will have less capacity to invest at home,” Sogang University economics Professor Hur Jung told UPI.

“The problem is that it appears to become a long-term trend, which is feared to lead to the hollowing out of Korea’s manufacturing sector. The government is required to put forth great efforts to address this,” he said.

Hur recommended the country to prioritize traditional industries, such as semiconductors and automobiles, rather than concentrate on artificial intelligence-based innovations, which have been the main focus of the incumbent Seoul administration.

Other analysts note that the worries go beyond the $350 billion investment plan, as many Korean corporations have announced major spending initiatives in the United States to avoid high tariffs.

For example, Korea’s state-backed companies and private enterprises promised up to $150 billion in investments in the United States in August, when Lee had his first summit with Trump.

Back then, Hyundai Motor Group unveiled a plan to funnel $26 billion in the United States until 2028, while Hanwha Group committed $5 billion to expand its shipyard in Philadelphia, which the Korean conglomerate acquired late last year.

Korean Air also plans to purchase 103 aircraft from Boeing by the end of the 2030s, which is expected to total $36.2 billion in value.

“Korea Inc. invested $106 billion in domestic facilities last year. And its companies are now ready to spend $150 billion in the United States alone after a single meeting between the two countries’ political leaders in August. Does it make sense?” economic commentator Kim Kyeong-joon, formerly vice chairman at Deloitte Consulting Korea, asked rhetorically in a phone interview.

“Our foreign exchange reserves stand at just over $400 billion, and we are preparing to pour more than that amount into a single foreign market. Such an approach could weaken our ability to invest domestically, weighing heavily on the manufacturing-based economy,” he said.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, manufacturing accounts for 27% of South Korea’s gross domestic product, which is almost double the average among other member countries.

Against this backdrop, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources is set to establish a forum involving related researchers and businesses to deal with the expected crisis. The Bank of Korea also warned of the gravity of the situation in an August report.

“As in past crises, our corporations, the government and households need to share a sense of urgency and work together to overhaul the country’s aging economic structure,” the central bank said at the time.

However, critics take issue with the complacency of top policymakers like Kim Yong-beom, chief presidential secretary for policy in the current administration, who downplayed fears about the hollowing out of the domestic manufacturing sector.

“Such assessments may be premature because many partner firms and key operations, including research and development centers, still remain based in Korea,” Kim told a conference in early September.

Nov. 2 (UPI) — Nine people were wounded Sunday in a shooting that erupted at a party being held at a large Airbnb in northern Ohio, authorities said.

Vito Sinopoli, chief of police for Bath Township, located about 26 miles due south of Cleveland, told reporters during a press conference that officers were working to identify the victims.

He said they were a “mix” of adults and youth. At least one suffered a leg injury in a fall, he said, stating they were unsure of how many suffered gunshot wounds.

Their conditions were unknown.

“This kind of violence is unacceptable in our community, and we’re committed to applying all available resources to this investigation,” he said.

Police were notified of the shooting at a residence in the 900 block of Top O Hill Drive at about midnight Saturday.

Officers arrived to find what Sinopoli described as a “chaotic scene” and began administering life-saving aid to the victims, who were then transported to area hospitals.

The shooting disrupted a “large party” at the residence that Sinopoli said had been advertised on social media as a birthday party that was to begin at 9:30 p.m.

Attendees fled when the shots were fired, he said, adding that preliminary information indicates that the majority of the shots were fired on the ground floor.

No arrests have been made. The number of shooters, if more than one, was unknown.

“We don’t have a clear indication yet of the number of individuals who may have been responsible,” he said.

Evidence was being gathered, surveillance was being reviewed and witnesses were being interviewed, he said, while calling on members of the public with information about the shooting, no matter how seemingly insignificant, to contact the authorities.

Police are in contact with Airbnb and the property owner.

There is a zoning prohibition on short-term rentals, such as those offered by Airbnb, Sinopoli said.

“Typically in a situation like this, there’d be a compliance letter issued to the property owner,” he said.

In July 2017, a shooting was reported at an Airbnb in Bath township, resulting in one person sustaining a leg wound.

On Monday, Airbnb announced an “anti-party system” to be in effect for the Halloween weekend.

It said the system uses “machine learning” on bookings to identify potential party risks. Employed last year, the system “deterred” 38,000 people in the United States and 6,300 people in Canada from booking listings over Halloween.

In a statement to ABC News, Airbnb said it was “heartbroken by this senseless act of gun violence.”

“Unauthorized and disruptive gatherings are strictly prohibited on Airbnb and our Safety team acted immediately to remove the account of the individual who deliberately broke rules by booking this stay,” the company said.

According to The Gun Violence Archive, which tallies gun violence across the United States, there have been at least 358 mass shootings involving four or more victims in the country so far this year.

Washington has announced new sanctions against Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, in an effort to pressure Moscow to agree to a peace deal in Ukraine. This marks the first time the current Trump administration has imposed direct sanctions on Russia.

Speaking alongside Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump said he hoped the sanctions would not need to be in place for long, but expressed growing frustration with stalled truce negotiations.

“Every time I speak to Vladimir [Putin], I have good conversations and then they don’t go anywhere. They just don’t go anywhere,” Trump said, shortly after a planned in-person meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Budapest was cancelled.

Trump’s move is designed to cut off vital oil revenues, which help fund Russia’s ongoing war efforts. Earlier on Wednesday, Russia unleashed a new bombardment on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, killing at least seven people, including children.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the new sanctions were necessary because of “Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war”. He said that Rosneft and Lukoil fund the Kremlin’s “war machine”.

How have Rosneft and Lukoil been sanctioned?

The new measures will freeze assets owned by Rosneft and Lukoil in the US, and bar US entities from engaging in business with them. Thirty subsidiaries owned by Rosneft and Lukoil have also been sanctioned.

Rosneft, which is controlled by the Kremlin, is Russia’s second-largest company in terms of revenue, behind natural gas giant Gazprom. Lukoil is Russia’s third-largest company and its biggest non-state enterprise.

Between them, the two groups export 3.1 million barrels of oil per day, or 70 percent of Russia’s overseas crude oil sales. Rosneft alone is responsible for nearly half of Russia’s oil production, which in all makes up 6 percent of global output.

In recent years, both companies have been hit by rolling European sanctions and reduced oil prices. In September, Rosneft reported a 68 percent year-on-year drop in net income for the first half of 2025. Lukoil posted an almost 27 percent fall in profits for 2024.

Meanwhile, last week, the United Kingdom unveiled sanctions on the two oil majors. Elsewhere, the European Union looks set to announce its 19th package of penalties on Moscow later today, including a ban on imports of Russian liquefied natural gas.

How much impact will these sanctions have?

In 2022, Russian oil groups (including Rosneft and Lukoil) were able to offset some of the effects of sanctions by pivoting exports from Europe to Asia, and also using a “shadow fleet” of hard-to-detect tankers with no ties to Western financial or insurance groups.

China and India quickly replaced the EU as Russia’s biggest oil consumers. Last year, China imported a record 109 million tonnes of Russian crude, representing almost 20 percent of its total energy imports. India imported 88 million tonnes of Russian oil in 2024.

In both cases, these are orders of magnitude higher than before 2022, when Western countries started to tighten their sanctions regime on Russia. At the end of 2021, China imported roughly 79.6 million tonnes of Russian crude. India imported just 0.42 million tonnes.

Trump has repeatedly urged Beijing and New Delhi to halt Russian energy purchases. In August, he levied an additional 25 percent trade tariff on India because of its continued purchase of discounted Russian oil. He has so far demurred from a similar move against China.

However, Trump’s new sanctions are likely to place pressure on foreign financial groups which do business with Rosneft and Lukoil, including the banking intermediaries which facilitate sales of Russian oil in China and India.

“Engaging in certain transactions involving the persons designated today may risk the imposition of secondary sanctions on participating foreign financial institutions,” the US Treasury Department’s press release on Wednesday’s sanctions says.

As a result, the new restrictions may force buyers to shift to alternative suppliers or pay higher prices. Though India and China may not be the direct targets of these latest restrictions, their oil supply chains and trading costs are likely to come under increased pressure.

“The big thing here is the secondary sanctions,” Felipe Pohlmann Gonzaga, a Switzerland-based commodity trader, told Al Jazeera. “Any bank that facilitates Russian oil sales and with exposure to the US financial system could be subject.”

