At his final rally on Monday New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani vowed to resist US President Donald Trump’s threat to withhold federal funds if the 34-year-old wins, framing the vote as a stand against intimidation and political bullying.
Published On 4 Nov 20254 Nov 2025
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David DeansWales political reporter
Matthew Horwood/Plaid CymruFamilies who have children aged nine months to four years old will get free childcare if Plaid Cymru wins the next Welsh Parliament election, its leader has said.
Rhun ap Iorwerth made the pledge as he told conference delegates he was ready to lead the country “right now”, replacing Labour as the party of government.
Labour has led Wales since the start of devolution in 1999, and has dominated Welsh politics for a century. The next Senedd election takes place in May.
He said the “transformative” policy, offering at least 20 hours for 48 weeks a year by 2031, would be a “helping hand with the things that matter the most”.
He told the conference that “Labour’s time is up” and that Reform wanted to treat the Senedd as a “plaything” to gain an “electoral foothold”.
Ap Iorwerth called on voters who wanted to stop Reform to back his party, accusing Nigel Farage of spurring a summer of “simmering hatred”.
Currently help with childcare costs is only available to families whose parents are in work, education or training, or to very young children who live in a Flying Start area.
The party says the policy would be worth £32,500 to families for the first four years of their child’s life.
Families whose parents are in work, training or education would still get 30 hours a week for three to four-year-olds.
Plaid’s plan would allow ineligible families to claim 20 hours a week for three to four-year-olds for 48 weeks of the year, and all families 20 hours for nine-month-olds to two years.
The party say that by the end of the five-year roll out it will spend roughly an extra £500m a year on childcare – bringing the total cost to £800m.
It says it can find the cash from the Welsh government’s budget, with about £400m thought to be available in the next budget if other services increase by inflation.
Matthew Horwood/Plaid CymruThe Welsh government has been under pressure to match the provision in England, where children between nine months and two years receive free child care.
The Bevan Foundation said earlier this year that high childcare costs were pushing more families into poverty and out of work.
Currently parents in Wales can apply for up to 30 hours of combined government funded nursery education and childcare a week – parents need to be in work, on maternity, paternity or other statutory leave, or in education or training.
That is only available to three and four-year-olds, and only if parents receive less than £100,000 a year combined.
Some eligible two-year-olds qualify for 12.5 hours of care a week under Flying Start, but it is not available nationally.
Plaid’s plan would be in three stages. It is proposing to keep the existing 30 hour offer for three to four-year-olds, while extending the roll out of 12.5 hours a week for two-year-olds.
The next step would be to give 20 hours to parents who are not currently eligible – such as those not in work or training, or those earning more than £100,000 a year.
The party would then seek to increase the number of hours offered to children under the age of two year-on-year.
It would be rolled out over the life of the next Welsh Parliament, with the policy fully implemented in the 2030/31 financial year, under the plans.
Getty ImagesParty sources, asked why parents whose incomes are above £100,000 should get free childcare, said services that are delivered universally are better, and that households across demographics are struggling.
Plaid says it would be the most generous childcare care offer in the UK.
Ap Iorwerth told BBC Wales: “This can make a huge difference. It’s a very, very important step in terms of helping families with the cost of living.
“This is universal, which marks it out from the system in England.”
Ap Iorwerth said it was “money that we know we can afford”.
Plaid Cymru has played a key role during the life of devolution, being an occasional supporter of Labour governments since 1999.
It has been unable to beat Labour in an election – but recent opinion polling has suggested Plaid is vying with the party to win, as is Reform.
Ap Iorwerth is now trying to position his party as a government-in-waiting.
Even if Plaid came first it is possible they would have to work with Labour or other parties in some form, with no party having ever won a majority in the Senedd.
Ap Iorwerth said Labour had “forgot where it came from who it was there to serve”.
He called on his party to seize the “historic opportunity ahead of us” and turn it into “reality”.
He said the UK had faced a summer of “simmering hatred”, spurred on, he said, by Nigel Farage.
“Farage and his followers drive the deliberate fragmentation of society, giving life to the bogeyman without whom they are nothing.”
He said Reform UK wanted to treat the Senedd as a “plaything” to gain “an electoral foothold”.
Ap Iorwerth said Plaid was ready to govern “right now”, promising to “usher in an age of new leadership that will set Wales on a different path.”
“We are not here as Labour’s conscious, we are not here to repair Labour, we are here to replace them,” he said.
He promised an “immediate cash injection” into the NHS to prioritise the longest waits.
The party leader, a former BBC Wales journalist and the Member of the Senedd (MS) for Ynys Mon, said Reform threatened the health service with “US-style bills”, and vowed to keep the NHS free at point of need.
Taylor Swift is “shockingly” offended by the idea that “The Life of a Showgirl” could be — given her recent engagement to Travis Kelce — her final album.
“It is not the last album. That’s not why people get married,” the singer told BBC Radio 2 on Monday.
“They love to panic sometimes,” she said, talking about conspiracy theorists in the Swifty-verse, “but it’s like, I love the person I am with because he loves what I do and he loves how much I am fulfilled by making art and making music.”
Rumors started to make their rounds after the couple announced their engagement in August through a joint Instagram post. Fans speculated that after she said “I do,” she would have children and move on from music — or so BBC host Scott Mills had informed his guest.
Wait, mothers can’t have careers? Swift called that a “shockingly offensive thing to say.”
Weeks earlier, the Grammy-winning singer announced the impending arrival of her 12th album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” on her now-fiancé’s podcast hosted along with brother Jason Kelce. Since the release last week, the rumors grew louder and louder, with some fans predicting this album would be it for the pop artist.
To which Swift pushed back:
“That’s the coolest thing about Travis, he is so passionate about what he does that me being passionate about what I do, it connects us,” Swift said.
Their passions in life aren’t so different, according to the singer.
“We both, as a living, as a job, as a passion, perform for 3½ hours in NFL stadiums,” the showgirl said. “We both do 3½-hour shows to entertain people.”
When she’s touring, she gets a dressing room, Swift said, but when he’s playing in the same space, they call it a locker room.
“It’s a very similar thing and we’re both competitive in fun ways, not in ways that eat away at us,” she added.
Over the weekend, while Kelce prepared for the Kansas City Chiefs’ “Monday Night Football” game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, the future Mrs. Tight End released “Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl” in theaters. The experience earned $33 million over the weekend, topping the box office, according to Box Office Mojo.
The music video for the album’s opening track, “The Fate of Ophelia,” premiered along with the release-party movie. Swift wrote and directed it.
“[The music video] is very, like, big and glitzy and it’s so fun and it’s supposed to be like the day in the life of a showgirl,” she said.
Multitasking has become a norm for the “Cruel Summer” singer, who juggled her last tour with the recording of the album.
Swift said she flew to Sweden on multiple occasions during the Eras Tour to record the album. Her loyal inner circle did not leak any information.
“My friends don’t rat, they do not rat and you can tell by the amount of stories about me that are out there that are absolutely not true,” she said.
OK, Swifties, you can breathe now. You can stop looking for clues into whether this is it for Tay-tay’s music career. Shake it off until her next release.
Abba Ali says he was there when Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau blew himself up to avoid capture by the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) in May 2021.
He survived, but his life changed forever. The road to that experience stretched back to 2015, when Boko Haram stormed his hometown of Bama and abducted him at the age of six.
That day, Abba and his four-year-old brother were taken to the forest by the terrorists. His younger brother succumbed to the harsh conditions in Sambisa Forest, the terror group’s enclave in Borno State, North East Nigeria, but Abba survived.
In the forest, he lived among other children in a village called Njimiya and was later taken to Shekau’s enclave by one of his two elder brothers, who had joined Boko Haram two years before Bama fell. That brother also later died, leaving Abba in the custody of Shekau’s household and his other elder brother.
By then, he had turned ten and had started combat training at Bula Sa’Inna in Sambisa Forest, where the deceased Boko Haram leader lived and conducted his operations. For two years, he was drilled until he became a sniper. When the training ended, he was assigned to guard checkpoints around Shekau’s camp.
Abba stayed at one of these posts for years, often seeing Shekau, who, though calm and playful with the boys, was ruthless when betrayed.
There, he repelled countless attacks and fought against splinter groups like ISWAP.
After Shekau’s death, ISWAP held him for two months, until his uncle, once the fourth in command under Shekau, saw a chance to escape. After three failed attempts, they succeeded. Together, they rode in the night, dodging rival factions until they reached the outskirts of Bama. Abba couldn’t recognise his hometown; his childhood memories were gone.
“I only knew it was Bama when I was told,” he said.
Now 19, Abba lives in Maiduguri with his mother and stepfamily, who continue to care for him. When he first returned, he surrendered to the authorities. He was held briefly for a day before being taken to an internally displaced persons’ camp at Government Day Senior Science Secondary School, Bama. There, he was given a food ration card and shelter until he reunited with his family.
Unlike the others who surrendered at the same time, Abba was not enrolled in Operation Safe Corridor, the federal programme launched in 2016 to provide psychosocial support, vocational training, and business starter packs for the reintegration of surrendered terrorists. He did not disclose why he was excluded.
Over 500,000 insurgents and their families have laid down their arms through the programme, while others have deliberately avoided it. Abba, however, did not evade but was excluded for reasons he did not disclose.
“We were told there would be help, but nothing came. Sometimes I feel like going back to Sambisa,” he told HumAngle. “I only feel like going back when I am hungry. I wish I had something to do.”
While Abba battles hunger and memories of Sambisa, other surrendered insurgents, such as Musa Kura, have returned to the battlefield, but on the government’s side.
He recalls how Boko Haram preached to him until their ideology seemed the only truth. At 18, in 2013, he followed willingly into the bush. But after Shekau died, Musa saw ISWAP as traitors, and the government’s amnesty offer felt like a lifeline. He fled with his wife and children and surrendered to the authorities.
Musa passed through Operation Safe Corridor, and it was there, he says, that the military recruited him. He works as a civilian security guard in Konduga, but he is struggling.
“The payment is poor. Our children are not in school, and what we are given is not enough to care for our families. The only reason we stay is because we swore not to go back to our old ways,” he told HumAngle. They are paid ₦30,000 per month.
