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A prominent political strategist has called for the “immediate removal” of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law from “every diplomatic assignment” following an explosive report alleging that Jared Kushner secretly had access to roughly $1.75 billion in Gulf money while serving in the White House.“I call it financial treason: the exchange of entrusted American power for concealed foreign financial benefit,” wrote ex-GOP strategist Steve Schmidt in an analysis published Friday on his Substack.“The constitutional crime of treason has a specific definition that prosecutors must satisfy; my accusation concerns the betrayal of allegiance at the heart of this reported bargain. I will not pretend it is a misunderstanding about etiquette.”According to an excerpt from journalist Matthew Cole’s book “Princes and Thieves” published by Vanity Fair, Kushner became a signatory on a roughly $750 million account in the United Arab Emirates held through a charity. Cole reported that Emirati ruler Mohamed bin Zayed separately routed about $1 billion, allegedly intended for Kushner’s personal benefit, through Azerbaijan to Israel’s central bank at the encouragement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.The report also alleged that Dutch intelligence found screenshots from Kushner’s phone on a Russian military intelligence server, indicating Moscow had penetrated the device. Kushner’s counsel has denied that the accounts existed and denied any wrongdoing.Kushner, who holds no official administration title, serves as an informal envoy and has helped lead U.S. negotiations involving Israel and Hamas, Russia and Ukraine, and Iran. Citing Kushner’s enormous influence on U.S. foreign policy, Schmidt called for immediate action from lawmakers not only to remove Kushner from his diplomatic roles, but also to launch a massive criminal probe.“Put Kushner and everyone with relevant knowledge under oath. The alleged transaction must be investigated as a potential crime. Accepting benefits corruptly in exchange for being influenced in official acts is bribery. The agreement, the benefits and the acts must be established,” Schmidt wrote.“There must be no family exemption. No private accommodation. No assumption that the money is too large, the people too powerful, or the implications too disturbing to confront. Americans have been asked to endure years of lies, cruelty, corruption and contempt while the most privileged people in the country explain why accountability must always wait. Enough.”

Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has courted Donald Trump and other leading MAGA figures for a decade, according to a trove of newly leaked emails reviewed by the Guardian.The leak, reported Friday, includes more than 420,000 emails and documents from the party, most dating to before 2019. The AfD has confirmed a cyberattack on an external provider in September but said only parts of a few inboxes, "mostly unused for years," were copied unlawfully.The Guardian reported that senior AfD officials agonized over the wording of an “obsequious” congratulatory telegram after Trump’s 2016 win, which included the wish that his “hopes as a person be fulfilled.” The party quickly moved to asking the White House for support on policy, the paper reported. A second message, sent Jan. 20, 2017, asked Trump to help remove the United Nations’ “enemy state” clauses. The AfD’s federal board adopted the request on a Jan. 16 call, according to a record in the leaked documents. When the party’s federal office circulated an English draft on Jan. 19, Georg Pazderski, then the party’s Berlin leader and a federal board member, objected to the tone and the request.“You don’t address the president as Mr Trump, he is Mr President. Otherwise a bit wordy and flowery. I stand by it: the enemy-state clause doesn’t belong in this letter at all. You don’t do that in a letter of congratulation. It looks like a begging letter,” Pazderski wrote, according to the Guardian.Other documents show a growing relationship between Alice Weidel, now the AfD’s leader, and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. The two met in Zurich in March 2018, though the files show "no follow-up," according to the Guardian.The AfD has surged since then. It won 12.6 percent of the vote when it entered the Bundestag in 2017 and came second with 20.8% in the February 2025 federal election, the Guardian noted. It now leads national polls at about 30 percent. On Sept. 6 it won 43.8 percent in Saxony-Anhalt, and Trump hailed the result on Truth Social. “Wow! The Populist Party in Germany just had a really big night,” he wrote, ending with “MGGA!!!”Germany’s domestic intelligence agency monitors the party as a suspected rightwing extremist organization, the Guardian reported.AfD politician Markus Frohnmaier said he could not verify the documents, which he said were obtained unlawfully, and described the contacts as ordinary political outreach, according to the Guardian. The paper said the US State Department has had friendly contacts with the party during Trump’s second term.

