Category: International

NEW YORK: A helicopter crashed in the Hudson River near lower Manhattan on Thursday afternoon, the New York City Police Department said.

ABC News reported that fatalities had occurred, citing law enforcement sources.

A New York City Police spokesman said police boats were assisting in the rescue efforts on the Hudson, but details such as how many people were on board were not immediately available. CNN reported that at least three people had been rescued.

The Federal Aviation Administration did not immediately comment, while the National Transportation Safety Board said it was gathering information on the incident.

News footage of the crash site showed several emergency and police boats circling a patch of river where the helicopter was submerged.

The accident occurred in the river off the Tribeca neighbourhood of lower Manhattan. New York police said residents should expect emergency vehicles and traffic delays in the surrounding areas.

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he would love to get a deal with China to end an escalating trade war.

Trump made the comments during a Cabinet meeting opened to press. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said during the meeting that as they settle deals with countries, it will bring more certainty on trade policy.

Trump said: “Would love to get deal with China.”

Speaking on the potential of ongoing talks, he said, “Think we will end up working out something good for both countries.”

Trump also commented on the war in Ukraine, stating that progress was being made toward ending the conflict. “… We’re making progress on getting Russia-Ukraine war stopped,” he added.

Addressing the financial side of his policies, Trump suggested that revenue generated from tariffs could be directed toward paying down the national debt. “Would use money from tariffs to pay down debt,” he said.

In his remarks on European Union trade, Trump noted that he was considering approaching the EU as a unified block when discussing tariffs. “Looking at EU as one block on tariffs,” he remarked.

Trump’s comments come at a time of heightened focus on US trade policies and his potential influence on international relations if he were to return to the presidency.

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This is a developing story and is being updated with more details.  

ISTANBUL: US and Russian delegations held talks in Istanbul on Thursday on normalising the work of their diplomatic missions after the war in Ukraine triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War.

A vehicle carrying the US delegation left the Russian consulate building in central Istanbul on Thursday afternoon, some six hours after they arrived. The Russian delegation remained in the building.

The talks were to be led by Russia’s new ambassador to Washington, Alexander Darchiev, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Sonata Coulter, Russia’s foreign ministry said.

The main focus, according to Moscow and Washington, is restoring the work of diplomatic missions after relations between the two nuclear powers were complicated by years of rows, mutual claims of intimidation and even the freezing of diplomatic property.

“Ukraine is not, absolutely not on the agenda,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said on Tuesday.

“These talks are solely focused on our embassy operations, not on normalizing a bilateral relationship overall, which can only happen, as we’ve noted, once there is peace between Russia and Ukraine.”

Both Moscow and Washington have complained in recent years about the difficulties of getting credentials for their diplomats, making the operation of their embassies extremely difficult.

Russia has said that even paying diplomats has become difficult due to Western restrictions, while U.S. diplomats say their movements are restricted in Russia. Both sides have complained of intimidation.

Among the issues is diplomatic property.

Washington has put six Russian properties under restrictions, including the Killenworth estate on Long Island, the Pioneer Point “dacha” in Maryland, the Russian consulates in San Francisco and Seattle and the trade missions in Washington and New York.

The EU paused plans for retaliatory tariffs on US goods Thursday after President Donald Trump abruptly suspended higher US duties on the bloc and other countries, leaving China in the crosshairs of his trade war.

Stocks in Asia and Europe joined a major rally on Wall Street after Trump said Wednesday that he was halting steep tariffs on scores of nations for 90 days — though he kept a global baseline 10% levy intact.

But Trump raised tariffs on China to 125% to punish Beijing for retaliating.

The European Union, which had faced a 20% tariff, welcomed Trump’s U-turn, saying it was an “important step towards stabilising the global economy”.

The 27-nation bloc responded with its own olive branch, suspending for 90 days tariffs on 20 billion euros’ worth of US goods that had been greenlit in retaliation to duties on steel and aluminium.

“We want to give negotiations a chance,” EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement.

She warned, however, that “if negotiations are not satisfactory, our countermeasures will kick in” and that all options remain on the table.