However, he added, “I don’t think this will be the driver in ending the war, as Russia will continue selling oil. There are always people out there willing to take the risk to beat sanctions.

“These latest restrictions will make Chinese and Indian players more reluctant to buy Russian oil – many won’t want to lose access to the American financial system. [But] it won’t stop it completely.”

According to Bloomberg, several senior refinery executives in India – who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue – said the restrictions would make it impossible for oil purchases to continue.

On Wednesday, Trump said that he would raise concerns about China’s continued purchases of Russian oil during his talk with President Xi Jinping at the 2025 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea next week.

Have oil prices been affected?

Oil prices rallied after Trump announced US sanctions. Brent – the international crude oil benchmark – rose nearly 4 percent to $65 a barrel on Thursday. The US Benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, jumped more than 5 percent to nearly $60 per barrel.

Pohlmann Gonzaga, however, predicted that the “market will correct from this 5 percent over-jump. You have to recall that sentiment in energy markets is still negative due to the gloomy [global] economic backdrop.”

Oct. 11 (UPI) — Twenty people were shot, four of whom died, in a shooting in the western Mississippi city of Leland during a celebration for a homecoming football game, in one of three shootings in small towns in the state late Friday.

The shooting in Leland happened late Friday night around midnight on the city’s main street after Leland High School played Charleston High School, sending at least 12 wounded people to local hospitals while four were airlifted to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in critical condition, according to media reports.

“I just want to send our condolences to the families of the deceased and to all those that are being treated,” Leland Mayor John Lee told The Guardian. “We need to be in prayer for our city.”

State Sen. Derrick Simmons told WAPT the shooting had not happened at the game itself, but at a gathering on the city’s Main Street afterward.

According to WLBT, the identities of people who were shot have not been released, and no suspects or arrests have been announced as the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation assists local police on the investigation.

Leland is a town of roughly 4,000 people in Washington County, MS, about 200 miles from the Arkansas-Mississippi border.

Forty miles south of Leland, two people were arrested and charged after a shooting during a football game at South Delta High School in Rolling Fork, MS, although WLBT reported that it was unclear if anybody was injured.

In another shooting, In Heidelberg two people were shot and killed, and another wounded, at Heidelberg High School, roughly 200 miles away from Leland, according to WDAM.

One person was killed on the school’s baseball field, and another shot in a tailgating area near the school’s bleachers, according to Heidelberg Police Chief Cornell White, who said the shooter or shooters remained at large.

The motives and causes of all three shootings have not been announced or are not known, according to the reports.

The United States government is set to shut down unless Congress passes an appropriations bill to fund its operations.

Without this legislation, federal agencies will be forced to suspend nonessential activities starting on Wednesday at 12:01am in Washington, DC (04:01 GMT).

Although Republicans control the House of Representatives, Senate and White House, they cannot pass the bill on their own. While Republicans have 53 of the 100 seats in the Senate, 60 votes are needed to advance the bill to a vote.

Republicans have proposed a short-term spending plan, but Democrats have been trying to use the approaching shutdown as leverage. They are pushing to reverse Medicaid cuts included in tax legislation passed in July and extend tax credits for healthcare purchased through government exchanges.

With neither side willing to compromise, a shutdown could have ripple effects across the US economy.

Layoffs and impact on consumer sentiment

The federal government is the nation’s largest employer. In a memo last week, federal agencies were told to prepare layoff notices for programmes that would run out of funds by the deadline and for those not considered a priority by the administration. The memo itself did not explicitly make it clear what those priorities are.

The White House did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for clarification.

The cuts would be through what is called Reduction In Force, or RIF. But it is unclear whether the cuts, even if the president were to push them through, would last because Trump doesn’t have the power to carry them out, said Daniel Hornung, policy fellow at the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research.

“There’s no legal authority that you [the White House] get from shutting down to do RIFs,” Hornung  told Al Jazeera.

RIFs require 30- to 60-days notice if an agency looks to make cuts, so Hornung expected that any cuts made now would be challenged in court.

But even if the job cuts are blocked, it is not clear when that would happen. As a result, those out of work may put off purchases, especially for big-ticket items, according to Michael Klein, professor of international economic affairs at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

“Consumers will start spending less because they’re concerned about what the future looks like,” Klein told Al Jazeera.

“It might be decided [by the court] that it’s not lawful, but that could be a long time. Even if it all gets resolved, those out of a job probably aren’t going to be spending like they otherwise would.”

The memo did not provide a specific number of jobs that could be cut. It comes as more than 150,000 workers are also expected to leave the federal workforce after accepting buyouts this year. Those reductions – as part of the deferred exit programme, which kept workers on payrolls until the end of September – are the largest federal worker job cuts in almost 80 years.

In addition to the permanent layoffs, government workers face furloughs as long as the government is shut down. Workers considered not essential to government operations would stop working until Congress passes budget bills or a stopgap measure.

Delayed jobs report

On Tuesday, the Jobs Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, released by the Department of Labor showed that hiring declined by 114,000 jobs to 5.1 million in August while job openings increased slightly by 19,000 to 7.2 million. If the government shuts down, the Labor Department would delay the release of key economic reports that gauge the health of the US economy.

On Thursday, it is scheduled to publish weekly jobless claims and on Friday the monthly jobs report, detailing how many jobs were created, in which sectors and the unemployment rate. Normally, the department releases that report on the first Friday of each month unless a holiday intervenes.

The broader labour market has already shown signs of cooling in recent months. In August, the US economy, the largest in the world, added only 22,000 jobs.

Softening labour conditions were one reason the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 25 basis points in September. A delay in new data could leave the central bank with less information to consider as it weighs whether to cut rates again. Still, a short delay is unlikely to have a major effect because the Fed’s next two-day policy meeting is not until October 28-29.

Hornung believes this shutdown is coming during a fairly unique economic situation that the central bank will need to watch.

“The main risk is that we’re in a precarious spot in the economy anyway. Unlike the prior shutdowns like the prolonged 2018 shutdown, the economy was performing well, the prolonged 2013 shutdown, the economy, was in the midst of a slow but long, gradual recovery,” Hornung said.

“Now the labour market has really weakened. It appears in recent months the risk of inflation remains because of the tariffs. And so, it’s kind of this question of how much can the economy withstand.”

Market impact

Historically, shutdowns have had limited impact on financial markets because investors typically recognise that a shutdown is short-lived.

“Typically in shutdown scenarios, there’s not much impact on either equity markets or in bond markets, mostly because investors tend to look through shutdowns and assess that any temporary slowdown associated with the shutdown will be reversed when the government opens back up,”  Hornung added.

This time, the dynamics are different as the government is planning to slash jobs vs just putting employees on furlough, and this is set against Trump’s broader economic agenda focused on tariffs, which have already pressured businesses.

Markets were relatively flat before the looming shutdown. As of 3:30pm in New York (19:30 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.08 percent, the Nasdaq was up 0.06 percent and the S&P 500 was up 0.2 percent.

CHICAGO — Eight people were killed and 50 others were wounded over the Labor Day weekend in dozens of shootings in Chicago, where President Trump has seized on crime to try to justify a greater federal role on the city’s streets.

The toll highlights Chicago’s persistent struggle with gun violence and reveals a grim reality: spikes in shootings during summer holiday weekends, particularly on the South and West sides. The violence this time was deadlier than the last Labor Day, when seven people were killed and more than 20 were wounded.

Asked by reporters about sending National Guard troops to Chicago, Trump said, “We’re going in,” but added, “I didn’t say when.”

“We have the right to do it,” he said.

Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, both Democrats, have repeatedly said there’s no reason for Trump to send the National Guard, which is on the ground in the District of Columbia, targeting crime, immigration and homelessness.

“We’ve got crime on the streets,” Pritzker acknowledged last week. “Any person that gets killed or hurt is a victim of crime, is somebody that we ought to be addressing the challenges for. And we’re doing that every day. But the way to do it is with police officers, not with troops.”

Between Friday night and Monday night, 58 people were shot in 37 separate shootings in the nation’s third-largest city, according to preliminary information from police. Most survivors were in good or fair condition, but several were listed in serious or critical condition, including a 17-year-old boy. In most cases, no suspect was in custody.

Separately, the Trump administration is expected to expand immigration operations in Chicago. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed plans for a greater presence of federal agents.

Johnson over the weekend signed an order declaring that Chicago police will not collaborate with military personnel on police patrols or civil immigration enforcement.