“I don’t know anything apart from fighting, so that is what I do,” he added.
Others, however, have chosen to disappear from the battlefield entirely. Isa Gana, another former Boko Haram member, chose a different path. After surrendering, he was given ₦100,000 in “startup support”. However, people never quite trusted him in his community.
Isa left Borno for Lagos, where he now works menial jobs. For him, anonymity is better than suspicion, and poverty in a city far from the battlefield feels safer than returning to violence.
“It is better this way,” he said. “I don’t want to fight for Boko Haram, and I don’t want to fight for the government.”
Yet, for some, even leaving the battlefield behind does not bring peace. Twenty-four-year-old Bakura Abba, who also surrendered after Shekau’s death and underwent the Operation Safe Corridor programme, said: “Survival in this new life is almost impossible. We have no housing, and we are jobless.”
Bakura was 17 when he was captured while working on the farm. Faced with the threat of execution, he chose to join Boko Haram and was trained as a fighter.
The frustration voiced by all those who spoke to HumAngle highlights a larger problem in Nigeria’s reintegration programme. Ahmad Salkida, the CEO of HumAngle and a security expert who has spent decades researching and reporting on the Boko Haram insurgency, said the sustainability of the reintegration programme rests on credibility.
The managers, he stressed, must be able to keep their promises to beneficiaries while also designing a framework that ensures the safety of the communities where defectors will eventually be resettled. According to him, the only way to achieve this is through a robust deradicalisation process, something that is currently missing.
“If a person is used to violence for over a decade and he is back in society, and is not engaged in other forms of livelihood or any skills, the likelihood of them going back, or even committing crimes in the community, is very high,” Salkida warned.
He added that the government’s best chance of success is to establish trust by handing the process to an independent civil society group, interfaith organisations, and mental health professionals, with communities fully involved, rather than leaving it in the hands of the Nigerian Army.
So far, however, there has been little meaningful support for communities most devastated by the insurgency, while considerable resources have gone instead to the perpetrators. This imbalance, Salkida warns, fuels the perception that deradicalisation is a reward for violent crimes — a perception that must change if trust is to be built between defectors, communities, and the government.
Official claims of success stand in sharp contrast to the lived reality. The deradicalisation programme suffers from a shortage of specialised trainers, poor physical infrastructure, and a lack of effective systems to monitor participants after reintegration.
The credibility gap is most visible in the mismatch between promises and delivery. Earlier in 2025, Borno State alone allocated ₦7.46 billion for the reintegration of surrendered combatants, one of its largest capital projects. But, as beneficiaries reveal, this investment is only heavy on paper, not in impact.
Just when you thought prospects for the future of the Gaza Strip could not get any bleaker, United States President Donald Trump has unveiled his 20-point “peace plan” for the Palestinian territory, starring himself as the chair of a “Board of Peace” that will serve as a transitional government in the enclave. This from the man who has been actively aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians since January, when he took over the US presidency from former honorary genocidaire Joe Biden.
But that is not all. Also on board for the “Board of Peace” is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who will reportedly play a significant governing role in Gaza’s proposed makeover. To be sure, importing a Sir Tony Blair from the United Kingdom to oversee an enclave of Palestinians smacks rather hard of colonialism in a region that is already quite familiar with the phenomenon.
And yet the region is also already quite familiar with Blair himself, owing in particular to his notorious performance during the 2003 war on Iraq, led by his buddy and then-chief of the so-called war on terror, George W Bush. Swearing by the false allegations of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Blair steered the UK into a war that ultimately killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, earning him a most deserved reputation as a war criminal.
In other words, he is not a guy who should under any circumstances turn up on a “Board of Peace”.
And while Bush would subsequently retire to a quiet life of painting dogs and portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Blair continued to make a name for himself as the man the Middle East just cannot get rid of – and to make a pretty penny while at it.
After resigning as prime minister in 2007, Blair was immediately reincarnated as Middle East envoy for the “Quartet” of international powers – representing the US, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations – that is ostensibly forever striving to resolve the Israel-Palestine issue.
But in this case, too, the appointment of an envoy with close relations to Israel – the unquestionable aggressor to the “conflict” – pretty much obviated any advancement in the direction of “peace”.
Furthermore, Blair’s diplomatic activity conveniently overlapped with an array of highly lucrative business dealings in the region, from providing paid advice to Arab governments to signing on as a part-time senior adviser in 2008 with the US investment bank JP Morgan. For the latter post, Blair was said to be compensated in excess of $1m per year.
As Francis Beckett, coauthor of Blair Inc: The Man Behind the Mask, told Al Jazeera in 2016 – the year after Blair stepped down as Quartet envoy – “the difficulty was that when he went to meetings in the Middle East, nobody knew which Tony Blair they were seeing – whether it was Tony Blair the Quartet envoy or Tony Blair the patron of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation or Tony Blair the principal of the consultancy firm Tony Blair Associates”.
But, hey, the point of conflicts of interest is that they pay off.
In a 2013 article for the Journal of Palestine Studies, award-winning journalist Jonathan Cook noted that, while Blair had little to show in terms of “achievements” as Quartet representative, he liked to “trumpet one in particular: his success in 2009 in securing radio frequencies from Israel to allow the creation of a second Palestinian cell phone operator, Wataniya Mobile, in the West Bank”.
There was a catch, however. As Cook details, Israel released the frequencies in exchange for an agreement from the Palestinian leadership to drop the issue at the UN of Israeli war crimes committed during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, which was launched in December 2008 and killed some 1,400 Palestinians in a matter of 22 days.
And what do you know? “Blair had private business interests in negotiating the deal,” and it so happened that “not only Wataniya but also JP Morgan stood to profit massively from the opening up of the West Bank’s airwaves.”
Now, it is hardly an exaggeration to assume that Blair will seek to capitalise on his impending governorship of Gaza, as well, as there are no doubt plenty of opportunities for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in, you know, changing the world to definitively screw over the Palestinians.
One focus of Trump’s 20-point plan, incidentally, is the “many thoughtful investment proposals and exciting development ideas … crafted by well-meaning international groups” that will magically produce “hope for future Gaza”. After all, why should Palestinians care about having a state and not being perennially massacred by Israel when they can have capitalism and the tyranny of foreign investors instead?
And the face of that tyranny may well be Blair, whose synonymousness with the slaughter of civilians in the Middle East has not prevented him from being once again tapped as a regional peacemaker.
This is not to say that Blair has no fans aside from Trump and the Israelis. For example, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman, a fellow Orientalist and Iraq war cheerleader, once praised Blair as “one of the most important British prime ministers ever” for having decided to “throw in Britain’s lot with President Bush on the Iraq war”, thereby not only defying “the overwhelming antiwar sentiment of his own party, but public opinion in Britain generally”.
There was, it seemed, no end to Friedman’s admiration for Blair’s antidemocratic stoicism: “He had no real support group to fall back on. I’m not even sure his wife supported him on the Iraq war. (I know the feeling!)”
Now, as Gaza’s fate continues to hang at the mercy of Blair and other international war criminals, perhaps his wife should suggest that he take up painting instead.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
The US president pledged a 100 percent tariff for films made outside the country.
Published On 29 Sep 202529 Sep 2025
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United States President Donald Trump has said he wants to levy a 100 percent import tax on movies made outside the country, saying the movie business “has been stolen” from Hollywood and the US.
Posting on his Truth Social platform on Monday, the US president said the tariff was intended to “solve this long time, never ending problem.”
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“Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing ‘candy from a baby,’” he wrote.
“California, with its weak and incompetent Governor, has been particularly hard hit!”, he added, in reference to California governor Gavin Newsom, who is a common foil of Trump’s.
It was unclear how these tariffs would operate, since movies and TV shows can be transmitted digitally without going through ports.
Nor was it clear what this would mean for US films that depend on foreign locations as part of the story, such as the James Bond franchise.
Analysts note that many films are international co-productions. They are also not goods that are imported in a conventional way, meaning the government would have to determine how to value them and when they even qualify as imports.
Trump made a similar threat in May, directing the Department of Commerce to immediately begin imposing a 100 percent tariff on films “produced in Foreign Lands”.
At the time, he complained the US film industry was “DYING a very fast death” due to other countries luring filmmakers and studios away with generous incentives, describing it as a national security threat.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Reuters news agency on how the tariffs would be implemented.
“There is too much uncertainty, and this latest move raises more questions than answers,” said PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore.
“For now, as things stand, costs are likely to increase, and this will inevitably be passed on to consumers,” he said.
The president on Monday, on his same social media platform, also promised “substantial” tariffs on any country that makes its furniture outside the US.
He said he was doing so to make the state of North Carolina “GREAT again”, saying it had “completely lost its furniture business to China, and other Countries”.
The Middle East in 2025 is still a powder keg, a place where dreams of peace get chewed up by the gritty, messy reality of the region. Donald Trump is swinging big with his “peace through strength” slogan, doubling down on his love for Israel. His grand plan? Pump up Israel’s military muscle, hit Iran where it hurts, and get Arab nations to play nice with Israel. Sounds like a neat fix, right? But it’s slammed headfirst into a wall of troubles: the never-ending Palestinian crisis, the boiling rage of people across the region, and the flat-out refusal of countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey to let Israel call the shots. Those recent strikes on Iran’s nuclear plants? They haven’t brought peace; they’ve just cranked up the odds of a full-blown disaster.
Where “Peace Through Strength” Comes From
Trump’s whole Middle East game plan boils down to one idea: flex enough muscle, and diplomacy will follow. He’s got Israel pegged as the region’s anchor, betting that backing it to the hilt while smacking Iran’s nuclear sites will somehow calm the storm. That’s why he’s cheering on Israel’s fights against groups like Hezbollah and Hamas and pushing hard to spread the Abraham Accords. But here’s the kicker; this plan’s all about brute force, not sitting down to talk, and it’s turning a blind eye to the Middle East’s messy politics and deep-rooted feelings. Israel’s dependence on Uncle Sam’s cash and weapons just shows how wobbly this idea is from the start.
This strategy, born from the alliance between America’s hard-right and Israel’s leadership, mistakenly believes military might can forge peace; a brutal approach that ignores the region’s history and heart. By dismissing the people’s realities and internal politics, the plan is inherently fragile. It hasn’t cooled tensions; it’s ignited them, proving you can’t bully your way to calm.
