Category: International

WASHINGTON: Days after joking about being the next Catholic pontiff, US President Donald Trump has shared an AI-generated image of himself dressed as the pope on his Truth Social platform.

The president is seen in what appears to be an AI-generated colour image, with his right index finger pointed toward the sky, wearing papal regalia, including white robes, a gold crucifix pendant and the mitre hat.

It comes after Trump joked to reporters this week that he would like to be the next pope, just days before cardinals are due to start the conclave to elect the successor of Pope Francis who died on April 21.

Asked who he would like to succeed Pope Francis, Trump said: “I’d like to be pope, that would be my number one choice.”

Trump went on to say that he did not have a preference but said there was a cardinal in New York who was “very good.”

He appeared to be referring to the archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, a theological conservative and fiercely opposed to abortion.

Trump attended the funeral service of Pope Francis last week, his first foreign trip since returning to power.

About 20% of Americans declare themselves Catholic, and exit polls indicated in November that they voted around 60% in favour of Trump.

Pope Francis had arguably been one of the most powerful moral voices on the world stage critical of Trump.

When Trump first ran for president in 2016, Francis was unsparing on his signature promise to build a border wall to seal off Mexico.

Francis told reporters: “Anyone, whoever he is, who only wants to build walls and not bridges is not a Christian”.

Cardinals will gather on May 7 in a conclave in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope.

NEW DELHI: At least six people were killed and dozens others were injured in a stampede at an Indian temple in the western coastal state of Goa where hundreds of devout Hindus had assembled, police official said on Saturday.

The stampede occurred on Friday night during the annual Shri Lairai Zatra festival in Shirgao village, which is popular for its events including fire-walking.

“Devotees were witnessing a religious ceremony and the frenzy caused during the rituals triggered a stampede,” said VS Chadonkar, a police officer in Goa’s state capital Panjim.

“Six people lost their lives and at least eight were critically injured,” he said.

Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said in a statement that he was “deeply saddened by the tragic stampede” at Lairai Devi temple in the village of Shirgao in the early hours of Saturday morning.

“Six people died even before they could be brought to the hospital,” Sawant told reporters.

He visited the hospital and said that “all possible support” would be given to the families of those killed or injured.

Vishwajit Rane, Goa state health minister said “approximately 80” people were injured.

“Five are critical and on ventilator support, while the remaining are being treated in the specially created emergency ward,” he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office expressed “condolences to those who lost their loved ones”.

Stampedes during large Hindu religious gatherings are routinely reported in India, as huge crowds gather in tight spaces often ignoring safety protocol.

Earlier this year, at least 30 people were killed in an early morning crush at the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu mega-festival in the northern city of Prayagraj.

—With additional input from AFP

US President Donald Trump on Friday eyed massive cuts targeting “woke” and “wasteful” spending in his first budget blueprint since he returned to power, while boosting defence and border security.

Republican Trump aims to cut non-defence spending by a huge $163 billion — or 22% — in 2026 as he digs in on the conservative, cost-cutting drive led by billionaire Elon Musk.

Trump would also massively cut foreign aid even while stepping up defence spending to $1.01 trillion and pouring money into homeland security as part of his anti-immigration drive.

But the budget proposal is more of a wish-list at the start of Trump’s second term and he faces a bitter battle in Congress, with Democrats calling it a “gut punch” that hammers health and education.

The White House said that many of the proposed cuts stemmed from the radical efforts by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to slash the US government.

“We’re joined at the hip with DOGE,” an official from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget told reporters in a call on condition of anonymity.

“This is a pretty historic effort to deal with the bureaucracy,” the official said. “It is woke and it is wasteful, and dividing us on the basis of race and identity in the country and honestly weaponised against it.”

The White House provided an entire fact sheet on cuts to “woke programmes”, saying it was “eliminating radical gender and racial ideologies that poison the minds of Americans” and countering “cultural Marxism.”

Trump’s budget would also confirm the blow to foreign aid that his administration has already delivered since his inauguration in January.