Police will not be “deputized to do traffic stops and checkpoints for the president,” said the mayor, adding that the Trump administration is “out of control.”

Violent crime has dropped in recent years in Chicago, population 2.7 million, but it remains a persistent problem in some neighborhoods. Some with the highest homicide rates have 68 times more homicides than those with the lowest rates, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab.

Last year, the city had 573 homicides, or 21 per every 100,000 residents, according to the Rochester Institute of Technology. Other cities had a higher rate in 2024. Chicago’s rate was down 25% compared with 2020.

Chicago police post weekly crime stats online. The department says there were 278 murders so far this year, through August, a 31% drop compared with the same eight-month period in 2024.

Heather Colley and her two children moved four times over five years as they fled high rents in eastern Tennessee, which, like much of rural America, hasn’t been spared from soaring housing costs.

A family gift in 2021 of a small plot of land offered a shot at homeownership, but building a house was beyond reach for the 45-year-old single mother and manicurist making $18.50 an hour.

That changed when she qualified for a $272,000 grant from a nonprofit to build a three-bedroom home because of a program that has helped make affordable housing possible in rural areas for decades. She and her family moved in in June.

“Every time I pull into my garage, I pinch myself,” Colley said.

Now, President Trump wants to eliminate that grant, the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, and House Republicans overseeing federal budget negotiations did not include funding for it in their budget proposal. Experts and state housing agencies say that would set back tens of thousands of future affordable housing developments nationwide, particularly hurting Appalachian towns and rural counties where government aid is sparse and investors are few.

The program has helped build or repair more than 1.3 million affordable homes in the last three decades, of which at least 540,000 were in congressional districts that are rural or significantly rural, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data.

“Maybe they don’t realize how far-reaching these programs are,” said Colley, who voted for Trump in 2024. Among those half a million homes that HOME helped build, 84% were in districts that voted for him last year, the AP analysis found.

“I understand we don’t want excessive spending and wasting taxpayer dollars,” Colley said, “but these proposed budget cuts across the board make me rethink the next time I go to the polls.”

The HOME program, started under President George H.W. Bush in the 1990s, survived years of budget battles but has been stretched thin by years of rising construction costs and stagnant funding. That’s meant fewer units, including in some rural areas where home prices have grown faster than in cities.

The program has spent more than $38 billion nationwide since it began filling in funding gaps and attracting more investment to acquire, build and repair affordable homes, federal Department of Housing and Urban Development data show. Additional funding has gone toward rental assistance and projects that have yet to be finished.

Political limbo

To account for the gap left by the proposed cuts, House Republicans want to draw on nearly $5 billion from a related pandemic-era fund that gave states until 2030 to spend on projects supporting people who are unhoused or facing homelessness.

That $5 billion, however, may be far less, since many projects haven’t yet been logged into HUD’s tracking system, according to state housing agencies and associations representing them.

A spokesperson for HUD, which administers the program, said HOME isn’t as effective as other programs where the money would be better spent.

In opposition to Trump, Senate Republicans have still included funding for HOME in their draft budget. In the coming negotiations, both chambers may compromise and reduce but not terminate HOME’s funding, or extend last year’s overall budget.

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle didn’t respond to specific questions from the AP. Instead, Ingle said that Trump’s commitment to cutting red tape is making housing more affordable.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is working to reduce HOME’s notorious red tape that even proponents say slows construction.

Some rural areas more dependent on HOME

In Owsley County — one of the nation’s poorest, in the rural Kentucky hills — residents struggle in an economy blighted by coal mine closures and declining tobacco crop revenues.

Affordable homes are needed there, but tough to build in a region that doesn’t attract larger-scale rental developments that federal dollars typically go toward.

That’s where HOME comes in, said Cassie Hudson, who runs Partnership Housing in Owsley, which has relied on the program to build the majority of its affordable homes for at least a dozen years.

A lack of additional funding for HOME has already made it hard to keep up with construction costs, Hudson said, and the organization builds a quarter of the single-family homes it used to.

“Particularly for deeply rural places and persistent poverty counties, local housing developers are the only way homes and new rental housing gets built,” said Joshua Stewart of Fahe, a coalition of Appalachian nonprofits.

That’s in part because investment is scant and HOME steps in when construction costs exceed what a home can be sold for — a common barrier in poor areas of Appalachia. Some developers use the profits to build more affordable units. Its loss would erode those nonprofits’ ability to build affordable homes in years to come, Stewart said.

One of those nonprofits, Housing Development Alliance, helped Tiffany Mullins in Hazard, Ky., which was ravaged by floods. Mullins, a single mother of four who makes $14.30 an hour at Walmart, bought a house there thanks to HOME funding and moved in in August.

Mullins sees the program as preserving a rural way of life, recalling when folks owned homes and land with gardens — “we had chickens, cows. Now you don’t see much of that.”

A long-term effect

In congressional budget negotiations, HOME is an easier target than programs such as vouchers because most people would not immediately lose their housing, said Tess Hembree, executive director of the Council of State Community Development Agencies.

The effect of any reduction would instead be felt in a fizzling of new affordable housing supply. When HOME funding was temporarily reduced to $900 million in 2015, “10 to 15 years later, we’re seeing the ramifications,” Hembree said.

That includes affordable units built in cities. The biggest program that funds affordable rental housing nationwide, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, uses HOME grants for 12% of units, totaling 324,000 current individual units, according to soon-to-be-published Urban Institute research.

Trump’s spending bill that Republicans passed this summer increased that program, but experts say further reducing or cutting HOME would make those credits less usable.

“It’s LIHTC plus HOME, usually,” said Tim Thrasher, chief executive of Community Action Partnership of North Alabama, which builds affordable apartments for some of the nation’s poorest.

In the lush mountains of eastern West Virginia, Woodlands Development Group relies on HOME for its smaller rural projects. Because it helps people with a wider range of incomes, HOME is “one of the only programs available to us that allows us to develop true workforce housing,” said Executive Director Dave Clark.

It’s those workers — nurses, first responders, teachers — that nonprofits like east Tennessee’s Creative Compassion use HOME to build for. With the program in jeopardy, grant administrator Sarah Halcott said she fears for her clients battling rising housing costs.

“This is just another nail in the coffin for rural areas,” Halcott said.

Kramon, Bedayn, Herbst and Kessler write for the Associated Press. Kramon reported from Atlanta, Bedayn from Denver, Herbst from New York City and Kessler from Washington.

CHANCELLOR Rachel Reeves was warned she will hit tenants if the Treasury pursues plans to hike taxes on landlords.

She is considering putting National Insurance on rental income to fill a £50billion black hole at the autumn Budget.

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But housing experts blasted the move.

TV property show presenter Kirstie Allsopp, said: “This is tenant bashing under the guise of landlord bashing. It’s like having the economy run by Baldrick.”

Ben Beadle, of the National Residential Landlords Association, said: “This will hit the very households the Government wants to protect.”

Earlier in the week, The Sun reported that firms were bracing themselves for a £2.5billion Labour tax double whammy.

They would be clobbered twice — first by an inflation rate increase in business rates in April, then by a Rachel Reeves surcharge, experts said.

Business rates are the property tax that companies must pay just to occupy their shops, pubs, factories and offices.

The Tories warned thousands of struggling firms would be crippled.

Shadow Housing Secretary James Cleverly said: “Once again, Labour is hammering the high street. Raising business rates for thousands of hard-working small businesses across England was one of Labour’s first acts in office.

“And despite our opposition to it, and clear evidence of the damaging impact it will have, they have pressed ahead — consequences be damned.”

The first squeeze would come in April when bills rise automatically with inflation.

The Bank of England expects the rate will hit four per cent next month.

Global tax firm Ryan said that would add £1.11billion to business rates across England.

The second blow would come when Chancellor Ms Reeves introduces a supplementary multiplier on larger premises next year.

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Ukrainian authorities describe Russia’s missile and drone attack as ‘massive’, with multiple areas of Kyiv hit.

An overnight Russian drone and missile attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv has killed at least four people and wounded more than 20 others, officials said.

Powerful explosions rocked the city into the early hours of Thursday morning, illuminating the sky and leaving behind columns of smoke as Russian projectiles damaged and destroyed buildings in several districts of the city.

The attack was the first major combined Russian drone and missile attack to strike Kyiv since United States President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska earlier this month to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.

Tymur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv’s city military administration, said a 14-year-old girl was among those reported killed, citing preliminary information.