The Palestinian Challenge
The biggest snag in Trump’s big vision is Palestine. The war in Gaza’s been a gut-punch to the region, breaking hearts and making it tough for Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, to buddy up with Israel. Gulf leaders are under fire from their own people; they can’t just sign deals that leave Palestinians in the dust. Without a real ceasefire and a promise to give Palestinians a state of their own, any talk of peace is just hot air. Netanyahu’s crew, egged on by hardliners, keeps betting on bombs over talks, digging everyone into a deeper hole. With no real plan for what’s next in Gaza, the region’s spiraling toward chaos and new waves of defiance.
This war’s not just hurting Israel’s rep in the Middle East; it’s tanking it worldwide. Israel’s operations, with their heavy toll on civilians, have lit a fire under Arab anger and slashed global support for Israel. Even countries that got on board with the Abraham Accords are feeling the heat at home to back off. It’s plain as day: without tackling Palestine head-on, no peace plan’s got a shot. Leaning on military might hasn’t steadied the region; it’s kicked it into a tailspin.
Big players like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt aren’t about to roll over for Israel’s power grab. Saudi Arabia laid it out straight: no Palestinian state, no deal with Israel. Turkey, which used to be on decent terms with Israel, is now one of its loudest critics, thanks to Gaza and Israel’s chummy ties with Greece and Cyprus. Turkey’s bulking up its military and missiles, carving out its own path in the region. Egypt and other Arab states are also holding back, scared of the blowback if they jump on Israel’s bandwagon. This pushback screams one truth: you can’t force peace at gunpoint.
Even Gulf states like the UAE and Bahrain, who signed onto the Abraham Accords, are getting jittery. They’re worried that sticking too close to Israel without progress on Palestine could spark trouble at home. Turkey’s stepping up in Syria and playing peacemaker, trying to cut Israel’s influence down to size. These rivalries show that banking on Israel to run the show doesn’t bring folks together; it splits them apart. Real peace? It’s still a distant dream.
Striking Out on Iran
Those recent hits on Iran’s nuclear sites, part of Trump’s go-hard-or-go-home strategy, didn’t land the way he hoped. Reports say only one of three targets got knocked out, and the others are set to fire back up soon. Iran’s digging in, moving its nuclear work to underground hideouts, proving bombs alone can’t stop them. Worse, these strikes have trashed any chance of Iran trusting talks, jacking up the risk of a bigger fight. Instead of breaking Iran’s spirit, this move’s just made it more stubborn.
The plan’s fallout is chaotic. Fearing a collapsed Iran would mean disaster and refugees, Gulf states are balking at the U.S.-Israel warpath. They’re keeping ties with Tehran to avoid a bigger blowup, proving the region isn’t buying a “peace through strength” doctrine. By juggling relations with both sides, they’re pulling the rug out from under a strategy that puts Israel first and ignores the complex realities on the ground.
The Shaky Ground of the Abraham Accords
The Abraham Accords, once Trump’s shiny trophy from his first term, are wobbling in 2025. They’ve warmed things up between Israel and some Gulf states, but good luck getting Saudi Arabia or Qatar to join without a fix for Palestine. Public fury over Gaza’s bloodshed has Arab leaders walking a tightrope; they can’t afford to get too cozy with Israel without paying a steep political price. This shakiness proves one thing: a plan that bets everything on Israel’s clout can’t pull the region together.
Trying to grow the Accords has hit a brick wall too. Countries like Oman and Qatar, who were once open to chatting, are backing off, squeezed by their own people and the region’s vibe. It’s a loud wake-up call: without real movement on Palestine, the Accords won’t turn into some grand regional love-fest. They’re more like quick deals for cash and military perks, not the deep roots needed for lasting peace. It’s another strike against forcing things through.
Israel’s Lonely Road
Israel’s moves, especially in Gaza, have left it standing alone on the world stage. Even old pals like the European Union are pulling back, though they’re not ready to throw punches. By scoffing at international law with a “rules are for losers” attitude, Israel and the U.S. have dented Israel’s cred as a regional heavyweight. This isolation, plus the crushing cost of war, is wearing down Israel’s staying power.
This global cold shoulder’s also messing with Israel’s ties to big players like China and Russia, who are calling out U.S. and Israeli military stances while eyeing their own slice of the Middle East pie. This global rivalry, paired with fading support for Israel in world forums, has kneecapped its regional swagger. Without legitimacy at home or abroad, a plan built on firepower can’t deliver lasting peace. It’s a screaming case for real diplomacy and regional teamwork.
Inside Israel, Netanyahu’s got a firestorm on his hands. Failing to lock in a full Gaza ceasefire or free all hostages has folks fed up, exposing deep cracks in the country. Israel’s die-hard belief that guns can bring peace doesn’t match the region’s reality. The war’s brutal cost, for Palestinians and Israelis alike, shows this road’s a dead end. Without a clear plan for Gaza’s future or a legit Palestinian setup, Israel’s just asking for more trouble and upheaval.
These homegrown woes are tangled up with money and social struggles. Crazy-high war spending, shrinking foreign cash due to global isolation, and political knife-fights between hardliners and moderates are tying Netanyahu’s hands. This mess, plus pushback from the region and the world, shows that Israel running the show isn’t just a long shot; it’s a one-way ticket to more chaos.
Trump’s big dream for Middle East peace, riding on Israel’s military might and a chokehold on Iran, has gone up in smoke because it ignored the real issues—Palestine above all. This muscle-over-talks approach hasn’t brought the region together; it’s lit a match under people’s anger and sparked pushback from local governments. Hitting Iran might’ve scored a few points for a minute, but it didn’t stop their nuclear plans; it just killed any hope of sitting down to talk. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, by saying no to Israel’s grip, have made it crystal clear: peace won’t happen without justice and respect for Palestinian rights. Israel’s growing loneliness, the wobbly Abraham Accords, and its own internal fights all shout that “peace through strength” has only churned up more trouble. A calm, steady Middle East needs real diplomacy, respect for people’s rights, and the guts to face the root of the fight, not just leaning on force and control.
Reporting from Sacramento — An Assembly panel on Tuesday recommended the confirmation of Los Angeles Rep. Xavier Becerra as state attorney general after the nominee pledged to aggressively defend state policies on immigration, civil rights and the environment against potential attacks by President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration.
Before the panel’s 6-3 vote in favor of confirmation, with all Republicans opposed, Co-Chairman Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles) told Becerra that he expects the state will become involved in a “long and ferocious and hard-fought legal war” with the federal government.
“Now more than ever we need an attorney general who will defend our values and stand up to the next administration’s backward vision for America,” Jones-Sawyer said during the hearing, denouncing Trump’s campaign rhetoric as “xenophobic.”
Gov. Jerry Brown introduced Becerra at the two-hour hearing, warning that “there are big battles ahead” and calling his nominee an “outstanding candidate that can certainly champion the causes we believe in.”
The nomination still must be acted on by the full Assembly, which is scheduled to vote Friday, as well as the Senate. The Senate Rules Committee will hold a confirmation hearing Jan. 18.
Becerra was questioned for more than an hour by members of the Assembly Special Committee on the Office of the Attorney General. He told them he is ready to fight for the state’s values. He told the panel that as the son of hardworking immigrants, he is committed to fighting any federal policy that takes away the rights of Californians who are playing by the rules.
“As California’s chief law enforcement officer and legal advocate, I am going to be ready to deploy those values and life lessons to advance and defend the rights — big and small — of all Californians,” Becerra told the panel. “Everyone who plays by California’s rules deserves to know, ‘We’ve got your back.’ ”
The 12-term congressman said he supports the state’s policies protecting the environment and civil rights. He said he opposes racial profiling by police and the stop-and-frisk policies of other cities.
With Trump proposing mass deportations and registration of immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries, Becerra said, “the head winds from outside of California could threaten the basic rights of so many families like the one I grew up in.”
“At risk is the notion that anyone who, like my parents and yours, works hard and builds this country can dream to own their own home, send their kids to college, earn a dignified retirement,” he said.
Asked about threats of cuts in federal funding to sanctuary cities, Becerra said cities will not protect violent criminals.
“‘Sanctuary’ is simply saying we are not going to go out there and do the bidding of an aggressive immigration enforcement agency.”
Becerra noted that federal law, on occasion, preempts state law, but he said he will be vigilant in ensuring that the state’s laws are preserved to the extent possible.
“If we have laws in place, we have every right to protect those laws,” Becerra said. “And while the federal government has preemption authority in most cases against the state for matters that are federal in nature, the federal government would have to prove that what it’s doing is federal in nature and that it isn’t violating the state’s rights to enact laws that improve the welfare of its people.
“You will find me being as aggressive as possible working with all of you to figure out ways that we can make sure there is no federal intrusion in areas that are really left to the state in the U.S. Constitution.”
Republican members called on Becerra to make fighting crime his top priority and said they had concerns about the attorney general failing to defend the rights of gun owners and religious institutions facing interference by the state government.
Assemblyman James Gallagher (R-Plumas Lake) complained about religious nonprofits being told by the state they must inform clients of the availability of abortion services even if it is against their beliefs.
Becerra tried to lighten the mood in the face of deeply philosophical questions.
“You’re getting into some subjects that probably require a few beers,” Becerra said, offering to buy Gallagher a round so they could talk about weighty issues.
Some 50 people testified, with support coming from groups such as the Sierra Club, Los Angeles Police Protective League, Equality California and several labor unions. Only two people objected to the nomination, including an American Independent Party member who questioned whether Becerra had enough years serving as an attorney to be qualified.
Craig DeLuz of the Firearms Policy Coalition said his group wants a state attorney general who can protect the constitutional rights of gun owners.
“Unfortunately, based on the record, we simply do not believe that this nominee is capable of doing that,” DeLuz told the panel.
The National Rifle Assn. also opposed Becerra in a letter.
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Who’s in and who’s out in the race to replace Rep. Xavier Becerra in Congress
Carlos Alcaraz arrived at the U.S. Open on Monday with a new hairdo.
Actually, he arrived at Flushing Meadows with no hairdo — as in no hair at all, aside from some teeny, tiny specks on his head that come to a widow’s peak.