It would formalise the closure of the US international development agency USAID, dramatic cuts to which have already been widely criticized around the world.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted a link to the budget proposal on X, saying that thanks to Trump “common sense leadership has been restored.”

“For far too long, Americans have had little to no return on their investment. Their tax dollars have been sent to unaccountable NGO’s overseas to fund programmes that do not serve our nation’s interests. That’s over,” he said.

‘Heartless’

The boosts for the Pentagon and Homeland Security however reflect Trump’s national security policies.

US defence spending would rise 13 percent to what the OMB official called “truly historic” levels comparable to those last seen under Republican president Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

Homeland Security spending would rise a giant 65% as part of Trump’s policy priority of cracking down on what he calls an “invasion” of undocumented migrants.

Together the spending boost would “at long last, fully secure our border,” OMB chief Russ Vought said in a letter to Congress accompanying the budget proposal.

The so-called “skinny budget” is often described as a wish-list that comes ahead of full budget proposals later in the year that must be agreed with Congress.

But it is a revealing summary of Trump’s focus in his new term, in which he has already sought to reshape the US government in his image.

The Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, hailed it as a “bold blueprint.”

But Republican leaders are already struggling to pass what Trump has called a “big, beautiful bill” for sweeping tax cuts.

Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said his party would “fight this heartless budget with everything we’ve got.”

“Donald Trump’s days of pretending to be a populist are over. His policies are nothing short of an all out assault on hardworking Americans,” Schumer said in a statement. 

SYDNEY: Australians went to the polls on Saturday in a national election shaped by soaring living costs, climate concerns, and the divisive global impact of US President Donald Trump.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is seeking a second term, facing off against opposition leader Peter Dutton in a contest that has been anything but ordinary.

From bread-and-butter issues to foreign influence, the campaign has seen both leaders walk a political tightrope. Trump’s name and policies have stirred debate, putting pressure on candidates to defend or distance themselves.

As voting began, the country appeared deeply divided — not just on domestic issues, but on where Australia stands in a changing world.

The almost universal consensus across a slew of opinion polls leading up to election day was that Albanese’s governing Labor Party would win a second term.

‘I’ll leave nothing on the field over the next three years if I’m re-elected as Australia’s prime minister,’ Albanese told Channel Seven on Saturday morning.

‘I’m hopeful that we receive a majority government today so that we can build on the foundations that we’ve laid. Australia has turned the corner.’

The first polls opened at 8:00 am (2200 GMT) on Australia’s east coast, to be followed later by the country’s western cities and far-flung island territories.

A total of 18.1 million voters have enrolled for the election. More than a third of them have cast an early ballot, the election authority said.

Voting is compulsory, enforced with fines of Aus$20 (US$13), leading to turnouts that top 90 percent.

A result could come as soon as Saturday night, unless the vote is very tight.

Albanese, 62, has promised to embrace renewable energy, tackle a worsening housing crisis, and pour money into a creaking healthcare system.

Trump slump

Liberal Party leader and former police officer Dutton, 54, wants to slash immigration, crack down on crime and ditch a longstanding ban on nuclear power.

Some polls showed Dutton leaking support because of US President Trump, who he praised this year as a ‘big thinker’ with ‘gravitas’ on the global stage.

‘I mean, Donald Trump is as mad as a cut snake, and we all know that,’ said voter Alan Whitman, 59, before casting his ballot on Saturday.

‘And we’ve got to tiptoe around that.’

As Australians soured on Trump, both Dutton and Albanese took on a more pugnacious tone.

‘If I needed to have a fight with Donald Trump or any other world leader, to advance our nation’s interest, I’d do it in a heartbeat,’ Dutton said in April.

Albanese condemned Trump’s tariffs as an act of ‘economic self-harm’ and ‘not the act of a friend’.

Economic concerns have dominated the contest for the many Australian households struggling to pay inflated prices for milk, bread, power and petrol.