A five-storey residential building in the city’s Darnytskyi district was hit directly. “Everything is destroyed,” Tkachenko said.

“Tonight, Kyiv is under massive attack by the Russian terrorist state,” he said.

Local media outlet The Kyiv Independent said at least four people were confirmed killed, and officials expect the number of casualties to rise.

Another strike in central Kyiv left a major road strewn with shattered glass, and rescue teams were working to pull people trapped beneath rubble from some 20 affected locations across the city.

Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko also called it a “massive attack” by Russia, adding that two children were also among the injured.

Officials provided news organisations with a long list of buildings that had suffered damage, including several high-rise apartment blocks, and photos and video posted online showed apartments ablaze and smoke billowing from buildings.

The attack comes amid so-far failed efforts by President Trump to convince Putin to cease his war on Ukraine, and as both Moscow and Kyiv trade blame over a diplomatic impasse in efforts to end the fighting.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday that members of his administration would meet with US officials in New York on Friday.

The Ukrainian leader said he saw “very arrogant and negative signals from Moscow” regarding negotiations to end the war, urging extra “pressure” to “force Russia to take real steps” to cease fighting.

Aug. 11 (UPI) — At least one person is dead and several are injured, including those trapped in rubble, after an explosion at the U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works about 15 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, officials said.

Allegheny County Emergency Services spokesperson Kasey Reigner told WPXI-TV that “dozens were injured” in the blast. Also, two people are missing as crews searched for victims trapped in rubble.

At 10:50 a.m. EDT, emergency medical services received a call for an “ongoing situation” at the plant for a potential mass casualty event, Reigner told the Post-Gazette.

A Level 3 Mass Casualty incident was declared and more resources across the region were deployed.

Allegheny County Health Department advised people who live within a mile to stay inside.

The extent of injuries wasn’t clear, though several people were taken to hospitals. Allegheny Health Network told WPXI that it was receiving patients at several of its hospitals, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said two patients were taken to Mercy Hospital.

WTAE-TV’s helicopter captured fire crews battling flames while ambulances rushed to the area.

Breath Project captured when the explosion occurred.

“Felt like thunder,” Zachary Buday, who was working close to the scene, told WTAE. “Shook the scaffold, shook my chest, then shook the building. Then we saw the smoke coming up from the steel mill.”

He said there wasn’t fire but black smoke.

Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, who grew up near the area in McKeesport, posted on X: “The Commonwealth is providing whatever resources and manpower are needed to help with emergency response. Please stay away from the area at this time to allow emergency crews to do their job and follow all future guidance from officials for those that live nearby.”

Gov. Josh Shapiro posted on X that his administration “is in touch with local officials.”

He said: “The scene is still active, and folks nearby should follow the direction of local authorities.”

Sen. John Fetterman, who serves Pennsylvanians, wrote on X: “My team and I are tracking this explosion and waiting for more information.”

Calirton Coke Works, which is situated along the Monongahela River, is considered the largest coke manufacturing plant in North America with several million tons produced annually.

In the process, raw coal is turned into coke, which is used in steelmaking.

The company’s headquarters are in Pittsburgh.

U.S. Steel, which was founded in 1901, has about 22,000 employees with revenue of $15.6 billion in 2024.

In May, President Donald Trump announced a partnership with Japan’s Nippon Steel Corporation. He also said there would be a 50% tariff on imported steel. He appeared at the Edgar Thomas Plant near Braddock.

California Democrats and Texas Republicans are in an old-fashioned standoff, threatening to redraw their congressional maps in an attempt to sway the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections.

Caught in the middle are a handful of California Republicans, from relative newcomers to seasoned veterans, who represent pockets of the state from the U.S.-Mexico border to the remote forests in the northeast corner.

The Texas GOP is pushing, at the behest of President Trump, to net five additional seats for congressional Republicans, who hold the U.S. House of Representatives by a razor-thin margin. In response, Gov. Gavin Newsom has said California will push back with a map that would increase the number of Democrats the state sends to Washington.

“The idea that the president of the United States says he’s entitled to five seats should sicken everybody,” Newsom said at a news conference Thursday. “There’s nothing normal about that and anyone who says it’s not surprising is normalizing it. That’s shocking.”

The California gerrymandering plan taking shape behind closed doors would increase the Democratic Party’s dominance in the Golden State, adding as many as five congressional districts favorable to Democrats, according to a draft map reviewed by The Times. If the Democrats succeed, those changes could leave Republicans with four of the state’s 52 House seats — down from the current roster of nine.

California’s districts are typically drawn once per decade by an independent commission. Newsom is pushing to put a new map tailored to favor Democrats in front of voters Nov. 4, which would require the Legislature to approve the plan shortly after members return to Sacramento from their summer recess.

Newsom has said California’s redistricting plan will have a “trigger,” meaning a redrawn map would not take effect unless Texas moved forward with its own.

“We want to do it in the most transparent way,” Newsom said. “That’s a process that will unfold over the course of the next few weeks. But we want to see the maps on the ballot. I want folks to know what they’re voting on. That’s what separates what we’re doing from what others are doing.”

The proposed boundaries of the new congressional districts continue to shift, but the goal for California Democrats remains the same: Funnel the state’s Republican voters into fewer seats, boost vulnerable Democrats and turn some GOP-dominant districts into narrowly divided toss-ups.

Here are the Republicans who could face major changes.

Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin)

Kiley represents a sprawling district that runs along the Nevada border from Northern California to Death Valley, cutting through Mammoth and Lake Tahoe and the cities of Roseville, Rocklin and Folsom.

Republicans have a 6-percentage-point voter registration advantage in Kiley’s district. The district’s footprint could shrink and shift closer to Sacramento, adding more registered Democrats and trimming off some conservative and rural areas.

Kiley introduced a bill this week to nullify any newly drawn congressional boundaries adopted by states before the next U.S. census, in 2030, which would apply to both Texas and California. He said the bill would “stop a damaging redistricting war from breaking out across the country.”

Newsom, Kiley said, is “trying to subvert the will of voters and do lasting damage to democracy in California.”

Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale)

LaMalfa represents a safe Republican district that stretches through a vast territory of Northern California that borders Oregon and Nevada. The district includes Chico, Redding and Yuba City.

LaMalfa said in an interview that he had seen one map that shifted his district south to include parts of Sonoma County wine country and shifted some conservative rural areas in the north in another lawmaker’s district. Those changes, he said, would put towns near the Oregon border and Marin County, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, in the same district.

“The Democrats are really way over the line on this,” LaMalfa said. “I hope the weight of how bad this looks collapses on them before we even have to go through these gyrations, and millions and millions of dollars.”

He said he was certain that Republicans would litigate the new map if Democrats push ahead. He said other groups, including Common Cause and the League of Women Voters, have also voiced concerns.

“I’m not even stressed,” said La Malfa, a fourth-generation rice farmer. “If they throw me in some wine country district or some coastal district, and that throws me out, then I can go over here and finish cutting apart this tree that fell on my fence last night.”

Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford)

The proposed plans could add more registered Democrats to Valadao’s predominately Latino district in the Central Valley.

Democrats have tried for years to unseat Valadao, who represents a district that has a strong Democratic voter registration advantage on paper, but where turnout among blue voters is lackluster.

Even before the redistrict dustup, Valadao was once again a top target for Democrats. Valadao represents the California district with the highest percentage of Medicaid recipients, many of whom may lose coverage because of legislation approved by the Republican-led Congress and signed by Trump. Valadao previously lost his congressional seat in 2018 after voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017.

A representative for Valadao didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Reps. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) and Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills)

The plan being considered could force two Republican members of the House into the same district: Kim and Calvert.

Calvert was first elected to Congress in 1992 and is the longest-serving member of California’s Republican delegation. He represents a Riverside County district that includes Lake Elsinore, Menifee, Palm Springs and his home base of Corona. The district, which leans Republican, has been a prime, but unsuccessful, target for Democrats in the last two elections.

Kim, who was first elected to Congress in 2020, represents a Republican district, mostly in Orange County, that includes Mission Viejo, Orange, Lake Forest, Anaheim and Tustin.

Calvert said he strongly opposes “the scheme being orchestrated behind closed doors by Sacramento politicians” to replace maps drawn by the redistricting commission “with a process that would allow legislators to draw district maps that are gerrymandered to benefit themselves and their political allies.”