The world’s No. 2-ranked player was asked about his shocking new look following his 6-4, 7-5, 6-4 victory over Opelka. Alcaraz told reporters that he had simply wanted a haircut before the tournament, but one of his brothers “misunderstood” how to use the clippers.
The resulting mess, he said, left him with no choice but to start over with a clean pate.
“The only way to fix it is just shave it off,” a casual Alcaraz said.
Alcaraz isn’t bothered by the situation. As he reminded the reporters, hair grows back.
“I’m not really into, you know, the hair at all,” Alcaraz said. “So I’m the guy who thinks like, OK, the hair grows, you know? And then [in] a few days it’s gonna be already OK, I guess.”
Alcaraz apparently is not kidding about the speed at which his hair grows. He mentioned it to reporters during the Australian Open, after arriving in toasty Melbourne with shorter locks than usual.
Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz serves during a practice session ahead of the Australian Open on Jan. 9 in Melbourne.
(Mark Baker / Associated Press)
“I discussed with my barber that when I get a haircut… three days later it’s grown out,” Alcaraz said in Melbourne. “So I have to go more often.”
Alcaraz unintentionally provided a demonstration during the French Open, where he first sported a rather bushy look during his first-round win over Giulio Zeppieri on May 26.
Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz celebrates after winning a point during his first-round French Open match against Italy’s Giulio Zeppieri on May 26 in Paris.
(Thibault Camus / Associated Press)
Two days later, however, Alcaraz returned to the court for his second-round match against Nuno Borges with a ‘do possibly (but probably not) inspired by Moe Howard from the “Three Stooges.” Alcaraz told befuddled reporters after the match that he “had to do something” about his hair and beard, so he flew in his personal barber.
Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz returns the ball to Portugal’s Nuno Borges during their second-round match of the French Open on May 28 in Paris.
(Christophe Ena / Associated Press)
A mere 11 days later, when Alcaraz defeated Jannik Sinner in the final match for his fifth major championship, he was back to looking like this:
Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz celebrates after defeating Italy’s Jannik Sinner in the French Open final June 8 in Paris.
(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)
So if Alcaraz happens to win the U.S. Open championship, like he did in 2022, he might have a lengthy mane while hoisting the trophy at Arthur Ashe Stadium at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
In the meantime, though, some people might continue to respond to his haircut the way U.S. player Frances Tiafoe did when asked about it by a reporter following his first-round victory over Yoshihito Nishioka.
“It’s definitely terrible,” Tiafoe said with a laugh. “He’s my guy, though. It’s funny. I looked at him and I was like, ‘I guess you’re aerodynamic’ … I don’t know who told him to do that, but it’s terrible. From a guy who gets haircuts week in, week out and prides myself on good haircuts, it’s horrendous.”
Alcaraz also laughed when he was asked about Tiafoe’s comment.
“I know he’s lying,” Alcaraz said. “He likes the haircut. He likes it, he told me.”
Others might react like Irish golfer Rory McIlroy, who expressed his full support for the radical change atop Alcaraz’s head while meeting with the Spaniard earlier Monday.
“I like it,” McIlroy told him. “It’s good. It’s a good look.”
Overall, Alcaraz told reporters, reactions have been mixed — and he really doesn’t care either way.
“Some people like it. Some people don’t like it,” he said. “To be honest, I’m just laughing about the reaction of the people. It is what it is. So I can’t do anything else right now, so I’m just laughing about everything that they are talking about my haircut.”
United States President Donald Trump has announced his government will seek the death penalty in every murder case that unfolds in Washington, DC, as part of his crackdown on crime in the country’s capital.
Trump made the announcement in the midst of a Labor Day-themed meeting of his cabinet on Tuesday as he discussed a range of issues, from weapons sales to the rising cost of living.
“Anybody murders something in the capital: capital punishment. Capital capital punishment,” Trump said, seeming to relish the wordplay.
“If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington, DC, we’re going to be seeking the death penalty. And that’s a very strong preventative, and everybody that’s heard it agrees with it.”
Trump then acknowledged that the policy would likely be controversial, but he pledged to forge onwards.
“I don’t know if we’re ready for it in this country, but we have no choice,” Trump said. “States are gonna have to make their own decision.”
Washington, DC, occupies a unique position in the US. The US Constitution defined the capital as a federal district as opposed to a state or a city within a surrounding state.
Elsewhere in the country, most murder cases are prosecuted by state or local authorities unless they rise to the level of a federal crime.
But in Washington, DC, the US Attorney’s Office – a federal prosecutor’s office under the Department of Justice – prosecutes nearly all violent crimes.
The administration of former President Joe Biden had backed away from the death penalty. Under the Democrat’s leadership, the Justice Department ordered a moratorium that paused capital punishment as it reviewed its policies.
Biden himself campaigned on the promise that he would “eliminate the death penalty”, arguing that more than 160 people who were executed from 1973 to 2020 were later exonerated.
“Because we cannot ensure we get death penalty cases right every time, Biden will work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example,” Biden’s team wrote on his 2020 campaign website.
While Biden ultimately did not eliminate the federal death penalty, in one of his final acts as president, he commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row.
In a statement in December, he anticipated that a second Trump administration would pursue the death penalty for federal cases.
“In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted,” Biden wrote.
But when Trump took office for a second term on January 20, one of his first executive orders was to “restore” the death penalty.
“Capital punishment is an essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes and acts of lethal violence against American citizens,” Trump wrote in the order.
“Our Founders knew well that only capital punishment can bring justice and restore order in response to such evil.”
The Republican leader had campaigned for re-election on a platform that promised a crackdown on crime and immigration, sometimes conflating the two despite evidence that undocumented people commit fewer crimes than US-born citizens.
In the days leading up to his inauguration, Trump doubled down on that pledge, denouncing Biden for his decision to commute the majority of incarcerated people on federal death row.
“As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters,” Trump wrote on his platform Truth Social. “We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!”
Trump has repeatedly pushed for the increased use of the death penalty in the seven months since, including during an address to a joint session of Congress in March.
In that speech, he called on Congress to pass a law to make the death penalty a mandatory sentence for the murder of a law enforcement officer in the US.
During his first term, from 2017 to 2021, Trump gained a reputation for accelerating the use of capital punishment on the federal level.
While federal executions are rare, the first Trump administration conducted 13 of the 16 executions that have taken place since 1976, the year the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty.
The only other president to carry out capital punishment during that time was a fellow Republican, George W Bush. His administration oversaw three federal executions.
Critics fear a similar uptick in death penalty cases during Trump’s second term.
Public support for capital punishment has been steadily declining over the past decade, according to surveys. The research firm Gallup found that, as of 2024, a narrow majority of Americans – 53 percent – were in favour of the death penalty, down from 63 percent a decade earlier.
Trump’s call to apply the death penalty to all murder cases in Washington, DC, coincides with his controversial push to crack down on crime in the capital city.
That comes despite data from the Metropolitan Police Department that show violent crime in the capital hit a 30-year low in 2024, a statistic shared by the Justice Department in a statement in January.
Homicides, it added, were down by 32 percent over the previous year.
But Trump has maintained that crime fell only when he deployed more than 2,000 armed National Guard troops to patrol the city this month.
“Crime in DC was the worst ever in history. And now over the last 13 days, we’ve worked so hard and we’ve taken so many – and there are many left – but we’ve taken so many criminals. Over a thousand,” Trump said at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting.
He also claimed – without evidence – that the local government in Washington, DC, gave “false numbers” in its crime reporting.
“What they did is they issued numbers: ‘It’s the best in 30 years.’ Not the best. It’s the worst. It’s the worst,” Trump said. “And they gave phoney numbers.”
Just a day before, Trump signed an executive order to develop a new unit within the National Guard “to ensure public safety and order in the Nation’s capital”.
But under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the federal government is largely prohibited from using military forces for domestic law enforcement except in cases of disasters or major public emergencies.
Trump has described crime in Washington, DC, as a national emergency although local leaders have disputed that assertion.
At several points during Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, he defended his strong-arm approach to law enforcement as necessary, even if it earns him criticisms for being a “dictator”.
“The line is that I’m a dictator, but I stop crime. So a lot of people say, ‘You know, if that’s the case, I’d rather have a dictator.’ But I’m not a dictator. I just know to stop crime,” Trump said.
Closing arguments are due to begin in the national security trial of Jimmy Lai, 77, a fierce critic of China’s Communist Party.
United States President Donald Trump has renewed his promise to “save” jailed Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai, who is on trial for alleged national security crimes over his pro-democracy activism and antipathy towards China’s Communist Party.
“I’m going to do everything I can to save him. I’m going to do everything … His name has already entered the circle of things that we’re talking about, and we’ll see what we can do,” Trump told Fox News Radio in the US.
Trump’s remarks came as closing arguments in Lai’s high-profile trial.
Closing arguments have been pushed from Friday to Monday after Lai’s lawyer said he had experienced heart palpitations.
The delay marks the second in as many days, after Hong Kong courts were closed due to bad weather.
Trump previously pledged to rescue Lai during an interview last October, just weeks before his election as president, and had said he would “100 percent get him out”.
Lai is one of the most prominent Hong Kongers to be charged under the city’s draconian 2020 national security law, and his cause has made international headlines.
The 77-year-old is a longtime opponent of China’s Communist Party thanks to his ownership of Apple Daily, a now-shuttered pro-democracy tabloid newspaper.
Thank you, President Trump, for your support for Jimmy Lai at this critical time.
“I’m going to do everything I can to save [Jimmy Lai]. I’m going to do everything…His name has already entered the circle of things that we’re talking about, and we’ll see what we can do. I… pic.twitter.com/EmscQHYQmX
— #FreeJimmyLai (@SupportJimmyLai) August 14, 2025
He is facing two counts of “colluding with foreign forces” and a separate charge of sedition in the long-running national security trial that began in December 2023.
If found guilty, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. He has always protested his innocence.
Lai was first arrested in 2020, just months after Beijing imposed the new national security law on Hong Kong, which criminalised the city’s pro-democracy movement and categorised public protests as acts of secession, subversion and terrorism.
The law was later expanded in 2024 to include further crimes such as espionage and sabotage.
