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Civilians try to flee as men and boys rounded up on streets by new alliance as Ethiopia conflict erupts againAs renewed fighting has threatened a fresh humanitarian crisis in the northern region of Ethiopia, reports are emerging that a new alliance of armed groups in Tigray has been forcibly recruiting men and boys to its ranks.Renewed conflict erupted on 23 September between Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which rules the region, shattering the fragile Pretoria peace agreement signed between the two sides in November 2022. Continue reading...

The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board warned Monday that China is not living up to the rosy picture President Donald Trump painted after Chinese president Xi Jinping visited the White House. Xi's visit to the White House marked the first time a Chinese leader has set foot in America in more than a decade. Following the visit, the Trump administration put up pictures of Xi and Trump around the White House and Trump made fawning posts about his Chinese counterpart on his Truth Social account. However, the Wall Street Journal's editors noted there is evidence that China is not behaving like a newfound ally of the U.S. The editors issued a stark warning to Trump in a new editorial on Monday about the recent arrest of a Chinese spy on American soil. "The phrase of the hour in Washington is that the Trump Administration wants 'strategic stability' with China, and it’s a nice aspiration," the editorial reads in part. "But the Chinese Communist Party isn’t behaving like a force for peace in the world, and the latest evidence is Beijing’s alleged spying in the U.S. on the son of Taiwan’s president."The editorial pointed to the FBI's recent arrest of a 34-year-old woman who was charged with "[surveilling] the Taiwanese President’s son and his family—filming their home, vehicles," and reporting information back to someone connected to the Chinese Communist Party. China's interest in spying on a member of the Taiwanese president's family is easy to understand, the editorial argues. What's more difficult is the lack of pushback from the Trump administration. "Mr. Lai’s son appears to be living in the U.S. and working in Washington state. No doubt the Communist Party wants to collect information about Mr. Lai’s family that it could exploit to blackmail or harm the President and his party in Taiwan," the WSJ editors wrote. "And it is notable, if not a great surprise, that Beijing is brazen enough to think that it can get away with something like this in the U.S. homeland.""No matter President Xi Jinping’s pronouncements about steady relations with the U.S., what matters is Beijing’s conduct. China acts against U.S. interests around the globe, including on American soil.

President Donald Trump's critics sounded off on Monday after the president tried to shift blame for high gas prices onto a U.S. ally. Trump has repeatedly tried to blame Ukraine's attacks on Russian oil refineries for the surge in gas prices, especially diesel fuel. He attempted to cast blame on Ukraine again in a Truth Social post on Monday, suggesting that continued aggression between the two countries has done more to increase prices than Trump's disastrous war in Iran, which caused an economically damaging fight over the Strait of Hormuz. "What's driving up Gasoline is no longer the Strait of Hormuz, because Record Numbers of Barrels are coming out now on an almost daily basis, but the word, 'Refineries,' where Russia's are being blown up by Ukraine, and where ours are being closed up, in Blue States, like California, by the Dumocrats (sic)," Trump posted. The president's wild claim was posted at a time when the national average for a gallon of gas was $4.36 for regular and $6.23 for diesel. Political analysts and observers reacted to Trump's post on social media. "Here’s a thought. If it really is because of Ukraine’s response to the illegal Russian invasion, then why doesn’t Trump tell Putin to get back in his box and end the war? A war Trump said he would end on Day 1. Gas prices are all Trump’s fault, whichever way you look at it," Greg Bagwell, president of the U.K. Air & Space Power Association, posted on X. "Trump admits he is causing the diesel shortage (and global food insecurity), as U.S. military is funding Ukraine, supplying it with weapons and Intel to target Russia," Christine Duhaime, a fomer anti-fraud officer, posted on X. "When the President has to explain that it’s actually our proxy war in Eastern Europe, not our regime change war in the Middle East, that’s driving up the cost of living for hardworking Americans, it should be evident to everyone that our foreign policy does not serve the American people," Joe Kent, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, posted on X.