Deviating from the independent redistricting process “disenfranchises voters and degrades trust in our political system,” Kim said in a statement. She said Newsom should, “for once, focus on addressing the pressing issues making life harder for Californians under his watch instead of trying to position himself for a presidential run.”

Newsom this week said he was pleased to see Republican members coming out in support of independent redistricting.

“That’s an encouraging sign,” Newsom said. “So already, perhaps, people are waking up to the reality of California entering into this conversation. We’re not a small state. Again, we punch above our weight. It will have profound national implications if we move forward.”

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall)

Under the tentative plans, Issa, who has served in Congress for more than two decades, would see his safely Republican district become purple. That could include absorbing Palm Springs, a liberal area that is currently in Calvert’s district and has become a hub of fundraising and political activity for Democrats.

A spokesman for Issa declined to comment but referred to a statement from the state’s nine-member Republican delegation, which said that Trump won 38% of the presidential vote in California last year, but Republicans hold fewer than 1 in 5 of the state’s 52 House seats.

Newsom, the delegation said, is trying to wrest power from the independent redistricting commission and “place it back into the hands of Sacramento politicians to further his left-wing political agenda.”

“A partisan political gerrymander is not what the voters of California want,” the statement said.

Times staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report.

Zohran Mamdani campaigned for the Democratic nomination for New York mayor on the promise that he would make the largest city in the United States an affordable one.

The 33-year-old Democratic socialist proposed plans that would transform the city – including a free bus programme and freezing rent increases on rent-stabilised apartments – paid for by a heightened income tax for millionaires and an increase in the corporate tax rate.

Those promises catapulted him to ultimately win the mayoral primary 12 points ahead of his next closest competitor, Andrew Cuomo, who had been endorsed by the likes of former President Bill Clinton.

McKayla Lankau, a 25-year-old tech worker, had canvassed for Mamdani’s campaign. She lives in Bushwick, a Brooklyn neighbourhood which Mamdani won by a 79-point margin, and said housing was among the many economic policies that emboldened her to vote for Mamdani.

“I believe that if people are living a better life in a more affordable community, we all will, and Zohran’s campaign fulfilled that from my perspective,” said Lankau.

As the cost of living rises and US President Donald Trump continues a rightward march as he shapes political discourse, many voters feel Democratic leaders have offered little more than symbolic gestures and strongly worded statements.

Mamdani, a three-term state assembly member, presented something different– a campaign centred around grassroots organising over big donors, detailed policies over vague slogans, and the kind of charisma and gravitas that defined other change candidates like Barack Obama’s successful presidential bid in 2008 or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s surprise win of the House of Representatives in 2018.

Affordability was central to Mamdani’s message – and it resonated. But Mamdani also faces another side of New York – the ultra-wealthy investor class. They are the ones who have made New York City known as the epicentre of global finance and commerce. They are a powerful force to be reckoned with, and they are not happy.

“They are mad that they lost, and they’re used to getting their way. They’re used to setting the rules…. Mamdani ran a transparent, clear campaign and New Yorkers showed up in droves to support it,” political strategist Adin Lenchner of Carroll Street Campaigns told Al Jazeera.

Some investors and lenders are threatening to pull out of deals amid fears of new taxes and regulations. Michael Comparato, a managing director at Benefit Street Partners, said he walked away from a $300m hotel investment in New York. “The financial capital of the world could be in the hands of a socialist. Hard to fathom,” he posted on LinkedIn. Comparato did not respond to requests for comment.

While Democratic socialism – an ideology that believes in shifting power from corporations to workers within the framework of a capitalist democracy – is different from socialism, that sentiment echoed across the city’s financial power players.

Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman said he was “gravely concerned” about Mamdani’s rise, warning that the city would become “economically unviable”. He pledged to support a more “centrist” candidate. Pershing Square, his firm, declined to comment.

“The fear isn’t about economics, I think it’s about power,” Lenchner said. “That doesn’t mean the policy is unsound. I think affordability is economic growth.”

Mamdani’s funding proposals are ambitious but not unprecedented. He would raise the city’s corporate tax rate to 11.5 percent – matching New Jersey next door – up from the current corporate tax rate of up to 7.25 percent. Fortune 500 firms like Johnson & Johnson and Prudential Financial base their headquarters in New Jersey despite its higher rate. Mamdani’s campaign estimates this would generate $5bn annually.

Historically, higher rates haven’t driven business away. In the late 1990s, private sector employment grew at an annualised pace of 2.6 percent, while wages and private sector salaries increased by 9.6 percent.

“I think there’s a lot of exaggeration here on the part of the wealthy investor class on how much this is going to economically harm New York,” Daniel Wortel-London, professor of history at Bard College and author of The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, told Al Jazeera.

Mamdani also proposes a new tax of an additional 2 percent on individuals earning more than $1m. That is projected to raise another $4bn annually. Today, earners who make $1m already pay a combined federal, state and local tax burden of about 46 percent (37 percent of that is the federal income tax set by the federal government).

Currently, the marginal local rate for someone making $40,000 (3.82 percent) is nearly identical to a millionaire’s (3.88 percent), due to New York City’s flat local tax structure for anyone making more than $50,000 annually.

Still, Mamdani can’t unilaterally change tax policy. Any adjustments would require approval from Governor Kathy Hochul. Wortel-London says that shared priorities between Mamdani and Hochul – such as expanding childcare – could create opportunities for collaboration, including on free bus service proposals that would also need state buy-in.

The state already raised personal income taxes on millionaires in 2021 under then-Governor Cuomo, pushing rates to 46 percent (when state, local and federal income taxes are combined), the highest in the country.

Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital and a former Trump White House communications director, warned in a podcast with journalist Katty Kay that Mamdani’s platform could accelerate the migration of wealthy residents to states like Florida. Scaramucci did not reply to a request for comment.

To an extent that is true, according to the Citizen Budget Commission, a New York-based nonpartisan think tank. Because of the millionaire migration, the city missed out on $2bn of tax revenue that ended up going elsewhere.

As per the data, the net negative migration for the highest income earners was highest in 2020 and 2021 – when the COVID-19 pandemic was at its peak and could have been a major contributing factor behind the move, as was the case all over the country with people moving out of cities – and began trending back towards historical rates in 2022.

With the exception of that period, high-income earners did not leave at a significantly higher rate before or after.

However, just because millionaires are moving out doesn’t mean that new ones aren’t moving in. According to a Henley & Partners report, New York has gained more new millionaires than any other city in the world – up 45 percent from 2014 to 2024.

“Most high earners really don’t relocate just to avoid taxes. They certainly don’t really relocate across the country. Most high-earners are staying in the city for prestige or their family or a culture. I think there have been scares before. We’ve seen it when [former Mayor] Bill de Blasio got in. They were also worried about tax hikes, and they didn’t leave in droves,” Wortel-London said.

Rather than courting the ultra-wealthy, Mamdani’s economic pitch is aimed at small businesses, which employ the majority of New Yorkers. He plans to appoint a “Mom-and-Pop Tsar” to cut red tape, streamline permits, reduce fees and fines (including not charging first-time offenders), and increase funding for small business support agencies by 500 percent. His platform promises to cut business fees in half.

How realistic are the plans?

Nowhere is Mamdani’s message more resonant than in housing. As rents skyrocket, nearly half of New Yorkers say they’ve considered leaving the city, according to the think tank, the 5boro Institute.

His campaign promised to freeze rent increases on rent-stabilised units, which account for about 28 percent of New York’s housing stock, which is important to voters like Lankau, who currently lives in one. These are typically buildings built before 1974 with six or more units. While some newer buildings opt in, they do so in exchange for tax breaks.

Under the current law, rent increases are approved annually by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board, an independent panel appointed by the mayor. Mayor Eric Adams, the incumbent, approved a combined 9 percent hike in his first three years in office, followed by another 4.5 percent earlier this month. If elected, Mamdani would appoint new members to this board and seek to reverse course.

But the proposal has drawn criticism. The New York Apartment Association (NYAA) – a pro-landlord group that backed Cuomo – says a freeze could worsen the city’s housing shortage. Landlords, they argue, may choose to leave apartments vacant rather than perform costly repairs that can’t be recouped through rent increases due to a 2019 law. As a result, tens of thousands of rent-stabilised units are currently vacant.

“Freezing rents will just accelerate the distress and physical decline of these buildings,” NYAA CEO Kenny Burgos told Al Jazeera.