Lai has been in detention continuously since December 2020 and is serving separate prison sentences for participating in a banned candlelight vigil and committing “fraud” on an office lease agreement.
He has spent more than 1,600 days in solitary confinement, according to the United Kingdom-based Hong Kong Watch, despite his age and health complications.
Lai was also denied the lawyer of his choice during trial and access to independent medical care.
A verdict in his trial is expected within days.
A SAVVY mum has shared a “genius” trick to guarantee there are no tears when applying sun cream.
Not only does it make the process much more fun for youngsters, but if your little one hates having sun cream applied, then you’ll need to check this out.
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With this simple tip, which has been hailed the “best sun cream hack ever,” you’ll need an unexpected kitchen essential.
Posting on social media, Gemma McCartan, a mum-of-two and full-time content creator from the UK, gave her followers a close-up look at her trick, which involves using spoons when applying spray sun cream.
Alongside her short video, the influencer beamed: “The best sun cream hack for kids EVER.”
She then said: “To the mum who posted this, I love you.”
Instead of wrestling her son Max to close his eyes so she could apply the spray sun cream to his face, the youngster instead put two spoons over his eyes.
Gemma was then able to spray his face with sun cream, without it getting in his eyes and causing any tears.
Moments after, the woman’s daughter then did the same, yet again ensuring a seamless application with no irritation of the eyes, whilst at the same time, making the often agonising process much more exciting.
Thrilled with her hack, Gemma later wrote: “It’s been a game changer.”
Clearly beaming with the simple trick, the mother added: “It’s made my day, I had the kids crying on holiday until we found this hack.”
Gemma’s TikTok clip, which was posted under the username @gemmamccartan, has clearly left many open-mouthed, as it has quickly racked up 200,800 views.
Not only this, but it’s also amassed 2,074 likes and 138 comments.
Parents were impressed with the “genius” trick and many thought it was a “great” idea.
One person said: “What a brilliant idea.”
Another added: “That is genius.”
My son has allergies so this is amazing
Gemma McCartan
Whilst a third commented: “Not only practical, it gives the kids a feeling of control over what’s about to happen, so they are more willing to cooperate. Great idea.”
Meanwhile, someone else gushed: “Best idea ever for sun cream.”
Dermatologist and skincare enthusiast Andrea Suarez – known as Dr Dray – revealed why you should wear suncream.
The one thing you can do that will make the biggest difference – and this matters for all ages – is protecting your skin from the sun, Andrea stressed.
“The vast majority of external aging is due to exposure to ultraviolet radiation,” she continued, not because you’re “not using some jazzy serum or layering 90 different things on your face everyday”.
“If you’re not doing in your 20s, get on that now.”
But she said the use of sun cream alone doesn’t go far enough. Andrea urged that you also wear sun-protective clothing like broad-brimmed hats and long sleeves, on top of not staying out too long in the sun.
Doing this over your lifetime – and all year, not just during the summer or on sunny days – “will reduce the visible signs of photoageing”, Andrea said.
Those are wrinkles, muddled pigmentation and sagging skin.
However, at the same time, one user wrote: “Should have cream on eyelids too as they can burn, I know it stings if it gets in eyes but it’s such a sensitive area so best to have full coverage.”
To this, Gemma wrote back and explained: “Yes but my son has allergies so this is amazing.”
Not only this, but another person asked: “Won’t they get a burnt line where the handles are?”
In response, Gemma confirmed that instead of spraying the sun cream on her youngster’s eyelids, after the fun part, she then uses her finger for a more controlled application, as she acknowledged: “I use my finger to do the sides and lids.”
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European leaders have welcomed plans by United States President Donald Trump to hold talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on ending the war in Ukraine, but called for continued support for Kyiv and pressure on Moscow to achieve a just and lasting peace.
The statement by France, Italy, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and the European Commission late on Saturday came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy insisted that Kyiv will not surrender land to Russia to buy peace.
Trump, who has promised to end the three-year war, plans to meet Putin in Alaska on Friday, saying the parties were close to a deal that could resolve the conflict.
Details of a potential agreement have not been announced, but Trump said it would involve “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both”. It could require Ukraine to surrender significant parts of its territory, an outcome Zelenskyy and his European allies say would only encourage Russian aggression.
The European leaders, in their joint statement, stressed their belief that the only approach to end the war successfully required active diplomacy, support for Ukraine, as well as pressure on Russia.
They also said any diplomatic solution to the war must protect Ukraine’s and Europe’s security interests.
“We agree that these vital interests include the need for robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” they said, adding that “the path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine.”
The leaders said they were ready to help diplomatically and promised to maintain their “substantial military and financial support for Ukraine”.
“We underline our unwavering commitment to the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” they said, adding: “We continue to stand firmly alongside Ukraine.”
The statement came after US Vice President JD Vance met British Foreign Secretary David Lammy and representatives of Ukraine and European allies on Saturday at Chevening House, a country mansion southeast of London, to discuss Trump’s push for peace.
Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, who took part in the talks with European leaders and US officials, said Ukraine was grateful for their constructive approach.
“A ceasefire is necessary – but the front line is not a border,” Yermak said on X, reiterating Kyiv’s position that it will reject any territorial concessions to Russia.
Yermak also thanked Vance for “respecting all points of view” and his efforts towards a “reliable peace”.
The Reuters news agency, quoting a European official, said European representatives had put forward a counterproposal, while the Wall Street Journal said the document included demands that a ceasefire must take place before any other steps are taken. According to the Journal, the document also stated that any territorial exchange must be reciprocal, with firm security guarantees.
“You can’t start a process by ceding territory in the middle of fighting,” the newspaper quoted a European negotiator as saying.
There was no immediate comment from the White House on the European counterproposal.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron also spoke earlier in the day and promised to find a “just and lasting peace” in Ukraine, pledging “unwavering support” for Zelenskyy while welcoming Trump’s efforts to end the fighting, according to a spokesperson for Downing Street.
Macron separately stressed the need for Ukraine to play a role in any negotiations.
“Ukraine’s future cannot be decided without the Ukrainians, who have been fighting for their freedom and security for over three years now,” he wrote on X after what he said were calls with Zelenskyy, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Starmer.
“Europeans will also necessarily be part of the solution, as their own security is at stake,” he added.
Meanwhile, Reuters and the NBC News broadcaster, quoting US officials, reported that Trump is open to a trilateral summit with Putin and Zelenskyy. But, for now, the White House is planning a bilateral meeting as requested by the Russian leader, they said.
The summit in Alaska, the far-north territory which Russia sold to the US in 1867, would be the first between sitting US and Russian presidents since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in June 2021.
Nine months after that meeting, Moscow sent troops into Ukraine.
Trump and Putin last sat together in 2019 at a G20 summit meeting in Japan, during Trump’s first term. They have spoken by telephone several times since January, but the US president has failed to broker peace in Ukraine as he promised he could.
Ukraine and the EU have meanwhile pushed back on peace proposals that they view as ceding too much to Putin, whose troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia justifies the war on the grounds of what it calls threats to its security from a Ukrainian pivot towards the West. Kyiv and its Western allies say the invasion is an imperial-style land grab.
Moscow has claimed four Ukrainian regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson – as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed in 2014.
Russian forces do not fully control all the territory in the four regions, and Russia has demanded that Ukraine pull out its troops from the parts that it still controls.
Ukraine says its troops still have a small foothold in Russia’s Kursk region, a year after they crossed the border to try to gain leverage in any negotiations.
Russia said it had expelled Ukrainian troops from Kursk in April.
Fierce fighting meanwhile continues to rage along the more than 1,000-km (620-mile) front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russian forces hold about a fifth of the country’s territory.
Russian troops are slowly advancing in Ukraine’s east, but their summer offensive has so far failed to achieve a major breakthrough, Ukrainian military analysts say.
Ukrainians remain defiant.
“Not a single serviceman will agree to cede territory, to pull out troops from Ukrainian territories,” Olesia Petritska, 51, told Reuters as she gestured to hundreds of small Ukrainian flags in the Kyiv central square commemorating fallen soldiers.
BOSTON — Casting his life as an embodiment of the nation’s patriotism and principles, Sen. John F. Kerry vowed Thursday night to rebuild alliances and restore “trust and credibility to the White House” as he concluded the Democratic National Convention with a sweeping account of his personal story.
Seconds into his 45-minute speech, Kerry summed up the theme of the four-day event and the message he planned to carry into the fall campaign against President Bush.
“We’re here tonight united in one purpose,” he said, speaking in a hometown convention hall awash in red, white and blue. “To make America stronger at home and respected in the world.”
Questioning the strength of the economy, Kerry said, “We can do better, and we will.” Addressing terrorists around the world, he said, “You will lose and we will win.”
The senator from Massachusetts, unfamiliar to millions of voters despite more than two years of steady campaigning, had the challenge of delivering the most important speech of his 22-year political career. While polls have showed many voters are dissatisfied with Bush, many are not yet convinced of Kerry’s ability to lead the nation.
His closing speech to the convention and the roof-shaking response sent the nominee off to a battle against Bush that polls indicated had been a virtual dead heat for months.
Kerry and his running mate, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, are to set out today on a two-week, cross-country campaign swing that takes them through 21 states via plane, train, bus and boat.
After spending the week out of sight at his Texas ranch, Bush plans to resume his campaign today with a bus tour through four swing states, and Vice President Dick Cheney is to continue his campaigning in the West.
Kerry, working his way through a text he spent weeks drafting in longhand, stirred the 4,000-plus convention delegates with an address that was poetic in parts and blunt in others, broad in biography but stinting in policy details.
“I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war,” Kerry said, reminding the audience of his military experience in Vietnam. “I will have a vice president who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a secretary of defense who will listen to the best advice of the military leaders. And will appoint an attorney general who will uphold the Constitution of the United States.”
On a night that bristled with martial talk and patriotic imagery, Kerry also sought to seize back the symbolism of the Stars and Stripes, which Republicans captured as their political totem in the 1988 presidential campaign, when they used patriotism as an issue to defeat the last Democratic nominee from Massachusetts, former Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.