President Donald Trump's latest AI-generated fantasy about seizing Greenland contains an embarrassing flaw that critics were quick to seize on: the Arctic territory he's so eager to claim has no penguins.As The Daily Beast flagged on Monday, Trump shared a Truth Social post featuring an AI-generated image of himself standing in front of a snowy mountain vista filled with penguins draped in stars and stripes. The problem, as critics quickly pointed out, is that penguins live in the planet's southern half, thousands of miles from Greenland's Arctic home in the north. He also posted a second AI image showing himself towering over a colorful village, captioned "Hello, Greenland!"Greenlandic commentator Orla Joelson was quick to mock the president over the goof. "Trump, did you skip geography class at school?" he posted. "Antarctica looks lovely, though…"The gaffe comes just days after Trump signed a trilateral agreement with Greenland and Denmark at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Despite his earlier vow to accept nothing less than a takeover, the deal amounts to an expansion of a 1951 U.S.-Denmark treaty that already gave the American military a foothold on the island.The penguin mix-up is the latest example of Trump's growing fixation on artificial intelligence and its role in his foreign policy. A White House insider recently told TIME that Trump was fascinated by Elon Musk's Grok chatbot, peppering it with questions about his own presidency and legacy for hours during a December meeting with Musk, and reportedly leaned on it heavily before the operation that captured then-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife.Last week, Trump also tried rebranding the technology itself. Cut off mid-question when a reporter asked who should be held accountable if AI agents commit crimes, he instead announced a new name."It's not AI, it's S.I.," Trump said. "You know what that means? Super Intelligence."Readers online were quick to roast the president's latest mistake, with one commenter joking that if this is "super intelligence," it can't even figure out where penguins live, while another quipped that Trump would simply import the birds and brand them "Trumpuins."

Fears mounted Saturday that the Trump administration was “gearing up for something” ahead of Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, in which incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will face off against far-right candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, an ally to the White House.“They are absolutely gearing up for something and they won’t try to hide it because they assume nobody will do anything to stop it,” argued Vesper Jordan, an independent filmmaker and video essayist.In what some critics called an “unprecedented move,” the Trump administration suspended all U.S. consular services in Brazil on Friday, just two days before Brazil’s first-round presidential election. The U.S. State Department said the suspension was due to unspecified “security concerns,” though critics feared the move was part of an effort to “interfere in the country’s democratic elections.”Critics also expressed outrage over the apparent lack of media attention that the Trump administration’s actions in Brazil had received. Foreign affairs journalist Ishaan Tharoor argued that “the U.S. role in Brazil’s election” was “criminally under-discussed in the U.S.,” and journalist Noah Kulwin issued a similar but far more blunt assessment.“If we had a real news media instead of smug a------- who do video podcasts and video podcasts that are now broadcast on TV, this is the kind of thing that would be breaking through,” Kulwin wrote in a social media post on X.Bolsonaro is a lawyer, politician and son of Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president who’s currently serving a 27-year sentence on charges related to an attempted coup after his election loss in 2022.Last year, Trump imposed a 50% tariff on Brazil in response to Jair Bolsonaro’s prosecution, calling it a “Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY.”“The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his Term, including by the United States, is an international disgrace,” Trump wrote in a July 2025 letter to Lula. “This Trial should not be taking place.”The US role in Brazil's election is criminally under-discussed in the US, though obviously front and center of the conversation in Brazil. https://t.co/qqnagh3LX0— Ishaan Tharoor (@ishaantharoor) October 2, 2026

Jared Kushner's questionable ties to a deal he helped negotiate are again in the spotlight a day after he spoke out to defend himself.On Saturday, The New York Times reported that Kushner's business partners stand to profit from a Russian oil deal he helped broker. A day earlier, Kushner took to X to blast a CNN report scrutinizing his business dealings in Israel.Talks between the Trump administration and Russia over ending the war in Ukraine have widened to include a multibillion-dollar sale of international assets owned by Lukoil, one of Russia's largest oil companies, the Times reported. Russian President Vladimir Putin raised the deal during a September 5 Kremlin meeting with Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff, according to the report.The leading group bidding for Lukoil's assets includes Trump megadonor Todd Boehly, a federal agency and two Middle Eastern investment groups with business ties to Kushner or Witkoff's family. One is a Qatar-based conglomerate run by brothers Moutaz and Ramez Al-Khayyat, who have partnered with Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, on a luxury resort in Albania.Another member of the group is a fund controlled by Emirati national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, whose separate fund Lunate ranks among the biggest backers of Kushner's private equity firm.The Times found no sign that Kushner or Witkoff would personally profit. But a senior administration official confirmed both men had a direct hand in shaping the federal government's financial stake, pushing for a "substantial upfront payment and profits interest for the United States."Hui Chen, a former Justice Department prosecutor and ethics adviser, raised red flags about the arrangement."This is an alarming and very concerning set of entanglements," Chen told the Times. "And it means you have to question how the Trump administration is evaluating the different bidders involved here. Are the personal interests involved going to wrongly influence the outcome?"The revelations land one day after Kushner went on the offensive against CNN, which reported Thursday that his firm Affinity Partners is the top shareholder in an Israeli financial company invested in suppliers to Israel's military. CNN noted it found no evidence his diplomacy affected those holdings."For the last 10 years, I have ignored false and misleading stories about me and focused on the work," Kushner posted on X Friday. He called CNN's story "deeply misleading" and vowed to start publicly rebutting coverage he views as inaccurate.