Other countries are also lining up to bargain.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called Trump’s reversal a “welcome reprieve” and said Ottawa would begin negotiations with Washington on a new economic deal after elections on April 28.

Vietnam said it had agreed with the United States to start trade talks, while Pakistan is sending a delegation to Washington.

China hits Hollywood

But there was no let-up in Trump’s trade war with China, which said the US tariffs policy “goes against the will of the world and goes against the whole world”.

The heightened tariffs against China took effect at the same time as retaliatory levies of 84% imposed by Beijing on US imports.

Beijing added Hollywood to its target list on Thursday as it announced it would “moderately reduce” the number of US films it imports.

But China’s commerce ministry said the door remained open for dialogue.

“We hope the US will meet China halfway, and, based on the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, properly resolve differences through dialogue and consultation,” Commerce Ministry spokeswoman He Yongqian said.

Trump has predicted that trade deals will be made with all countries, including China, which has for now refused to roll back retaliatory tariffs on US goods.

“A deal’s going to be made with China. A deal’s going to be made with every one of them,” Trump said at the White House. However, China’s leaders “don’t quite know how to go about it”.

Trump believes his policy will revive America’s lost manufacturing base by forcing companies to relocate to the United States.

The billionaire former property tycoon has particularly raged against China, accusing it of excess production and “dumping” inexpensive goods on other economies.

‘A little queasy’

Markets have been on a roller-coaster ride since Trump announced his tariff plans last week, with the 10% global levy taking effect on Saturday and the higher ones on Wednesday before the pause.

Investors also began to dump US government bonds — a major economic red light since American sovereign debt is normally seen as a haven for investors in troubled times.

Trump denied that he backtracked on the tariffs, saying he remains flexible.

“I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy,” he said.

Wall Street’s tech-heavy Nasdaq index finished more than 12% higher on Wednesday while the broad-based S&P 500 jumped 9.5%.

“What a day, but more great days coming!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social network.

Asia and Europe followed suit on Thursday, with Tokyo closing 9.1% higher as the Japanese government welcomed the tariff pause but demanded that other levies be halted.

Paris and Frankfurt were up more than 5% in afternoon deals while London rose 4.5%.

“This will go down in American history as the greatest trade negotiating day we have ever had,” said Trump’s senior trade advisor Peter Navarro.

“We’re in a beautiful position for the next 90 days” to seek trade deals with partners, he told ABC News, adding that more than 75 have sought to negotiate with Washington.

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump in a stunning reversal said he would temporarily lower the hefty duties he had just imposed on dozens of countries while further ramping up pressure on China, sending global stocks rocketing higher.

After Trump’s announcement, Experts and politicians posted their reactions on social media after Trump’s announcement.

They put forward accusations that the president orchestrated a reverse “pump and dump” scheme with the American economy.

Democratic Senator Adam Schiff is calling for an investigation into market manipulation or insider trading.

“Is Donald Trump’s inner circle illegally profiting off of these huge swings in the stock market by insider trading? Congress must find out,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

This was also backed by Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Warren wrote on X: “I’m calling for an investigation into whether President Trump manipulated the market to benefit his Wall Street donors—all while working people and small businesses paid the price.”

“Did Trump help insiders cash in on his tariff flip-flopping? It sure looks like corruption,” she added.

Additionally, US senator Chris Murphy also reacted to Trump’s move and said: “An insider trading scandal is brewing. Trump’s 9:30am tweet makes it clear he was eager for his people to make money off the private info only he knew. So who knew ahead of time and how much money did they make?”

Trump’s turnabout on Wednesday, which came less than 24 hours after steep new tariffs kicked in on most trading partners, followed the most intense episode of financial market volatility since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The upheaval erased trillions of dollars from stock markets and led to an unsettling surge in US government bond yields that appeared to catch Trump’s attention.

“I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line, they were getting yippy, you know,” Trump told reporters after the announcement, referring to a golf term.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has repeatedly threatened an array of punitive measures on trading partners, only to revoke some of them at the last minute. The on-again, off-again approach has baffled world leaders and spooked business executives, who say the uncertainty has made it difficult to forecast market conditions.