Kerry pointed to a huge American flag painted overhead, and recalled the one that flew tattered from the gun turret on his aluminum Swift boat in Vietnam. “That flag doesn’t belong to any president,” Kerry said to roars, which turned to chants of “U.S.A! U.S.A!”
“It doesn’t belong to any ideology,” Kerry shouted. “It doesn’t belong to any party. It belongs to all the American people.” Conjuring memories of World War II, the Cold War and the civil rights movement — epochal events that have shaped the country, — Kerry said: “We have it in our power to change the world again. But only if we are true to our ideals — and that starts by telling the truth to the American people.”
Turning around a line from Bush’s 2000 campaign, Kerry continued, “That is my first pledge to you tonight: As president, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House.”
The response was ear-splitting inside the FleetCenter arena, just a few miles from Kerry’s residence on elegant Beacon Hill. People hollered as they filled the aisles to capacity, perched on ledges, hung over railings and sat on the floor of balconies, their legs dangling over the edge. Outside, hundreds more were turned away under the fire marshal’s order.
Kerry’s speech was intended to be more personal than policy-oriented, reflecting a strategic sense that it was most important for voters to develop a gut-level sense of the Democratic nominee.
So even as he mentioned his proposals for job creation, pledged to expand the availability of healthcare and promised a middle-class tax cut, the address broke no new policy ground.
Instead, Kerry sought to wrap his principles in a narrative of his 60 years.
He spoke of his decorated military service as a Navy lieutenant in the Vietnam War. “I know what kids go through when they are carrying an M-16 in a dangerous place and they can’t tell friend from foe,” he said.
“I know what they go through when they’re on patrol at night and they don’t know what’s coming around the next bend. I know what it’s like to write letters home telling your family everything’s all right when you’re just not sure that that’s true.”
As president, he said, he would put into practice the lessons he learned from that unpopular war. “Before you go to battle, you have to be able to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say, ‘I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm’s way.’ ”
Kerry cracked the book on earlier chapters in his life, speaking of his parents, the Cub Scouts and “my first model airplane, my first baseball mitt and my first bicycle.”
“What I learned has stayed with me for a lifetime,” he said of living in occupied Berlin, where his father worked in the Foreign Service. “I saw the gratitude of people toward the United States for what we have done … I learned what it meant to be America at our best. I learned the pride of our freedom. And I am determined now to restore that pride to all who look to America.”
He was vague about Iraq, reflecting the political bind he faced. Kerry voted to support the March 2003 invasion, which many Democrats opposed. Since then he has criticized Bush’s conduct of the war.
Kerry reiterated his call to reduce the U.S. cost in lives and aid by enlisting help from the country’s allies, but he said that could never come about under Bush.
“That won’t happen until we have a president who restores America’s respect and leadership so we don’t have to go it alone in the world,” Kerry said. “And we need to rebuild our alliances so we can get the terrorists before they get us.”
Much of the speech was an effort to turn away the criticisms that Republicans had leveled in tens of millions of dollars in advertising since Kerry clinched the Democratic nomination in March — that he was outside the mainstream, flip-flopped on issues and lacked the toughness to be commander in chief.
Latching on to a phrase often used by Bush and Cheney, Kerry sought to define “family values” in terms of economic stability.
“We value jobs where, when you put in a week’s work, you can actually pay your bills, provide for your children, lift up the quality of your life,” Kerry said. “We value an America where the middle class is not being squeezed, but doing better.”
Kerry said he would repeal the Bush tax cuts for individuals making more than $200,000 a year, “so we can invest in healthcare, education and job creation.”
He pledged to close the tax loopholes that reward companies for shipping jobs overseas, and vowed to cut the federal deficit in half in four years by imposing a “pay-as-you-go” system of federal budgeting.
He promised he would not raise taxes on middle-class Americans, calling that a false charge put out by Republicans. “Let me say straight out what I will do as president: I will cut middle-class taxes. I will reduce the burden on small businesses.”
Other issues such as healthcare and energy received passing mention. Kerry drew one of his biggest ovations by declaring: “I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation — not the Saudi royal family.”
Kerry has made energy independence a central part of his domestic platform, calling for promotion of alternative and renewable energy sources so that by 2020, Americans would be getting 20% of their electricity from those fuels. He also has proposed a $20-billion fund to research new forms of energy.
Kerry presented vague details of his healthcare plan. He said it would allow Americans to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada and allow them to select their own doctors under any reform plan he approved.
Kerry has proposed extending coverage to almost three-fourths of uninsured Americans by allowing the working poor to obtain insurance through the existing federal-state partnership that covers children in their families. He would also seek to reduce insurance premiums for those with insurance by having the federal government assume the cost of the most expensive cases.
On foreign policy, Kerry pledged to wage war only as a last resort. But he said, “Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and a certain response. I never will never give any nation or any institution a veto over our national security. And I will build a stronger American military.”
He acknowledged those who had criticized him “for seeing complexities.”
“And I do,” he said. “Because some issues just aren’t all that simple.”
Swiping at Bush, Kerry went on: “Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn’t make it so. Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn’t make it so. And proclaiming ‘mission accomplished’ certainly doesn’t make it so.”’
As president, Kerry said, he would “not evade or equivocate,” but would immediately adopt the recommendations of the 9/11 commission to revamp the nation’s foreign policy and restructure its intelligence services.
Even before Kerry spoke, the last night of the Democrats’ four-day gathering included some of the convention’s most pointed attacks on Bush’s handling of terrorism and the war in Iraq. One after another, speakers tore into the president’s credibility and blamed him for souring relations with U.S. allies.
“Because we waged the war in Iraq virtually alone, we are responsible for the aftermath virtually alone,” said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, who is one of Kerry’s closest foreign policy advisors. “And the price is clear: Nearly 90 percent of the troops and the casualties are American. And because the intelligence was hyped to justify going to war, America’s credibility and security have suffered a terrible blow.”
In one of the few departures from the week’s script, home-state Rep. Barney Frank delivered an impassioned defense of gay marriage.
“It is the Democratic Party — as opposed to our very right-wing Republican opponents — who support that agenda … of allowing us to marry, of allowing us to go forward as human beings with the rights of everyone else,” said Frank, who is openly gay and went beyond remarks vetted by the Kerry campaign.
The Massachusetts congressman, however, was consigned to an early speaking slot, well before the national television networks tuned in for Kerry’s speech.
The convention ended on the positive note Kerry had promised. He challenged Bush to join him in waging their campaigns as “optimists, not just opponents.”
Invoking the nation’s spirit of discovery — the first flight at Kitty Hawk, man’s mission to the moon, the invention of the computer chip — Kerry put forth a lyrical challenge: “What if?”
“What if we find a breakthrough to cure Parkinson’s, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and AIDS? What if we have a president who believes in science, so we can unleash the wonders of discovery like stem-cell research to treat illness and save millions of lives?
“What if we … make sure all our children are safe in the afternoons after school? And what if we have a leadership that’s as good as the American dream, so that bigotry and hatred never again steal the hope and future of any American?”
Times staff writers Michael Finnegan, Janet Hook, Maria L. La Ganga, Robert Schiff and Stephen W. Stromberg contributed to this report.
*
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Politics vs. other stuff
Americans have more than politics on their minds these days. The top five Yahoo searches so far this week: Tour de France, Maria Sharapova, right, Britney Spears, NASCAR, and Usher. (The political satire Web cartoon at JibJab.com that lampoons President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry was No. 6, but the real Kerry and the Democrats didn’t crack the top 15.)
Source: Yahoo
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Convening on a budget
Although convention costs had risen steadily since 1984 as both parties’ political fests grew more elaborate, this year the Democrats reversed the trend. Their convention costs:
1984: $18.1 million
1988: $26.7 million
1992: $38.3 million
1996: $47.4 million
2000: $85.4 million
2004: $64.4 million
SOURCE: Campaign Finance Institute
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Safety team
Securing the convention involved no fewer than 27 agencies. In addition to biggies such as the Boston police and the Secret Service, those keeping politicians and others safe included: Massachusetts Turnpike Authority; North American Aerospace Defense Command; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; U.S. Northern Command; Massachusetts Executive Office of Transportation and Construction.
SOURCE: United States Secret Service
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History on the block
Scores of vintage convention items have been put up for auction on EBay. Among them:
* A Georgia state seal from the 1912 Democratic National Convention, at $1,999.99
* A 2000 tambourine, right, that reads “Tipper Rocks,” at $9.99
* $3,000 worth of domain names in the event of a second vote recount, including UncountedVote.com
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Secret Service’s secret out
Kerry and Edwards enjoy at least one trapping of the presidency and vice presidency — Secret Service protection and cool code names.
John Kerry Minuteman
John Edwards Speedway
Teresa Heinz Kerry Mahogany
SOURCE: National Journal
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Plugged In
The Democratic National Convention website has turned into a virtual hot spot. Dems2004.org has received 50 million hits during the convention this week — more Monday and Tuesday alone than during the entire 2000 event in Los Angeles. There were 341,700 requests for live video streams in the 24-hour period after Sen. John Edwards’ speech.
SOURCE: Democratic National Convention Committee
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Eventually, Nov. 2
The Democratic National Convention has come and gone. The GOP’s is just weeks away — from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 in New York City. After that, debates will await:
Kerry vs. Bush: Sept. 30 in Miami;
Oct. 8 in St. Louis; Oct. 13 in Tempe, Ariz.
Edwards vs. Cheney: Oct. 5 in Cleveland
*
A TALE OF RESCUE
“The hamster was never quite right after that.”
ALEXANDRA KERRY
Telling the Democratic National Convention about how her father, Sen. John F. Kerry, did CPR on a family pet that had fallen overboard.
SACRAMENTO — Voters’ approval Tuesday of an open primary system, combined with their 2008 decision to strip state lawmakers of the power to draw their own election districts, will reshape California politics. The question is: How?
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who backed both moves, is confident that state elections will become more daunting for the rigid partisans he says plague Sacramento. Other politicians and election strategists are not so sure.
The new system will put candidates of all political stripes on a single ballot, and all voters will be able to participate. The top two vote-getters in a given contest — regardless of political affiliation — will advance to the general election. Supporters say that once the system is in place and voting districts have been redrawn outside of the Legislature, candidates will have no choice but to move to the middle as they compete for voters who are more politically diverse.