Mamdani’s platform doesn’t currently include a proposal to address these vacancies or to cap rent increases on market-rate apartments directly.

But to elevate pressure on the housing market, which does indirectly impact the cost of market-rate apartments, the campaign has proposed building 200,000 new affordable units over 10 years – tripling the city’s current pace. His housing plan also includes overhauling zoning laws, eliminating parking minimums, and supporting mixed-use development.

“I think those two, hand in hand, [freezes on rent-stabilised units and plans to build more housing] would be the kind of holistic programme that would make New York more affordable,” Lenchner said.

It remains unclear whether Mamdani would adopt policies proposed by Brad Lander, the third-place primary finisher who endorsed him. Lander had proposed converting some city-owned golf courses into housing. Lander did not respond to a request for comment.

Mamdani also wants to raise the city’s minimum wage to $30 per hour by 2030 – up from $16.50. A Cornell University study estimates a true living wage in New York would be $28.54, meaning Mamdani’s proposal would exceed that. It would also tie future increases to inflation and productivity metrics.

Even so, the gap between “living” and “comfortable” is wide. A SmartAsset study found that a New Yorker would need to earn $66 per hour to live comfortably. Mamdani hopes to relieve some of that pressure through policies like universal childcare, free bus service and a public grocery store option.

The city-run grocery store plan would start with one location in each borough to address food deserts. Much similar to city-owned hospitals or public housing, it would not replace the private sector but augment it. Regardless, this proposal has sparked backlash from John Catsimatidis, the Republican megadonor and owner of Gristedes, a local grocery store chain. He threatened to close his stores if Mamdani wins.

Catsimatidis, who donated over $500,000 to Republicans this year, according to Federal Election Commission records, did not respond to a request for comment.

Grocery costs remain politically sensitive. The latest Consumer Price Index shows grocery prices are up 2.4 percent over last year.

Mamdani also wants to make city buses permanently free. He championed a successful pilot programme in the State Assembly, which boosted weekday ridership by 30 percent and weekend ridership by 38 percent. Making that permanent would require cooperation from state leaders and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which is state-run, and might require some concessions on his part.

“The kind of momentum and energy behind this campaign makes a powerful case in arguing before Albany to make those kinds of investments, giving him that kind of public mandate to pressure state lawmakers to move this kind of proposal forward,” Lenchner said.

This, however, comes as the MTA is under additional pressure from the federal government. The US Department of Transportation recently threatened to withhold funding over New York’s congestion pricing plan, a toll on cars entering parts of Manhattan during peak hours, designed to fund transit improvements.

The political calculus

Like any mayor, Mamdani wouldn’t govern in a vacuum. He’d have to navigate complex City Council dynamics, work with borough presidents and contend with powerful interest groups.

Democrats have struggled across the country because they have such a broad coalition, suggesting little conviction on policy positions which has turned off their base. Even if Mamdani’s proposals are seen as more “radical”, he enters negotiations with a clear starting point and non-negotiables – something Republicans mastered a decade ago when they embraced it and Democrats still have not figured out, Lenchner suggested.

“It’s hard to think in recent memory of a campaign that spoke with such clarity about its objectives, about its convictions, about its moral clarity, and about its practical policy objectives,” Lenchner added.

To win in November, he’ll need to expand his coalition, particularly among Jewish and Black voters where he underperformed.

In a city still defined by finance, Mamdani will also have to show he can hold Wall Street accountable without alienating it. His campaign appears to be trying. The Partnership for New York City – a business group representing more than 300 top firms – hosted a meeting between Mamdani and executives, at the campaign’s request, which according to reporting from the outlet The City, went well and attendees left feeling that he was “willing to listen” and “find solutions to the city’s challenges that will work for all” but they were sceptical if he was genuine.

Mamdani’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

July 14 (UPI) — A fire at an assisted living complex in Massachusetts is under investigation Monday after it left several dead and injured Sunday night.

Jeffrey Bacon, Fire Chief of the city of Fall River, confirmed Monday nine people died and 30 have been hospitalized as a result of the five-alarm blaze that broke out around 9:30 p.m. EDT at the 100-unit Gabriel House Assisted Living Residence.

Bacon also explained that firefighters found heavy fire conditions upon arrival, and that some residents were hanging out of windows awaiting rescue.

One of the injured victims remains in critical condition, and five firefighters also sustained minor injuries due to the incident.

Bacon credited EMS, police and his department for saving lives while working in a coordinated effort during a press conference Sunday.

The Massachusetts Department of Fire Services announced Monday that a notification center has been established at St. Anne’s Hospital in Fall River, and that anyone who goes there should enter through its Emergency Department.

July 10 (UPI) — A second consecutive night of Russian drone and missile strikes on Kyiv killed at least two people and injured 24, authorities said.

Residential, healthcare, education, commercial and transport infrastructure was damaged across eight districts of the capital, including Podilskyi, where a 22-year-old woman police officer and a 68-year-old woman were killed, Kyiv Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said in a social media update.

“House-to-house inspections of the affected building are underway with the police checking whether anyone was left without help. About 400 rescuers and 90 units of fire and rescue, engineering and robotic equipment of the State Emergency Service are involved in clearing the rubble and dealing with the consequences of the shelling,” he said.

Tkachenko said apartment blocks, vehicles, warehouses, offices and other non-residential buildings were burning.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that apartment buildings in Shevchenkivskyi and Darnytskyi were set ablaze, gas stations and garages damaged, and a primary healthcare center “almost completely destroyed” in Podilskyi district.

The attack started shortly after 1 a.m. local time when explosions were heard and a swarm of Shahed-type attack drones was detected over the Pechersk district in old Kyiv, kicking off a three-hour-long intense bombardment in which the city was also targeted with ballistic missiles.

The Ukraine Air Force said 18 ballistic, cruise and S-300 guided missiles, mostly targeting Kyiv, were part of a much larger attack targeting the Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava, Kirovohrad and Kharkiv regions that involved almost 400 real and decoy drones in an effort to throw off Ukrainian air defenses by swamping them.

However, air defenses succeeded in downing 14 of the missiles and while more than 350 drones were shot down, jammed or went the wrong way, at least two people, a man and a woman, were injured in the southern province of Kherson.

“This is a clear escalation of terror by Russia — hundreds of ‘shaheds’ every night, constant strikes, and massive attacks on Ukrainian cities,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on X.

“This demands that we speed things up. Sanctions must be imposed faster, and pressure on Russia must be strong enough that they truly feel the consequences of their terror. There’s a need for quicker action from our partners in investing in weapons production and advancing technology,” Zelensky wrote.

The latest attacks came as the United Nations released figures for June showing 232 people were killed and 1,343 injured in Ukraine due to enemy action, the highest number of civilian casualties in any month since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh – The sound of children at play echoes through the verdant lanes of one of the dozens of refugee camps on the outskirts of Cox’s Bazar, a densely populated coastal town in southeast Bangladesh.

Just for a moment, the sounds manage to soften the harsh living conditions faced by the more than one million people who live here in the world’s largest refugee camp.

Described as the most persecuted people on the planet, the Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh may now be one of the most forgotten populations in the world, eight years after being ethnically cleansed from their homes in neighbouring Myanmar by a predominantely Buddhist military regime.

“Cox’s Bazar is ground zero for the impact of budget cuts on people in desperate need,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said during a visit to the sprawling camps in May.

The UN chief’s visit followed United States President Donald Trump’s gutting of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has stalled several key projects in the camps, and the United Kingdom announcing cuts to foreign aid in order to increase defence spending.

Healthcare in the camps has suffered as the severe blows to foreign aid bite.

‘They call me “langhra” (lame)’

Seated outside his makeshift bamboo hut, Jahid Alam told Al Jazeera how, before being forced to become a refugee, he had worked as a farmer and also fished for a living in the Napura region of his native Myanmar. It was back then, in 2016, that he first noticed his leg swell up for no apparent reason.

“I was farming and suddenly felt this intense urge to itch my left leg,” Alam said. “My leg soon turned red and began swelling up. I rushed home and tried to put some ice on it. But it didn’t help.”

A local doctor prescribed an ointment, but the itch continued, and so did the swelling.

He soon found it difficult to stand or walk and could no longer work, becoming dependent on his family members.

A year later, when Myanmar’s military began burning Rohingya homes in his village and torturing the women, he decided to send his family to Bangladesh.

Alam stayed behind to look after the cows on his land. But the military soon threatened him into leaving too and joining his family in neighbouring Bangladesh.