‘The cost of living — it’s extremely high at the moment. So, taxes as well, is also another really big thing. Petrol prices, all the basic stuff,’ human resources manager Robyn Knox told AFP in Brisbane.

Small business owner Jared Bell had similar concerns.

‘Our grocery shops are definitely way more expensive than they were a couple years ago,’ he said.

Campaign stumbles

Both Albanese and Dutton tried to tout themselves as men of the people but were stumped when asked the price of eggs in a nationally televised debate.

Coal-mining superpower Australia will choose between two leaders with sharply contrasting ideas on climate change and emissions reduction.

Albanese’s government has embraced the global push towards decarbonisation, warning of a future in which iron ore and polluting coal exports no longer prop up the economy.

Dutton’s signature policy is a US$200 billion scheme to construct seven industrial-scale nuclear reactors, doing away with the need to ramp up renewables.

The 36-day campaign was a largely staid affair but there were a few moments of unscripted levity.

Albanese tumbled backwards off the stage at a heaving campaign rally, while Dutton drew blood when he hit an unsuspecting cameraman in the head with a stray football.

It remains to be seen whether Albanese or Dutton will command an outright majority, or whether they are forced to cobble together a coalition with the support of minor parties.

Growing disenchantment among voters has emboldened independents pushing for greater transparency and climate progress.

Polls have suggested 10 or more unaligned crossbenchers could hold the balance of power — making a rare minority government a distinct possibility.

LONDON: Britain’s retailers are facing serious trouble after cyberattacks hit some of the country’s biggest names, with Marks & Spencer still unable to take online orders and Co-op confirming a major data breach.

M&S entered a second week unable to take online orders on Friday following a major cyberattack, as food retailer the Co-op Group said hackers had stolen customer data.

Some £700 million ($930 million) has been wiped off the stock market value of M&S since the hack was revealed last week. News that the Co-op and London department store Harrods have also suffered incidents in recent days was described as a “wake-up call” by the government’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

British companies, public bodies, and institutions have been hit by a wave of cyberattacks in recent years, costing them tens of millions of pounds and often months of disruption.

The 141-year-old M&S, one of the best-known names in British business, stopped taking clothing and home orders through its website and app on April 25 following problems with contactless pay and click-and-collect services over the Easter bank holiday weekend.

The Co-op first revealed a cyberattack on Wednesday but said on Friday that information relating to a significant number of its current and past members — including personal data such as names, contact details, and dates of birth — had been taken.

Ciaran Martin, the former CEO of the NCSC, told Reuters that so far there were no signs the attacks on M&S, the Co-op and Harrods were linked, with the latter two possibly discovered due to heightened vigilance after the M&S incident.

“If this can happen to M&S, it can happen to anybody,” he said, noting that after such a serious attack, a lengthy recovery period was not unusual.

On Friday, M&S CEO Stuart Machin again apologised to shoppers, without stating when online ordering would resume.

“We are working day and night to manage the current cyber incident and get things back to normal for you as quickly as possible,” he said in an email sent to M&S customers.

With M&S, which operates around 1,000 stores across Britain, generating roughly one-third of its clothing and home sales online, analysts have said a short-term profit hit is inevitable.

M&S has declined to quantify the financial impact, which grows daily as it misses out on sales of new season ranges while the UK basks in record May temperatures.

Commuters were locked out of their accounts for almost three months last year following a cyberattack on London transport operator TfL, while another attack on a London blood test processing company last year disrupted services for over three months.

The availability of some food products has also been affected in certain M&S stores, while broader disruption may be hitting the business, which has pulled job postings from its website.

Shares in M&S closed down 1%, extending losses since Easter to about 9%.

‘Increasingly sophisticated’ attacks

Helen Dickinson, CEO of the trade body British Retail Consortium, said cyberattacks were becoming “increasingly sophisticated”, forcing retailers to spend hundreds of millions of pounds each year on defences.

“All retailers are continually reviewing their systems to ensure they are as secure as possible,” she said.