The day’s events cast into stark relief the uncertainty surrounding Trump’s policies and how he and his team create and implement them.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asserted that the pullback had been the plan all along to bring countries to the bargaining table. Trump, though, later indicated that the near-panic in markets that had unfolded since his April 2 announcements had factored in to his thinking.

Despite insisting for days that his policies would never change, he told reporters on Wednesday: “You have to be flexible.”

But he kept the pressure on China, the No 2 provider of US imports. Trump said he would raise the tariff on Chinese imports to 125% from the 104% level that took effect at midnight, further escalating a high-stakes confrontation between the world’s two largest economies. The two countries have traded tit-for-tat tariff hikes repeatedly over the past week.

Trump’s reversal on the country-specific tariffs is not absolute. A 10% blanket duty on almost all US imports will remain in effect, the White House said. The announcement also does not appear to affect duties on autos, steel and aluminum that are already in place.

The 90-day freeze also does not apply to duties paid by Canada and Mexico, because their goods are still subject to 25% fentanyl-related tariffs if they do not comply with the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement’s rules of origin. Those duties remain in place for the moment, with an indefinite exemption for USMCA-compliant goods.

“China is unlikely to change its strategy: stand firm, absorb pressure, and let Trump overplay his hand. Beijing believes Trump sees concessions as a weakness, so giving ground only invites more pressure,” said Daniel Russel, vice president of international security and diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

“Other countries will welcome the 90-day stay of execution — if it lasts — but the whiplash from constant zigzags creates more of the uncertainty that businesses and governments hate,” Russel said.

Trump’s tariffs had sparked a days-long sell off that erased trillions of dollars from global stocks and pressured US. Treasury bonds and the dollar, which form the backbone of the global financial system. Canada and Japan said they would step in to provide stability if needed – a task usually performed by the United States during times of economic crisis.

Analysts said the sudden spike in share prices might not undo all of the damage. Surveys have found slowing business investment and household spending due to worries about the impact of the tariffs, and a Reuters/Ipsos survey found that three out of four Americans expect prices to increase in the months ahead.

Goldman Sachs cut its probability of a recession back to 45% after Trump’s move, down from 65%, saying the tariffs left in place were still likely to result in a 15% increase in the overall tariff rate.

Treasury Secretary Bessent shrugged off questions about market turmoil and said the abrupt reversal rewarded countries that had heeded Trump’s advice to refrain from retaliation. He suggested Trump had used the tariffs to create maximum negotiating leverage. “This was his strategy all along,” Bessent told reporters. “And you might even say that he goaded China into a bad position.”

Bessent is the point person in the country-by-country negotiations that could address foreign aid and military cooperation as well as economic matters. Trump has spoken with leaders of Japan and South Korea, and a delegation from Vietnam met with US officials on Wednesday to discuss trade matters, the White House said.

Bessent declined to say how long negotiations with the more than 75 countries that have reached out might take.

Trump said a resolution with China was possible as well. But officials have said they will prioritize talks with other countries.

“China wants to make a deal,” Trump said. “They just don’t know how quite to go about it.”

Trump told reporters that he had been considering a pause for several days. On Monday, the White House denounced a report that the administration was considering such a move, calling it “fake news.”

Earlier on Wednesday, before the announcement, Trump tried to reassure investors, posting on his Truth Social account, “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!”

Later, he added: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”

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— Additional input from Reuters

WELLINGTON: After months of protest and discussion on the role of indigenous Maori in the Pacific nation, the New Zealand parliament on Thursday overwhelmingly rejected a bill that sought to redefine the fundamentals of the country’s founding agreement.

Over 500 Maori chiefs and the British Crown initially signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, outlining their agreed-upon system of governance. Today’s laws and policies are based on how the document’s clauses are interpreted.

The failed bill was a policy of David Seymour’s ACT New Zealand party, which garnered 8.6% of the party vote at the 2023 election.

Seymour had said the purpose of the Treaty Principles Bill was for parliament to define the principles of the treaty, provide certainty and clarity, and promote debates on its place in constitutional arrangements.