First lady Melania Trump claimed she secured a “ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine, but it covers only one occupied town, and neither country immediately confirmed it.The White House made the claim in a statement Friday, saying the first lady “successfully secured a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, localized to the city of Oleshky.” Melania Trump shared the statement on X.The statement said the ceasefire would begin Oct. 29, allowing humanitarian aid into Oleshky and preparing to evacuate civilians through a safe passageway.About 2,000 residents remain trapped in the Russian-occupied town in Ukraine’s Kherson region without enough food or medicine, the Kyiv Independent reported.“It was abundantly clear that without my intervention, the possibility to bring humanitarian aid into the city and to evacuate the elderly would be impossible,” Melania Trump said in the statement.The statement described her role as “Exclusive Intermediary” and said she and an unnamed representative worked directly with “Russian and Ukrainian leadership” to set the terms.Pope Leo XIV had been pushing for a truce in Oleshky, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin on Oct. 16 and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Oct. 19 to seek a humanitarian ceasefire there, the Kyiv Independent reported.After the Oct. 16 call, the Kremlin said Putin “supported the Vatican’s intention” to help protect the town’s residents and organize supplies, America Magazine reported.Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said Russia had considered all of Kyiv’s earlier evacuation proposals.“We are now moving towards agreeing the final details on ensuring a ceasefire and evacuating everyone who wishes to leave, not just from Oleshky elsewhere, but directly to territory controlled by the Ukrainian government,” Lubinets said.“There are still some difficult issues, so to speak, but I hope that in the near future we will all see results from these negotiations,” he added.During a meeting with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff in St. Petersburg this week, Putin asked him to thank the first lady for leading mediation on Oleshky, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters, according to the Russian state news agency TASS, the Daily Beast reported.The Daily Beast said it remains unclear what role the first lady has played in addressing the Oleshky crisis.Her husband, President Donald Trump, repeatedly said as a candidate that he would end the war within 24 hours, and in a September 2024 debate he said he would settle it before he even took office.“Well, I was being a little bit sarcastic when I said that,” Donald Trump said in a March 2025 TV interview, 54 days into his second term, according to the AP.On Oct. 11, Donald Trump posted that the two countries had agreed to an energy ceasefire, but Zelenskyy said the next day that Russia was still striking Ukraine’s energy facilities.“In the Kremlin, both President Putin and officials at other levels have repeatedly stated we do not want a ceasefire,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that week.Putin agreed Wednesday to resume three-way talks with the United States and Ukraine after Nov. 10, at Witkoff’s request, CNN noted.Hours later, Russia launched a massive missile attack on Kyiv, CNN reported.

Switzerland says patient is wife of Swiss diplomat and believed to have contracted virus while travelling in UgandaHealth officials across Africa are racing to determine how Nigeria’s first Ebola patient ⁠in more than a decade ⁠became infected, amid fears ​the outbreak could spread further after reaching a fourth African country.The Swiss foreign ministry said on Friday the patient in Nigeria, the Ugandan-born wife of a Swiss diplomat based in Abuja, had not travelled to the Democratic Republic of ⁠Congo, where the outbreak was first detected in mid-May before spreading to Uganda, Kenya and now Nigeria. The woman was believed to have contracted Ebola while travelling with her husband in Uganda, the ministry added. Continue reading...