Technology specialist site BleepingComputer, citing multiple sources, said a ransomware attack that encrypted M&S’s servers was believed to have been carried out by a hacking collective known as “Scattered Spider”.

The NCSC is working with the affected retailers, while the Metropolitan Police’s Cyber Crime Unit and the National Crime Agency (NCA) are investigating the M&S attack.

“These incidents should act as a wake-up call to all organisations,” said NCSC head Richard Horne.

Labour MP Matt Western, Chair of Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, said the government should do more to prevent major cyberattacks.

“As the Government concludes its consultation on proposals to counter ransomware, I hope its response treats these threats with the seriousness they clearly deserve.”

A strong offshore earthquake caused a tsunami scare in the far south of Chile and Argentina on Friday, with authorities evacuating residents of coastal areas for hours before scaling back the threat level.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake struck in the Drake Passage between the southern tip of South America and Antarctica at a shallow depth of 10 kilometres (6.2 miles).

The USGS put the magnitude at 7.4, slightly below the 7.5 reported by Chile’s National Seismological Centre.

It struck at 9:58 am local time (1258 GMT), and several smaller aftershocks were also recorded, but there were no reports of injuries or material damage.

The epicentre was 219 kilometres from the city of Ushuaia in Argentina and a similar distance from the Chilean town of Puerto Williams.

Chile’s emergency agency, Senapred, issued a tsunami warning and ordered the evacuation of coastal areas of the remote southern Magallanes region.

But within two hours, the agency had lifted the evacuation order.

“The preventive evacuation is over. That means everyone can return and resume their activities,” Juan Carlos Andrade, Senapred’s director in Magallanes, said, while adding that fishing was suspended until further notice.

Situated at the southern tip of South America, the Magallanes region is Chile’s second largest, but is sparsely populated.

It lies adjacent to Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego Province, home to Ushuaia, a major jump-off point for expeditions to the Antarctic.

Felt the bed moving

Sofia Ramonet told AFP was asleep when she “felt the bed moving a lot” in her third-floor apartment in Ushuaia.

“I looked up at the ceiling where I have a hanging lamp and it was moving from one side to the other. It lasted a considerable amount of time, a few minutes.”

When she looked out the window, she saw “a lot of people outside their homes” who were “scared because they didn’t know what was happening or what to do.”

There was no evacuation order for Ushuaia.

But residents of Puerto Almanza, a village 75 kilometres to the east on the Beagle Channel, which separates the main island in the Tierra del Fuego archipelago from smaller islands and which could act as a funnel for a wave surge, were ordered to move to higher ground.

All nautical activities in the Beagle Channel were suspended, Tierra del Fuego’s secretary for civil protection told AFP.

The quake was felt 160 miles as the crow flies north of Ushuaia in the Chilean town of Porvenir on the Strait of Magellan.

“I didn’t give it much thought until the alarms sounded. It caused a bit of chaos because it’s not normal to feel tremors here,” Shirley Gallego, a 41-year-old fishing plant operator, told AFP.

A history of quakes

Chile is one of the countries most affected by earthquakes.

Three tectonic plates converge within its territory: the Nazca, the South American, and the Antarctic plates.

On X, several videos showed people evacuating their homes in Puerto Williams, the town closest to the quake’s epicentre.

police on its X account showed an officer pushing a person in a wheelchair up a hill in the town of 2,800 inhabitants, while other videos shared on X showed people walking up a hill.

In 1960, the southern Chilean city of Valdivia was devastated by a magnitude 9.5 earthquake, considered the most powerful ever recorded, which killed 9,500 people.

In 2010, an 8.8 magnitude quake off the coast of central Chile, which triggered a tsunami, left more than 520 dead.

ROME: Packing the Roman basilica where he had chosen to be buried in a break from tradition, tens of thousands of people streamed past the tomb of Pope Francis on Sunday.