In coalition negotiations, ACT’s governing coalition partners National and New Zealand First had committed to support the bill through the first of three readings but had said they would not support it into law.

The law, needing a simple majority to pass its second reading, failed with 112 votes against it and just 11 votes for it.

“The Treaty Principles Bill is dead. Our movement for Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi) justice lives on,” said Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson, whose party did not support the bill. “Instead of dividing and conquering, this Bill has backfired and united communities across the motu (country) in solidarity for our founding agreement and what it represents.”

The bill has garnered significant attention. In November, tens of thousands of people marched on New Zealand’s parliament as a show of opposition to the bill, in what was one of the largest protests ever in New Zealand. A deluge of submissions to the committee considering the bill followed.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said that Tehran is open to discussions with the United States on an equal footing, although he did not specify whether the country would engage in direct negotiations.

It came after US President Donald Trump, who has called on Tehran to hold direct negotiations on its nuclear programme, threatened to bomb Iran if diplomacy fails.

Iran says it is ready to engage in dialogue, but refuses to hold direct talks under threats and pressure.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran wants dialogue on equal footing,” Pezeshkian said during a meeting, according to the presidency’s website.

On Thursday, Trump said he would prefer to hold “direct talks” with Iran.

“I think it goes faster and you understand the other side a lot better than if you go through intermediaries,” the US president argued.

But on Saturday, Pezeshkian asked: “If you want negotiations, then what is the point of threatening?”

“Today, America is not only humiliating Iran, but also the world,” Pezeshkian added, in an apparent reference to recent policies adopted by Trump, including imposing tariffs on imports.

Western countries, led by the United States, have for decades accused Tehran of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.

Iran rejects the allegation and maintains that its nuclear activities exist solely for civilian purposes.

On Saturday Hossein Salami, head of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideological arm of Iran’s military, said the country was “ready” for war.

“We are not worried about war at all. We will not be the initiators of war, but we are ready for any war,” the official IRNA news agency reported him as saying.

In 2015, Iran reached a landmark deal with the permanent members of the UN Security Council, namely the United States, France, China, Russia, and the United Kingdom, as well as Germany, to regulate its nuclear activities.

The agreement provided for sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on Iranian nuclear activities.

In 2018, during Trump’s first term in office, the United States withdrew from the agreement and reinstated sanctions.

In response, Iran rolled back on its commitments under the agreement and accelerated its nuclear programme.

On Monday, Ali Larijani, a close adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned that while Iran was not seeking nuclear weapons, it would “have no choice but to do so” in the event of an attack against it.

PANAMA CITY: The Pentagon chief has said that it is for Iran to interpret whether the recent deployment of the B-2 bombers to a US-British base in the Indian Ocean is intended as a message, amid ongoing efforts to address the country’s nuclear programme.

As many as six B-2 bombers were relocated in March to a US-British military base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, US officials told Reuters, amid a US bombing campaign in Yemen and rising tensions with Iran.

There are only 20 B-2 bombers in the Air Force’s inventory, so they are typically used sparingly.

Experts say the B-2s, which possess stealth technology and can carry the heaviest US bombs and nuclear weapons, are ideally placed to operate in the Middle East.

When asked if the B-2 deployment was meant as a message to Iran, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth responded: “We’ll let them decide.”

“It’s a great asset … it sends a message to everybody,” he told reporters during a visit to Panama.

“President Trump’s been clear … Iran should not have a nuclear bomb,” he said. “We very much hope – the President is focused on doing that peacefully.”

On Monday, Trump made a surprise announcement that the United States and Iran were set to begin direct talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme on Saturday. He warned that Iran would be in “great danger” if the talks failed.

Iran, which had resisted Trump’s demands in recent weeks, said indirect talks would take place in Oman, highlighting the gulf between the two sides.

On Wednesday, Trump reiterated a threat to use military force if Iran refused to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

“I’m not asking for much … but they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters. 

He declined to say when any military action might begin.

Although B-2 bombers have previously been used to strike Houthi targets in Yemen, many experts believe deploying the stealth aircraft there is overkill.