“Coupled with redistricting, Proposition 14 will change the political landscape in California — finally giving voters the power to truly hold politicians accountable,” Schwarzenegger said after declaring victory late Tuesday. Proposition 14 passed with 54.2% of the vote.
But party leaders, as well as some political analysts and election experts — admittedly with a vested interest in the status quo — offer a number of reasons that Proposition 14 could do the opposite of what Schwarzenegger suggests.
They say it could push California back to the days when candidates were picked by party bosses in smoke-filled rooms and send the cost of campaigns sky-high, giving special interests more power and wealthy candidates more of an advantage. The new system could even further disenfranchise candidates who are trying to break free of the special interests that have a grip on government, they say.
“This is a process that lends itself to back-room dealing, to big decisions being made by small groups of people,” said California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring.
In cases where two strong Republicans are running against one another, he said, party leaders may pressure one of them out of the race to avoid any risk of splitting the vote and creating an opportunity for other candidates to advance.
“We’ll be forced to turn to nominating conventions,” Nehring said.
Under his scenario, instead of millions of registered Republicans choosing the GOP’s gubernatorial candidate, the task would fall to a relative handful of party loyalists.
Other opponents say the new system is possibly unconstitutional, and they are scrambling to assess their options to challenge it in court.
Elections expert Alan Clayton said open primaries will make some campaigns more costly. Currently, the winner of a partisan primary in a safely drawn district doesn’t face a big expense in the general election, Clayton said , and that scenario may no longer be possible in some districts.
A new emphasis on money could give an advantage to wealthy candidates and hurt minority contenders with more limited funds, said Clayton, who represented groups, including the Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Assn., in the redistricting process.
State Democratic Party Chairman John Burton said anything that requires more fundraising is not good for state politics: It “means there’s more money that will have to be raised, and that doesn’t come from little old ladies, that comes from special interests.”
The new process could also disenfranchise candidates from smaller political parties, so those groups are weighing a possible court challenge, said Cres Vellucci, a spokesman for the Green Party of California.
“We would not be on the November ballot in the top two, and that’s the election that counts,” Vellucci said. “People don’t vote in the primaries. They vote in the majors.”
An analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies concluded recently that more than a third of all state legislative and congressional races could produce runoffs between two members of the same party and that nearly all of those races would feature two Democrats.
The Los Angeles-based group said there may be some races in which a “top two, same party” general election contest could be close enough that voters from another party, or decline-to-state voters, could swing the election to the more moderate candidate.
Backers of the open primary measure said the current system promotes partisan bickering that caused last year’s state budget to be delayed by weeks, forcing officials to stop cash payments to vendors and issue IOUs.
“For too long, running for office in California has meant pandering to your party’s narrow base, and it’s just to win that primary, and then you are basically a shoo-in,” said Jeannine English, state leader with AARP. The result, she said, is “elected officials who are locked into inflexible ideological positions that make it impossible for them to work together for solutions to get California back on track.”
But, there is some skepticism among political scientists, including Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A.
“I don’t think Proposition 14 is going to make a fundamental difference in candidates elected and whether there will be a less polarized Sacramento,” said Regalado, who foresees unions and political parties continuing to elect their favorites. But the effect could be magnified when combined with the change in redistricting.
Two years ago, state voters gave the job of drawing legislative districts to a panel of citizens: five Democrats, five Republicans and four members of neither main party. That panel is to be picked by year’s end.
David Ellison’s Skydance Media pledged to abandon all diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Paramount Global in an attempt to win government approval for its $8-billion merger.
Paramount already had scaled back diversity programs earlier this year. In a Tuesday letter to Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, Skydance said it would go further to cancel diversity efforts.
“Paramount no longer will maintain an Office of Global Inclusion and will not have any teams or individual roles focused on DEI,” Stephanie Kyoko McKinnon, Skydance general counsel, wrote in the three-page letter to Carr. The appointee of President Trump, in one of his first moves as chair, dismantled the agency’s diversity programs and called on companies to do the same.
Kyoko McKinnon said Paramount will remove “references to DEI in its public messaging, including on its websites and social media,” along with culling DEI language in “internal messaging and training materials.”
Last week, Ellison met with Carr to press his case that Skydance and its backer RedBird Capital Partners would be strong stewards of Paramount, which includes CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, BET and the Melrose Avenue movie studio, Paramount Pictures. Skydance needs Carr’s approval for the merger and the transfer of the CBS television station licenses to the Ellison family.
Skydance separately tackled persistent complaints by conservatives about alleged news bias at “60 Minutes” and other programs.
Ellison’s firm pledged to “promote transparency and increased accountability” at CBS News. The company said it would install an ombudsman, reporting to the president of Paramount, “to receive and evaluate any complaints of bias or other concerns involving CBS” for at least two years.
Trump’s ire over edits of a “60 Minutes” Kamala Harris interview last fall nearly derailed Skydance’s takeover of Paramount. Carr opened an inquiry into alleged news distortion after Trump sued CBS in federal court in Texas.
Earlier this month, Paramount reached a $16-million settlement with Trump to resolve the dispute that caused deep divisions within Paramount and prompted high-level CBS departures. Trump boasted Tuesday on Truth Social that he anticipates receiving an additional $20 million worth of advertising and PSA time from the new owners.
During his July 15 meeting with Carr, Ellison underscored “Skydance’s commitment to unbiased journalism and its embrace of diverse viewpoints, principles that will ensure CBS’s editorial decision-making reflects the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers,” according to an FCC filing.
Skydance’s Kyoko McKinnon added: “We further reaffirm that, after consummation of the proposed transaction, New Paramount’s new management will ensure that the company’s array of news and entertainment programming embodies a diversity of viewpoints across the political and ideological spectrum, consistent with the varying perspectives of the viewing audience.”
Ellison recently met with prominent journalist Bari Weiss, reportedly to discuss Skydance acquiring her center-right online publication, the Free Press, as an alternative to traditional news sites. She started the outlet, which is often critical of DEI, after quitting her job as a New York Times opinion writer, citing intolerance of her and her more conservative viewpoints.
Also last week, late-night host Stephen Colbert learned his CBS talk show would be canceled in May. CBS has said Colbert’s cancellation, which will take place in May, was “strictly financial” and not related to the merger approval. Still, conservatives and liberals have widely questioned whether Colbert’s frequent criticisms of Trump played into the decision.
Skydance has said it didn’t have a role in the Colbert decision.
Skydance isn’t the only company under pressure to ditch diversity programs to win FCC approval for a deal.
Two months ago, telecommunications giant Verizon pledged to drop diversity efforts to gain Carr’s blessing for the company’s $20-billion takeover of Frontier Communications.
Carr separately launched probes into Walt Disney Co. and Comcast Corp.’s workplace diversity efforts.
After George Floyd’s 2020 murder in Minneapolis, Paramount and other Hollywood companies vowed to hire more people of color. Such moves were cheered by many, including those cognizant of Hollywood’s troubled history with diversity.
Paramount encouraged executives to make diverse hires and promotions, and progress toward the corporate goals was one of many factors considered when calculating bonuses. That program was dismantled last year.
For years, CBS struggled to shake its prime-time sitcom formula to build shows around white men, a la “King of Queens,” “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Two and a Half Men.”
The network broke the pattern in 2018 with “The Neighborhood,” starring Cedric the Entertainer, and procedural drama “FBI,” starring Zeeko Zaki.
CBS also championed mentorship programs for writers and directors to build a more diverse pipeline of creators. That initiative dated to 2004.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has made a priority of abolishing DEI programs.
(Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Skydance promised not to set numerical goals related to race, ethnicity or gender of job applicants.
“The company is committed to ensuring that its storytelling reflects the many audiences and communities it serves in a manner that complies with non-discrimination requirements and other applicable laws,” Kyoko McKinnon wrote.
“I am very encouraged by today’s announcements,” said Daniel Suhr, president of the conservative Center for American Rights, which filed an FCC complaint about “60 Minutes” and suggested a CBS News ombudsman. “These are important steps towards better broadcasting that serves all consumers.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has promised to introduce new legislation amid continuing protests and international criticism over a law passed earlier this week that critics say undermines Ukraine’s fight against corruption.
The controversial law, passed on Tuesday, places the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) under the direct authority of the country’s prosecutor general – an official appointed by the president. Critics say the law strips the agencies of their independence and could allow political interference.
While Zelenskyy has defended the law as a necessary response to suspected “Russian influence” within the agencies, European Union officials and rights groups say that it contains no specific provisions to target Kremlin-linked operatives and warn it could derail any Ukrainian accession bid to the European Union.
“I have analysed all concerns,” Zelenskyy wrote on X following a meeting with top government and law enforcement officials.
Writing about the proposal of the new bill, he said: “We will prepare and submit a bill to the Verkhovna Rada [parliament] that ensures the strength of the rule-of-law system. There will be no Russian influence or interference … and all the norms for the independence of anti-corruption institutions will be in place.”
On Tuesday night, thousands of Ukrainians rallied in Kyiv and other major cities in rare wartime protests. More than 1,000 demonstrators defied martial law, which bans large public gatherings, to express their anger at the government, while on Wednesday, more protests took place in the capital.
“This is complete nonsense from the president’s office,” 20-year-old student Solomiia Telishevska told the news agency Reuters, referring to the law signed by Zelenskyy on Tuesday. “This contradicts what we are fighting for and what we are striving for, namely to [join] the European Union.”
Cleaning up systemic corruption has long been a core requirement for Ukraine’s EU membership and for unlocking billions in foreign aid. The law’s passage risks alienating Kyiv’s Western allies as the war grinds on.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has demanded “explanations” from Zelenskyy, with a spokesperson confirming on Wednesday that she conveyed “strong concerns about the consequences of the amendments”. Germany’s Johann Wadephul, deputy leader of the Christian Democratic Union, warned on X that the restrictions were “hampering Ukraine’s path to the EU”.
The storm erupted days after law enforcement raided NABU offices and arrested an employee on suspicion of spying for Russia. Another employee was accused of illegal business ties to Moscow. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) agency also carried out searches and arrests related to other alleged infractions, including a traffic incident.