The 53-year-old has been treated by Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, in the Kutupalong region of Cox’s Bazar since arriving, but amputation of his leg seems likely. While some doctors have said he has Elephantiasis – an infection that causes enlargement and swelling of limbs – a final diagnosis is yet to be made.

Along with the disease, Alam has to also deal with stigma due to his disability.

“They call me ‘langhra’(lame) when they see I can’t walk properly,” he said.

But, he adds: “If God has given me this disease and disability, he also gave me the opportunity to come to this camp and try to recover. In the near future I know I can start a new and better life.”

‘The word “Amma” gives me hope’

Seated in a dimly lit room in a small hut about a 10-minute walk from Alam’s shelter, Jahena Begum hopes aid organisations will continue supporting the camps and particularly people with disabilities.

Her daughter Sumaiya Akter, 23, and sons, Harez, 19, and Ayas, 21, are blind and have a cognitive disability that prevents them from speaking clearly. They are largely unaware of their surroundings.

“Their vision slowly began fading as they became teenagers,” Begum says.

“It was very difficult to watch, and healthcare facilities in Myanmar could not help,” said the 50-year-old mother as she patted her daughter’s leg.

The young girl giggled, unaware of what was going on around her.

Begum’s family arrived in Cox’s Bazar about nine months ago after the military in Myanmar burned their house down.

“We made it to the camps with the help of relatives. But life has been very hard for me,” said Begum, telling how she had single-handedly brought up her children since her husband’s death eight years ago.

Doctors from MSF have given her children spectacles and have begun running scans to understand the root cause of their disability.

“Right now, they express everything by making sounds. But the one word they speak, which is ‘Amma’, meaning mother, shows me that they at least recognise me,” Begum said.

“The word ‘Amma’ gives me hope and strength to continue trying to treat them. I want a better future for my children.”

‘The pain isn’t just physical – it’s emotional’

Clad in a blue and pink striped collared shirt and a striped brown longyi – the cloth woven around the waist and worn by men and women in Myanmar – Anowar Shah told of fleeing Myanmar to save his life, on top of losing a limb to a mine blast.

Shah said he was collecting firewood in his hometown Labada Prian Chey in Myanmar when his leg was blown off by the landmine last year.

Myanmar is among the world’s deadliest countries for landmine and unexploded ordnance casualties, according to a 2024 UN report, with more than 1,000 victims recorded in 2023 alone – a number that surpassed all other nations.

“Those were the longest, most painful days of my life,” said the 25-year-old Shah, who now needs crutches to get around.

“Losing my leg shattered everything. I went from being someone who provided and protected, to someone who depends on others just to get through the day. I can’t move freely, can’t work, can’t even perform simple tasks alone,” he said.

“I feel like I’ve become a burden to the people I love. The pain isn’t just physical – it’s emotional, it’s deep. I keep asking myself, ‘Why did this happen to me?’”

More than 30 refugees in the camps in Bangladesh have lost limbs in landmine explosions, leaving them disabled and dependent on others.

All parties to the armed conflict in Myanmar have used landmines in some capacity, said John Quinley, director of rights organisation Fortify Rights, in Myanmar.

“We know the Myanmar junta has used landmines over many years to bolster their bases. They also lay them in civilian areas around villages and towns that they have occupied and fled,” he told Al Jazeera.

Abdul Hashim, 25, who resides in Camp 21 in Cox’s Bazar, described how stepping on a landmine in February 2024 “drastically altered his life”.

“I have become dependent on others for even the simplest daily tasks. Once an active contributor to my family, I now feel like a burden,” he said.

Since arriving in the camp, Hashim has been in a rehabilitation programme at the Turkish Field Hospital where he receives medication and physical rehabilitation that involves balance exercises, stump care, and hygiene education.

He has also been assessed for a prosthetic limb which currently costs about 50,000 Bangladeshi Taka ($412). The cost for such limbs is borne by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

“Despite the trauma and hardship, I hold onto some hope. I dream of receiving a prosthetic leg soon, which would allow me to regain some independence and find work to support my family,” Hashim said.

So far, a total of 14 prosthetic limbs have been distributed and fitted for camp inhabitants by the aid group Humanity & Inclusion, who have expertise in producing the limbs in orthotic workshops outside the refugee camps.

Both Hashim and Shah are a part of the organisation’s rehabilitation programme, which has been providing gait training to help them adapt to the future, regular use of prosthetic limbs.

Tough decisions for aid workers

Seeking to ensure refugees in the camps are well supported and can live better lives after fleeing persecution, aid workers are currently having to make tough decisions due to foreign aid cuts.

“We are having to decide between feeding people and providing education and healthcare due to aid cuts,” a Bangladeshi healthcare worker who requested anonymity, for fear his comment could jeopardise future aid from the US, told Al Jazeera. 

Quinley of Fortify Rights pointed out that while there are huge funding gaps because of the aid cuts, the Rohingya refugee response should not fall on any one government and should be a collective regional responsibility.

“There needs to be a regional response, particularly for countries in Southeast Asia, to give funding,” he said.

“Countries connected to the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) in the Middle East could also give a lot more meaningful support,” he said.

He also recommended working with local humanitarian partners, “whether it’s Bangladeshi nationals or whether it’s Rohingya refugee groups themselves” since they know how to help their communities the best.

“Their ability to access people that need support is at the forefront, and they should be supported from governments worldwide,” he said.

For the estimated one million refugees in Cox’s Bazar, urgent support is needed at this time, when funds grow ever scarce.

According to a Joint Response Plan drawn up for the Rohingya, in 2024, just 30 percent of funding was received of a total $852.4m that was needed by the refugees.

As of May 2025, against an overall appeal for $934.5m for the refugees, just 15 percent received funding.

Cutting the aid budgets for the camps is a “short-sighted policy”, said Blandine Bouniol, deputy director of advocacy at Humanity & Inclusion humanitarian group.

It will, Bouniol said, “have a devastating impact on people”.

June 25 (UPI) — At least 20 people were killed and up to 300 injured in a massive Russian airborne assault on the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro in the country’s industrial heartland, authorities said Wednesday.

Dnipropetrovsk Gov. Serhii Lysak said in a social media update that the strikes during the daytime on Tuesday killed 18 people in Dnipro and two in a separate attack on Samar, 10 miles away to the northeast, with nearly 300 people injured across the province.

“The entire Dnipropetrovsk region is in mourning. This is a pain that resonates in every heart. That never goes away,” Lysak wrote.

President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was in The Hague meeting with European heads of government at an annual gathering of NATO, said many of the injured were passengers on a train.

“This strike hit numerous civilian infrastructure: homes, schools, and even a regular passenger train. There were more than 500 passengers on board. Five train cars were destroyed. There were no fatalities. All the injured have received medical assistance. It was another Russian strike on life,” he said in a post on X.

State-run Ukrainian Railways confirmed a missile struck near one of its trains en route from Odessa to Zaporizhzhia as it was passing through Dnipro and that dozens of passengers had been injured by flying glass.

The company said emergency workers moved passengers who were unhurt to the nearest subway station, from where they were able to make their way into Dnipro to catch a replacement train service to continue their journey to Zaporizhzhia, if they so wished.

Dnipropetrovsk is Zelensky’s home province.

The attacks mirrored a deadly wave of airstrikes on Kyiv last week that coincided with a meeting of the G7 group of countries in Canada. The group was formally the G8 — until Russia was ejected in 2014 over its invasion and annexation of Crimea.

Elsewhere, one person was killed and 10 injured in Kharkiv city and Kupiansk and surrounding areas after residences and other civilian infrastructure were targeted by Russian attack drones and warplanes launching air-to-surface rockets and glide bombs.

In the neighboring part-Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia province, which lies to the south of Dnipro, five people were injured after Russian forces carried out missile, drone and airstrikes on more than a dozen towns and opened fire with artillery.

Three people were killed near the frontline in Donetsk, according to Gov. Vadym Filashkin, less than 100 miles east of Dnipro, where Ukrainian forces are battling to hold off a Russian advance poised to break through to the west into Ukraine‘s industrial heartland.

Earlier this month, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Russian troops and units of its 90th Guards Tank Division had penetrated into Dnipropetrovsk without resistance and were pushing forward.

Ukraine rejected the claim outright as fake news, but Emil Kastehelmi, an analyst at the Finland-based Black Bird Group, told the Kyiv Independent that geolocation data indicated an incursion by Russian troops had occurred.