In more than a century, no pope had been laid to rest outside the Vatican, but Francis opted instead for burial in Santa Maria Maggiore (Saint Mary Major), located in the Italian capital’s most multicultural neighbourhood.

His coffin was taken there on Saturday after his funeral Mass in St Peter’s square, with around 150,000 people lining the route through the heart of the city to say their farewells.

The casket was placed in a simple marble tomb in a side aisle of the basilica. Only his name in Latin, “Franciscus”, is inscribed on top, while a reproduction of the plain cross that he used to wear around his neck hangs above the niche.

“I feel like it’s exactly in the way of the Pope. He was simple, and so is his place now,” said Polish pilgrim Maria Brzezinska after paying her respects.

Visitors began queuing well before the Basilica opened at 7:00am (0500GMT) and the church rapidly filled with well-wishers after the doors opened. Authorities urged people to leave as soon as they had seen the tomb, saying thousands more were waiting to get in.

Six hours later, 30,000 people had visited St Mary Major, according to the Vatican.

Tourists leaving the basilica at lunch time said they had been queuing for more than two hours and had only a few minutes inside.

In the afternoon, hundreds of cardinals gathered in the church for prayers.

The church was founded in 432 and is the only basilica in Rome that preserves the early Christian structure, although there have been many later additions.

Francis, who died on April 21 at the age of 88, was especially attached to it because of his devotion to Mary, Mother of God. He prayed there before and after every overseas trip.

A venerated Byzantine icon of Mary is housed in the Pauline chapel near the tomb. A vase of golden roses, donated by Francis in 2023, sits among candlesticks under the icon. He last visited the chapel carrying a bunch of white roses on April 12.

A single white rose was placed on his tomb.

“So much intensity. He was a person close to everyone, so we respect him for what he did, each in our own way. Thank you,” said Carmelo Lamurra, a Rome resident.

MADRID: Lights flickered back to life in Spain and Portugal late Monday after a massive blackout hit the Iberian peninsula, stranding passengers in trains and hundreds of lifts while millions saw phone and internet coverage die.

Nearly half of Spain’s national electricity supply had been restored before the end of the day, the prime minister announced. Lights came on again in Madrid and in Portugal’s capital.

But no firm cause for the shutdown emerged, though wild rumours spread on messaging systems about cyber attacks.

Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said the source of the outage was “probably in Spain”. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said “all the potential causes” were being analysed and warned the public “not to speculate” because of the risk of “misinformation”.

Sanchez said about 15 gigawatts of electricity, more than half of the power being consumed at the time, “suddenly disappeared” in about five seconds.

Sanchez was unable to say when power would be completely restored in Spain and warned that some workers would have to stay home Tuesday. Montenegro said Portugal’s power would be back “within hours”.

The outage rippled briefly into southwest France, while Morocco saw disruption to some internet providers and airport check-in systems.

People were “stunned”, according to Carlos Candori, a 19-year-old construction worker who had to exit the paralysed Madrid metro system. “This has never happened in Spain.”

“There’s no (phone) coverage, I can’t call my family, my parents, nothing: I can’t even go to work,” he told AFP.

Cash queues

In Madrid and elsewhere, panicked customers rushed to withdraw cash from banks, and streets filled with crowds floundering for a phone signal. Long queues formed for taxis and buses.

Play was cancelled at the Madrid Open tennis tournament when the power went.

With traffic lights knocked out, police struggled to keep densely congested traffic moving. Authorities urged motorists to stay home.

In Madrid alone, 286 rescue operations were carried out to free people trapped in lifts, regional authorities said.

Trains were halted across the country and late Monday, the transport minister said there were still 11 trains with stranded passengers who needed help.

Spain’s nuclear power plants automatically went offline as a safety precaution, with diesel generators maintaining them in a “safe condition”, the Spanish Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) said.

‘Serious disruption’

Sanchez said the blackout, which hit just after midday, caused “serious disruption” for millions and “economic losses in businesses, in companies, in industries”.