A conservative editorial board threw cold water on one of President Donald Trump's latest diplomatic wins, warning his team was getting played.The Wall Street Journal's editorial board wrote Wednesday that there is "no cause to be grateful" to Russian President Vladimir Putin for freeing Stephen Hubbard, a retired American teacher jailed in Russia since 2022. Trump said Wednesday that Putin let Hubbard go after a personal plea from the president and asked for nothing in return.The board welcomed Hubbard home but argued the Russian leader "takes Western hostages as part of his statecraft." The editorial laid out a pattern. Putin seizes someone, slaps them with bogus charges, secures a conviction in a rigged court and then frees or swaps them whenever it suits him.The board pointed to The Journal's own reporter, Evan Gershkovich, whom Putin used as a bargaining chip to win back an assassin held in Germany. It also noted that Russian security services detained a Japanese reporter just last week, possibly to pressure Tokyo.Putin didn't need anything new for Hubbard because he has "already been piling up concessions" from Trump while escalating his war on Ukraine, Europe and NATO, the editorial argued. Among them, the board listed loosened U.S. sanctions on diesel sales, waived sanctions in a bill from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and what its sources described as intermittent limits on Ukraine's access to Starlink.The board also took aim at Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, who told Putin in Moscow on Wednesday, "you are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that." The editorial dismissed the remark as a "rhetorical smooch," arguing that jailing a man on false charges for four years and then letting him go hardly earns that title.Hubbard's homecoming shouldn't distract from what's at stake, the editorial warned. It accused Putin of bombarding women and children with missiles and drones every night, helping Iran target and kill Americans in the Middle East and seeking to help China fracture U.S. alliances in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific.

President Donald Trump lashed out at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday, calling her a “dummy” and a “low-IQ person” during a tense exchange over his administration’s handling of Russia.The confrontation erupted as Trump defended his decision not to impose additional sanctions on Moscow while his administration pursues negotiations over the war in Ukraine.“We are maybe close to a deal for the first time in a long time,” Trump said. “When you’re close to a deal, and you have very delicate negotiations, you don’t put sanctions on.”But when Collins pressed him about whether he had lifted sanctions in exchange for a prisoner’s release, Trump abruptly turned hostile.“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re a low-IQ person. You’re a dummy, and you work for CNN,” Trump snapped.“But that’s what you said,” Collins said as she pushed back. Trump moments earlier also accused the reporter of knowing nothing and called CNN “fake news.”The president then launched into a lengthy explanation about negotiations to secure the release of an American prisoner held in Russia, arguing that imposing sanctions could derail such efforts. “The negotiation would obviously come immediately to an end,” Trump said Wednesday. “So use your head.”President Trump is directly tying waiving Russian sanctions to the release of the freed American Stephen Hubbard, despite denying he gave anything to Putin. https://t.co/TUxcvodPuF— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) October 21, 2026

A once-friendly world leader turned the tables on President Donald Trump by blasting his latest attempts to score political points off a crisis abroad.French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday blasted what he called "unacceptable" and "stupid" comments from foreign leaders about the turmoil in his country, and when a reporter asked if he meant Trump, he replied, "Among others," the Associated Press reported.France has been rocked by rioting and looting that grew out of protests over the rising cost of living. Trump has seized on the violence to energize his supporters, claiming without evidence that Muslim migrants are to blame and urging Macron to "close your borders and take control before it is too late!"Macron said there "has been foreign manipulation of information in the aftermath" of last weekend's looting in Paris and other cities."And that has led to comments that are as unacceptable as they are stupid, from many people, including foreign leaders," he said.The French leader also pointed to "AI-generated images depicting scenes that never actually happened in France.""We've had people claiming that we were invaded by hordes of migrants and Islamists, which is completely false," he said.The two leaders were once on friendly terms, but Trump now routinely ridicules Macron in his speeches."The fact is, all the people who are speaking ill of our country right now are people who don't love our country," Macron said. "So those people really bother me."He went further, taking aim at politicians "in the middle of election campaigns, whether in the region or on the other side of the Atlantic.""They're using our country for their own political campaigns," he said. "And we don't need that."Macron made the remarks in Qatar as he wrapped up a swing through Gulf states aimed at shoring up fuel supplies amid France's energy crunch, the AP noted.

Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka spent a week in jail after defying restrictions on protests in Delhi amid government crackdownAn Indian court has ordered the release of two leaders of India’s Cockroach movement who were jailed last week amid a mounting state crackdown on youth-led protests.The two leaders of the Cockroach Janta party (CJP) movement, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, had spent a week in Delhi’s Tihar jail after being arrested by Delhi police last week. Continue reading...