Kastehelmi said that while he thought Russian forces would push on “at least somewhat” further west over the summer, he didn’t expect it to have much impact on the net state of play across the frontline.

Other military experts agreed.

They said the southeastern region of Ukraine would ultimately be penetrated by Russian forces, but only to a degree, as Moscow’s overarching goal was to capture the remaining areas of Donetsk it does not already control, and therefore neither side was likely to divert significant forces to the theater.

June 23 (UPI) — At least 13 people were killed and 57 injured in Ukraine, half of them in Kyiv, after Russian forces attacked the capital and other targets in the eastern half of the country with hundreds of drones and ballistic and cruise missiles, officials said Monday.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a social media update that six people were killed when a missile struck and badly damaged a building in the central Shevchenkivskyi district, but that the rescue operation was still underway and there might be more casualties buried under the rubble.

“A terrible picture in the Shevchenko district. Extensive damage to a five-story building. Rescuers, medics, and municipal services are working at the scene. The blast wave also damaged the apartments of the 25-story residential building opposite. Ten people were rescued from it. Among them, a child and a pregnant woman,” said Klitschko.

Another 22 people were injured, 12 of them hospitalized, in attacks on residential and non-residential buildings in five other districts of the capital, he added.

The governor of the region, Mykola Kalashnyk, said one person was killed in Bilotserkivka district, southwest of Kyiv, and four were injured, two of whom were admitted to the hospital. Residential targets were hit in Boryspil and Bila Tserkva, where a medical facility and a hotel were also destroyed.

The town of Bucha, just northwest of Kyiv, one of the first Ukrainian settlements overrun by Russian forces and scene of the U.N.-documented execution of at least 73 civilians and other suspected war crimes after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, also came under attack, damaging several houses and vehicles.

In neighboring Chernihiv province to the northeast, which borders both Russia and Belarus, at least three people were killed and 11 injured, including four teenagers, in missile and drone strikes on Chernihiv, the regional capital, and four other districts, according to Chernihiv Gov. Viacheslav Chaus.

In Donetsk, one of four Ukrainian provinces partly or fully controlled by Russian forces, Gov. Vadym Filashkin reported on Telegram that two people had been killed in Siversk, 18 miles east of the city of Slovyansk, and in Myrne, east of Pokrovsk, with five more injured.

In part-Russian-occupied Kherson, Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin reported via social media that one person had been killed and six injured in Russian drone, artillery and airstrikes on Kherson city and several other communities, damaging seven apartment buildings, 14 houses, a gas pipeline and other civilian targets.

The Ukrainian Air Force said on its official account on Telegram that of 368 incoming attack drones, ballistic and cruise missiles, mostly targeting Kyiv, air defenses managed to down all but 14.

WASHINGTON — A majority of U.S. journalists who followed the 1992 presidential campaign believe President Bush’s candidacy was damaged by press coverage of his record and of the economy, according to a survey released Saturday.

Only a small percentage of print and broadcast journalists think the campaign of President-elect Bill Clinton was similarly harmed by media coverage. In fact, more than one in three said coverage benefited the Arkansas governor.

Most journalists interviewed believe the press treated Bush fairly. He was harmed, they said, not by media bias but by accurate reporting on his performance in office and on the nation’s economy.

These are the principal findings of a special survey of more than 250 top- and middle-level journalists conducted by the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press. The survey was conducted in the final weeks of the election campaign.

Four in five journalists surveyed rated press performance in the 1992 campaign as good or excellent, saying it generally was better than the coverage in 1988.

Public opinion surveys conducted throughout the campaign showed most Americans also gave positive ratings to media coverage, although by a smaller margin. Nearly six in 10 people surveyed gave the press good or excellent marks. More than one in three, however, judged the performance as fair or poor.

The Times Mirror survey found the media judging the impact of its coverage differently at the end of the campaign than it had in an initial survey last May, during the final stages of the presidential primary battles.

The earlier polling found most journalists–slightly more than 50%–believed campaign coverage was having a “neutral effect” on Bush’s campaign as he turned back the challenge of conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan.

At that time, 64% thought Clinton was being hurt by media coverage during his struggle with the so-called “character” problems that beset his primary campaign.

The latest poll also found that journalists gave the industry high marks for specific aspects of campaign coverage. Overall, more than 70% gave ratings of good or excellent to coverage of Clinton’s Vietnam draft status, the candidates’ positions on issues and the economy.

The press gave itself a somewhat lower grade for coverage of independent candidate Ross Perot, with 63% rating it as good or excellent. The survey said one senior editor summed up the attitude of many by saying: “We were all on the verge of carrying very critical stories about his temperament and his personal life when he pulled out. Since he re-entered, we’ve treated him as an eccentric.”

The coverage of Bush’s role in the Iran-Contra scandal received the harshest judgment by journalists. More than 70% of respondents said the coverage was only fair or poor, with only 24% rating it as good. A television executive said only the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post had “done a good job of explaining this issue.”

The survey said a large number of journalists cited the emergence of talk shows this year as a chastening sign that politics can work well “without the press as interlocutor.”

However, critics of this new phenomenon “took aim at the cheerleading-like atmosphere” of some talk show political interviews, saying too many questions were soft, with no follow-up questions, the poll reported.

Multiple people were injured after a man shouting “free Palestine” tossed Molotov cocktails at a gathering in support of Israeli hostages in Colorado, authorities said.

Police said eight people were injured in the attack at the Pearl Street Mall, a popular outdoor space in Boulder, about 30 miles (48km) from Denver.

The FBI called it a suspected terror attack and said the suspect used a makeshift flamethrower, Molotov cocktails and other incendiary devices.

Footage of the attack shows the suspect, who was shirtless, screaming at the group and had what appears to be Molotov cocktails in each hand when he was arrested.

The attack unfolded during a weekly scheduled demonstration put on by Run for Their Lives, a pro-Israeli group that that holds walks in the outdoor pedestrian mall in solidarity with Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Police got calls around 13:26 local time (20:26 BST) about a man with a weapon and people being set on fire, Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn said at a news conference.

Witnesses told authorities that the suspect used a “makeshift flamethrower and threw an incendiary device into the crowd, ” said Mark Michalek, who heads the FBI’s Denver office.

Redfearn added those devices included Molotov cocktails being tossed at the crowd.

He identified the suspect as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45.

Soliman is an Egyptian national, government officials told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

In 2022, Soliman arrived in California on a non-immigrant visa that expired in February 2023, multiple sources have told CBS News. He had been living in Colorado Springs.

Officers who responded found multiple people injured, including those with burns.

Footage that appeared to be from the attack showed a chaotic scene: smoke filling the air, people running in multiple directions, spots of grass on fire and people injured on the ground.

Warning: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.

In images and videos posted online, but not yet verified by the BBC, a man appearing to be the suspect is seen without a shirt and holding bottles with liquid with a piece of red cloth inside. He can be heard yelling at the crowd and appears to be advancing on them as some rush to flee.

As he screams, one woman is on the ground and appears injured. People surround her and one man pours water on her body.

Footage shows police rushing to the scene and arresting the suspect. Police say he was taken to the hospital with injuries.

“It is clear that this is a targeted act of violence and the FBI is investigating this as an act of terrorism,” Mr Michalek said. “Sadly, attacks like this are becoming too common across the country.”

The attack is the second high-profile act of violence in the US in the last two weeks related to the conflict in Gaza.

A man who shouted “free Palestine” fatally shot two Israeli embassy employees outside a Jewish museum in Washington DC on 22 May. The incident happened at a networking event organised by a Jewish organisation.

Colorado’s Attorney General Phil Weiser said that from what officials know the attack “appears to be hate crime given the group that was targeted”.

“People may have differing views about world events and the Israeli-Hamas conflict, but violence is never the answer to settling differences,” Weiser said in a statement on Sunday. “Hate has no place in Colorado.”

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, said he was “shocked” by the incident and called the attack “pure antisemitism”.

“Shocked by the terrible antisemitic terror attack targeting Jews in Boulder, Colorado,” he wrote on X. “This is pure antisemitism, fueled by the blood libels spread in the media.”

Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, similarly was saddened over the attack, calling it “terrorism” and asking for “concrete action” in response.

In a post on X, the ambassador said that Jewish protesters were brutally attacked”.

“Terrorism against Jews does not stop at the Gaza border – it is already burning the streets of America,” he said.