The European Commission said it was in contact with Spain and Portugal over the crisis. European Council President Antonio Costa said on X: “There are no indications of any cyberattack.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky offered support in a call to Sanchez, noting his country had become specialised in such emergencies after three years of Russia attacking its electrical grid.

“No matter what happens, we are always ready to assist and support our friends,” he said on X. “Our technical experts are ready to help.”

Portugal’s REN operator said the entire Iberian peninsula was affected — 48 million people in Spain and 10.5 million in Portugal.

The huge power cut disrupted flights to and from Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon, European air traffic organisation Eurocontrol said.

France affected

Transport chaos also gripped Spain’s second city, Barcelona, where locals and tourists alike flooded the streets in an attempt to find out what had happened.

Student Laia Montserrat had to leave her school when the lights went out.

“As the internet wasn’t coming back, they told us to go home… (but) there weren’t trains either,” she told AFP. “Now we don’t know what to do.”

The internet activity monitoring site Netblocks told AFP the blackout caused a “loss of much of the country’s digital infrastructure”. It said web connections plunged to just 17 percent of normal usage.

Spain’s El Pais newspaper reported that hospitals used back-up generators to keep critical wards going, but some units were left without power.

Massive blackouts have affected other countries around the world in recent years.

Huge outages struck Tunisia in September 2023, Sri Lanka in August 2020, and Argentina and Uruguay in June 2019. In July 2012, India experienced a vast blackout.

In Europe, in November 2006, 10 million people were left without power for an hour in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. That was caused by a failure in Germany’s grid.

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday touted the early results of his immigration crackdown despite concerns over due process, displaying photos of alleged criminal offenders on the White House lawn and preparing to target cities and states that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

Trump plans to sign an executive order on Monday directing top officials to identify within a month the cities and states failing to sufficiently comply with federal immigration laws, a White House official said.

Trump launched an aggressive enforcement campaign after taking office, surging troops to the southern border and pledging to deport millions of immigrants in the US illegally.

The Republican president – who made immigration a major campaign issue in 2024 – said the actions were needed after years of high illegal immigration under his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden.

At a press briefing, White House officials touted a steep decline in illegal crossings at the border during Trump’s first three months in office – even as concerns have emerged over the due process rights of immigrants and US citizens swept up in the dragnet.

US Border Patrol arrested 7,200 migrants illegally crossing the border in March, the lowest monthly total since 2000 and down from a peak of 250,000 in December 2023.

“We have the most secure border in the history of this nation and the numbers prove it,” Trump border czar Tom Homan said at the briefing.

Democrats and civil rights advocates have criticized Trump’s heightened enforcement tactics, including the cases of several US-citizen children recently deported with their parents, including one with a rare form of cancer, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Homan blamed the parents for putting their children at risk of deportation by remaining in the US.

“If you choose to have a US-citizen child, knowing you’re in this country illegally, you put yourself in that position,” he said.

In his first hundred days in office, Trump has moved to strip legal immigration status from hundreds of thousands of people, increasing the pool of those who can potentially be deported.

While arrests of immigrants in the US illegally have spiked, deportations remain below last year’s levels under Biden when there were more people illegally crossing the border who could be quickly returned.

Deportations were down in Trump’s first three months in office from 195,000 last year to 130,000 this year, Reuters reported last week. Homan defended the figures and said it was not fair to compare them to Biden-era tallies.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities have been over capacity, with some 48,000 in custody as of early April, beyond the funded level of 41,500.

Homan said Texas military base Fort Bliss could be ready “in the very near future” to hold migrant detainees. The Trump administration has already been using the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Photos posted on the White House lawn featured 100 people charged or convicted of serious crimes, including murder, rape and fentanyl distribution. Numerous studies show immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans.

Sanctuary standoff

Trump has criticised cities and states that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, labeling them “sanctuaries” and blaming them for releasing criminal offenders instead of coordinating their transfer to ICE.

Last week, a federal judge blocked Trump’s administration from withholding federal funding from more than a dozen so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown.