Zelenskyy suggested these incidents justified the law passed on Tuesday, but Ukrainian analysts have warned the changes could erode public trust in Zelenskyy’s leadership during a critical phase of the war.
NABU was created in 2015 after Ukraine’s 2014 pro-European revolution to tackle deep-rooted government corruption. The agency has investigated multiple high-profile cases, including figures close to Zelenskyy’s administration.
Transparency International Ukraine denounced the raids as “an attempt by the authorities to undermine the independence of Ukraine’s post-Revolution of Dignity anti-corruption institutions”.
Some Ukrainians believe the government is protecting loyal insiders at the expense of transparency. “Those who swore to protect the laws and the constitution have instead chosen to shield their inner circle, even at the expense of Ukrainian democracy,” said veteran Oleh Symoroz, who lost both legs in 2022 fighting Russian forces.
The political firestorm risks creating deeper rifts within Ukraine at a time when unity is vital in Kyiv’s war against Russia. Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Center for Civil Liberties, warned the law could play directly into the Kremlin’s hands. “This is a gift to Putin,” she said.
Russian officials have already seized on the controversy. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov remarked there was “a lot of corruption” when asked about the protests in Kyiv.
Ron Washington was beaming in his black suit, complete with a red tie, as he sat at a table perched on a platform in the Home Plate Club of Angel Stadium on Wednesday.
The 71-year old manager from New Orleans, the newest in Angels history, scanned the room, taking in his moment as his new general manager, Perry Minasian, boasted about him. Minasian gave him his official Angels gear and Washington affixed his newest cap to his head and meticulously buttoned each button on his newest jersey.
“Now I’m legit,” Washington said and smiled.
It had been nine years since Washington had been in this position, the manager of a major league baseball team. Now that he was back, he stated his message clearly: The Angels will be a force to be reckoned with while he’s in charge.
“Our whole focus is going to be to run the [American League] West down,” Washington said in front of a crowd of Angels players, alumni, media members and team employees. “And you can take that to the bank and deposit it.”
Washington, hired by Texas Rangers ahead of the 2007 season, has had a chip on his shoulder after not winning a World Series despite AL pennants in 2010 and 2011 and a wild-card berth in 2012.
He left the Rangers before the end of the 2014 season — stating, at the time, that his decision to leave was because he had been unfaithful to his wife. Of the nature of his departure from the Rangers, Minasian said Wednesday that he had done his due diligence and felt comfortable hiring Washington.
Washington had been trying to return to a managerial position since then, interviewing with at least three other clubs over the years, he said, but he never stopped believing his next opportunity would come.
He has a World Series ring, having been an integral part of the 2021 campaign of the Atlanta Braves, the team he had been the third base coach for since the 2017 season.
Angels new manager Ron Washington, left, and general manager Perry Minisian hug during a news conference Wednesday at Angel Stadium.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
And he spoke with more than just determination, but a conviction in the Angels, with his confidence in himself and down-to-the-soul belief in a better Angels future paving the way.
The Angels have not reached the playoffs since 2014 and have eight straight losing seasons. In addition, Angels two-way star Shohei Ohtani is a free agent and could leave the team. While some view the roster as weak, Washington sees potential.
“I really have been, since I’ve been here these past three days, focusing in on these young arms we got,” Washington said. “I am very impressed with the young arms we got. That’s why we trying to find us a pitching coach to guide them in the right direction.
“Pitching and defense is the key to success. The rest of it, I’m going to take care of as we move along. … The defense, you’re looking at the best in the business, and that’s not patting myself on the back. That’s a fact.”
The Houston Astros have won the AL West six of the last seven seasons. The Rangers won this season’s World Series.
While some view beating the top teams in the division as a tall order, Washington says so what.
“Yeah, the Astros [have] been there,” Washington said matter-of-factly. “When I took over in Texas, guess who was the big dog? The Angels. And what happened? We ran them down. So my intent is to run Houston down.
“I’m not saying that’s gonna happen this year. But we don’t know when it’s gonna happen. I can tell you what, we’re gonna get back on top.”
Washington’s official candidacy for the Angels job began with a dinner with Minasian in New Orleans a few weeks ago — though Washington’s familiarity with the Minasian family dates back much further. After that, Washington was invited to meet with Minasian and other members of the front office in Scottsdale, Ariz., for a brunch on the Tuesday of the general manager meetings last week.
Team owner Arte Moreno picked Washington up from the airport and Minasian and the rest of the Angels contingent talked with him for more than three hours, Minasian said, and he was offered the job. The next day, the Angels announced Washington as their new manager.
Washington’s Angels have already secured their new third base coach, Eric Young Sr., who followed Washington from Atlanta, as well as their new infield coach, Ryan Goins. Washington also said Wednesday that he knows who his first base coach is, though he did not give a name. The Angels confirmed Bo Porter as their new first base coach on Friday. The Angels also confirmed on Friday that they promoted Jerry Narron to major league catching coach after previously serving as their minor league catching coordinator. The Angels subsequently named Johnny Washington as their hitting coach and Barry Enright as pitching coach.
Next up on Washington’s agenda: making calls to the team’s biggest leaders for the foreseeable future: Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon.
Washington and Dave Roberts of the Dodgers are the only Black managers in the majors, after Dusty Baker retired from his position with the Astros last month. Washington replaces Phil Nevin, whose contract for next season was not picked up by the Angels.
WASHINGTON — When President Trump returned to the White House in January, he promised to deliver big foreign policy wins in record time.
He said he would halt Russia’s war against Ukraine in 24 hours or less, end Israel’s war in Gaza nearly as quickly and force Iran to end to its nuclear program. He said he’d persuade Canada to become the 51st state, take Greenland from Denmark and negotiate 90 trade deals in 90 days.
“The president believes that his force of personality … can bend people to do things,” his special envoy-for-everything, Steve Witkoff, explained in May in a Breitbart interview.
Six months later, none of those ambitious goals have been reached.
Ukraine and Gaza are still at war. Israel and the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, but it’s not clear whether they ended the country’s atomic program once and for all. Canada and Denmark haven’t surrendered any territory. And instead of trade deals, Trump is mostly slapping tariffs on other countries, to the distress of U.S. stock markets.
It turned out that force of personality couldn’t solve every problem.
“He overestimated his power and underestimated the ability of others to push back,” said Kori Schake, director of foreign policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “He often acts as if we’re the only people with leverage, strength or the ability to take action. We’re not.”
The president has notched important achievements. He won a commitment from other members of NATO to increase their defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product. The attack on Iran appears to have set Tehran’s nuclear project back for years, even if it didn’t end it. And Trump — or more precisely, his aides — helped broker ceasefires between India and Pakistan and between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
But none of those measured up to the goals Trump initially set for himself — much less qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize he has publicly yearned for. “I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for this,” he grumbled when the Rwanda-Congo agreement was signed.
The most striking example of unfulfilled expectations has come in Ukraine, the grinding conflict Trump claimed he could end even before his inauguration.
For months, Trump sounded certain that his warm relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin would produce a deal that would stop the fighting, award Russia most of the territory its troops have seized and end U.S. economic sanctions on Moscow.
“I believe he wants peace,” Trump said of Putin in February. “I trust him on this subject.”
But to Trump’s surprise, Putin wasn’t satisfied with his proposal. The Russian leader continued bombing Ukrainian cities even after Trump publicly implored him to halt via social media (“Vladimir, STOP!”).
Critics charged that Putin was playing Trump for a fool. The president bristled: “Nobody’s playing me.”
But as early as April, he admitted to doubts about Putin’s good faith. “It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along,” he said.
“I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done, and I always hang up and say, ‘Well, that was a nice phone call,’ and then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,” Trump complained last week. “After that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn’t mean anything.”
The president also came under pressure from Republican hawks in Congress who warned privately that if Ukraine collapsed, Trump would be blamed the way his predecessor, President Biden, was blamed for the fall of Afghanistan in 2022.
So last week, Trump changed course and announced that he will resume supplying U.S.-made missiles to Ukraine — but by selling them to European countries instead of giving them to Kyiv as Biden had.
Trump also gave Putin 50 days to accept a ceasefire and threatened to impose “secondary tariffs” on countries that buy oil from Russia if he does not comply.
He said he still hopes Putin will come around. “I’m not done with him, but I’m disappointed in him,” he said in a BBC interview.
It still isn’t clear how many missiles Ukraine will get and whether they will include long-range weapons that can strike targets deep inside Russia. A White House official said those details are still being worked out.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sounded unimpressed by the U.S. actions. “I have no doubt that we will cope,” he said.
Foreign policy experts warned that the secondary tariffs Trump proposed could prove impractical. Russia’s two biggest oil customers are China and India; Trump is trying to negotiate major trade agreements with both.
Meanwhile, Trump has dispatched Witkoff back to the Middle East to try to arrange a ceasefire in Gaza and reopen nuclear talks with Iran — the goals he began with six months ago.
Despite his mercurial style, Trump’s approach to all these foreign crises reflects basic premises that have remained constant for a decade, foreign policy experts said.
“There is a Trump Doctrine, and it has three basic principles,” Schake said. “Alliances are a burden. Trade exports American jobs. Immigrants steal American jobs.”
Robert Kagan, a former Republican aide now at the Brookings Institution, added one more guiding principle: “He favors autocrats over democrats.” Trump has a soft spot for foreign strongmen like Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, and has abandoned the long-standing U.S. policy of fostering democracy abroad, Kagan noted.
The problem, Schake said, is that those principles “impede Trump’s ability to get things done around the world, and he doesn’t seem to realize it.
“The international order we built after World War II made American power stronger and more effective,” she said. “Trump and his administration seem bent on presiding over the destruction of that international order.”
Moreover, Kagan argued, Trump’s frenetic imposition of punitive tariffs on other countries comes with serious costs.
“Tariffs are a form of economic warfare,” he said. “Trump is creating enemies for the United States all over the world. … I don’t think you can have a successful foreign policy if everyone in the world mistrusts you.”
Not surprisingly, Trump and his aides don’t agree.
“It cannot be overstated how successful the first six months of this administration have been,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. “With President Trump as commander in chief, the world is a much safer place.”
That claim will take years to test.
Iran’s President said Israel’s strikes on Tehran and other cities will be met with a “legitimate and powerful response.”
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