However, the B-2 can carry the 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator – a weapon designed to destroy deeply buried targets. Experts believe this could be used to target Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

Western powers accuse Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons by enriching uranium to levels beyond what is needed for civilian energy purposes.

Tehran insists its nuclear programme is purely for generating electricity and other peaceful purposes.

WASHINGTON: Strong storms in the central-eastern United States have pushed the death toll to 16,  officials said, with the National Weather Service warning on Saturday of “severe” flash flooding in the coming days.

A line of fierce storms stretching from Arkansas to Ohio has damaged buildings, flooded roadways and produced dozens of tornadoes in recent days.

Tennessee was hardest hit by extreme weather, with state authorities saying on Saturday that 10 people had died across the western part of the state.

Two people were killed due to floods in Kentucky, according to state Governor Andy Beshear, including a child who was “swept away by floodwaters.”

Photos shared on social and local media showed widespread damage from the storm across several states, with homes torn apart, toppled trees, downed power lines and overturned cars.

“Severe, widespread flash flooding is expected” into Sunday in parts of the central-eastern region, the National Weather Service (NWS) said, warning that “lives and property are in great danger.”

Two storm-related deaths were recorded in Missouri and one in Indiana, according to local media reports and authorities.

A five-year-old was found dead in a home in Little Rock, Arkansas “in connection to the ongoing severe weather,” the state’s emergency management agency said in a statement.

“Flooding has reached record levels in many communities,” Kentucky’s Governor Beshear wrote on social media Saturday, urging residents in the state to “avoid travel, and never drive through water.”

More than 100,000 customers were without power in Arkansas and Tennessee as of early Sunday, according to tracking website PowerOutage.us.

The NWS on Saturday said that moderate to severe tornadoes could form in parts of the Tennessee Valley and Lower Mississippi Valley on Sunday, along with “severe thunderstorms.”

Scientists say global warming is disrupting climate patterns and the water cycle, making extreme weather more frequent and ferocious.

Last year set a record for high temperatures in the United States, with the country also pummeled by a barrage of tornadoes and destructive hurricanes.

The US attorney general Pam Bondi on Sunday said that Donald Trump’s third term would be “a heavy lift” for the president to find a legal way to run for a third term in office. 

“I wish we could have him for 20 years as our president,” Pam Bondi told Fox News Sunday, “but I think he’s going to be finished, probably, after this term.”

In 1947, the US Constitution was amended and set to a two-year limit on the presidency, not long after Franklin Roosevelt died near the start of his fourth term in the White House.

But constitutional amendments require approval by two-thirds of both houses of Congress, as well as ratification by three-quarters of the 50 states, which political analysts say is extremely unlikely.

“That’s really the only way to do it,” Bondi said. “It’d be a heavy lift.”

Trump’s early talk of seeking a third term struck many as fanciful, but on March 31 the 78-year-old president told NBC News that he was “not joking” about the possibility.

He said there were “methods” that would allow it to happen.

The remarks by Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, about the difficulty of a legal third term appear to align with the views of most constitutional scholars.

But as a confirmed Trump loyalist holding the government’s top law-enforcement office, her comments take on greater significance.

Earlier in the interview with Fox’s Shannon Bream, Bondi spoke out against the broad legal pushback the still-young Trump administration has faced as he moves aggressively to put his policies in place.

“We’ve had over 170 lawsuits brought against us — that should be the constitutional crisis right there,” she said. “We’ll continue to fight” those cases as they move through the courts.

Bondi defended the administration’s decision to seek the death penalty in the case of Luigi Mangione, who is charged with the December 4, 2024 killing on a New York sidewalk of health insurance executive Brian Thompson.

“The president’s directive was very clear: we are to seek the death penalty when possible,” she said. “If there was ever a death case, this is one.”

Bondi exulted in one recent legal victory, when the Supreme Court on Friday sided with the administration in a dispute over the Education Department’s move to freeze so-called DEI grants — involving efforts to ensure diversity, equity and inclusion.

The right-leaning court allowed the administration to continue freezing $64 million intended for teacher training and professional development.

“We just got a great win,” Bondi said, “and we’ll continue to fight every day.”