The executive order planned for Monday, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, would build on Trump’s early efforts to pressure the jurisdictions to cooperate.

“President Trump plans to sign an executive order on Monday escalating his battle against Democratic-led states and cities that don’t fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities,” a White House official said.

US officials arrested a Wisconsin judge on Friday and charged her with helping a man in her court briefly evade immigration authorities. The arrest triggered backlash from Democrats and immigrant rights advocates who raised concerns that immigrant victims may not feel safe in courthouses.

Homan defended the arrest, saying the administration would enforce laws prohibiting harboring of a person in the US illegally.

“You will be prosecuted, judge or not,” he said.

Trump’s schedule calls for him to sign executive orders at 5pm EST. Americans are split on Trump’s immigration approach, but he has a 45% approval rating on immigration, better than other major issues, a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in mid-April found.

US President Donald Trump ousted his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, on Thursday and named Secretary of State Marco Rubio as his interim replacement in the first major shakeup of Trump’s inner circle since he took office in January.

Trump, in a social media post, said he would be nominating Waltz to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, adding that “he has worked hard to put our nation’s interests first.”

Earlier in the day, sources said Trump had decided to force Waltz out of his White House position.

Trump’s selection of Rubio to temporarily replace Waltz will mark the first time since Henry Kissinger in the 1970s that one person has held both the positions of secretary of state and national security adviser.

Waltz’s deputy, Alex Wong, an Asia expert who was a State Department official focused on North Korea during Trump’s first term, is also leaving his post, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Waltz, a 51-year-old former Republican lawmaker from Florida, faced criticism inside the White House when he was caught up in a March scandal involving a Signal chat among top Trump national security aides.

The national security adviser is a powerful role that does not require Senate confirmation.

Trump cycled through four national security advisers during his first presidency.

A White House official did not confirm the reports, saying they “do not want to get ahead of any announcement.”

Waltz showed no sign that he knew of his imminent departure when appearing early Wednesday on Fox News, where he hailed the new US minerals deal with Ukraine.

“Nobody said (it) could be done. President Trump said ‘get it done’,” he said.

Saying Trump has boosted US military recruitment, he added: “This is leadership at its finest, led by our commander in chief, who loves the troops and they love him.”

Waltz was also present at Trump’s televised cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

A former special forces officer, Waltz was seen as a moderate voice in the Trump administration when he was appointed, but reportedly clashed with other officials over his hawkish stance against Russia and Iran.

Trump has pushed for Ukraine to reach a quick ceasefire deal with Russia, while reopening negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

Steve Witkoff, a real estate magnate whom Trump has picked to lead US talks with both Russia and Iran, is in contention to replace Waltz, US media reported.

Waltz had been under pressure since late March, when the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Magazine revealed he had been mistakenly added to a chat on the commercial messaging app Signal about military attacks on Yemen’s Huthi rebels.

Officials on the chat laid out the attack plan, including the timings that US warplanes would take off to bomb targets, with the first texts barely half an hour before they launched.

Despite intense media speculation that Trump would fire Waltz over the scandal, the president repeatedly offered his backing, and the national security adviser appeared to have ridden out the storm.

However, Waltz was among several White House staff targeted by a right-wing influencer and conspiracy theorist who met with Trump, urging a purge.

Laura Loomer, who is known for claiming that the September 11, 2001 attacks were an inside job, is reported to have successfully pushed for the dismissal of several senior US security officials she deemed disloyal to the president.

After news of Waltz and Wong’s ouster was reported Thursday, Loomer posted on X: “SCALP.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also faced pressure over the scandal.

“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”, Hegseth wrote in one text, referring to F/A-18 US Navy jets, before adding that “Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME.”

“1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets).”

A short time later, Waltz sent real-time intelligence on the aftermath of an attack, writing that US forces had identified the target “walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”

Reacting to Waltz’s reported dismissal on Thursday, top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer posted on X: “Now do Hegseth.”