The Trump administration suspended all U.S. consular services in Brazil on Friday in what one political economist feared was a ploy to “interfere in the country’s democratic elections this weekend.”The State Department told Reuters that the suspension of all consular services across the South American nation was due to “security concerns,” but did not provide additional details, including what those concerns were or when consular services would be restored.“Consular Services in the US Embassy and Consulates in Brazil will be suspended starting Friday, October 2 due to security concerns," the State Department said in a statement, according to Reuters. "US citizens seeking emergency assistance during this time should not come to the Embassy, the Consulates, or other US diplomatic facilities."The timing of the move was suspect, argued David Adler, co-general coordinator of Progressive International and former advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Brazil’s first-round presidential election is on Sunday, pitting Flávio Bolsonaro — a far-right politician supported by President Donald Trump — against incumbent Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a progressive Workers' Party member and frequent Trump critic.“Holy s---. In an UNPRECEDENTED move, the United States suspends ALL embassy services in all American consulates in Brazil… with no justification whatsoever,” Adler wrote in a social media post on X. “Yet another fear-stoking effort to interfere in the country’s democratic elections this weekend.”Brazilian political commentator Julio Freiress — whose commentary was cited by the Brazilian Supreme Court earlier this year — expressed similar concerns.“Trump has already started interfering in the Brazilian election,” Freiress wrote, according to an automatic translation by X’s Grok chatbot from its original Portuguese. “There's no reason whatsoever for the United States to suspend embassy services. There's already a whiff of interference in the air.”

President Donald Trump is trying to rewrite his own predictions about how long the war with Iran would last, but CNN's Daniel Dale subjected his revised public claims to a fact check.Seven months after launching the war on the last day of February, the 80-year-old president claimed Thursday that his much-repeated "four to six weeks" estimate referred only to eliminating Iran's nuclear threat, not to the entire conflict."I stated, numerous times, that it would take 4-6 weeks to get rid of THE IRAN NUCLEAR THREAT, and I did it in one night! The rest of the time is just to make sure it stays that way," Trump wrote on Truth Social.In an interview with TIME Magazine published the same day, a reporter told Trump that "most people heard you say four to six weeks." Trump blamed the media: "No, I think the press fed it to them."But CNN's review found that Trump and his former press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, repeatedly described the weeks-long timeline as applying to the war as a whole.On March 2, less than three days into the fighting, Trump told CNN's Jake Tapper, "I always thought it would be four weeks. And we're a little ahead of schedule." Later that day, he said in a speech, "We projected four to five weeks."At a March 10 briefing, Leavitt said the "initial timeline was about four to six weeks to achieve the full objectives" of the operation. She listed goals that went well beyond nuclear weapons, including destroying Iran's missiles and navy and weakening its proxy groups.Trump repeated the estimate twice at a March 26 Cabinet meeting. "We estimated it would take approximately four to six weeks to achieve our mission, and we're way ahead of schedule," he said.On March 31, Trump went further. He told reporters the U.S. could be done "within two weeks, maybe; two weeks, maybe three." Asked to clarify, he added: "We'll leave."As recently as April 8, Leavitt said Trump "stated this would be a four-to-six-week military operation to dismantle the military threat" posed by Iran.CNN asked the White House for any example of Trump limiting his timeline to the nuclear threat. The White House offered none and instead sent back a statement insisting Trump was "right" without addressing the request.Many experts also dispute Trump's separate claim that he eliminated Iran's nuclear threat in a single night.Trump has been distancing himself from the estimates for months. In April, he accused Democrats of claiming he "promised 6 weeks to defeat Iran.""He can quibble about whether he made a promise or offered an estimate," Dale concluded. "But the record shows the “six weeks” figure came from his own mouth."