Category: Latest News

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has eased off his attacks on Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, saying he does not intend to sack him but wants the central bank to act swiftly to lower interest rates.

Wall Street investors dumped US assets on Monday, with all three main indexes down after Trump took a series of swipes at Jerome Powell, head of the US central bank.

The president had criticised Powell for warning that the White House’s sweeping tariffs policy would likely reignite inflation.

“I have no intention of firing him,” Trump said Tuesday.

“I would like to see him be a little more active in terms of his idea to lower interest rates – it’s a perfect time to lower interest rates.

“If he doesn’t, is it the end? No.”

Trump’s recent outbursts against Powell had fanned concern that he would oust him, and White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said last week the president was looking at whether he could do so.

Trump has repeatedly said he wants rate cuts now to help stimulate economic growth as he rolls out his tariff plans, and had threatened to fire Powell if he does not comply.

“If I want him out, he’ll be out of there real fast, believe me,” Trump said Thursday.

Inflation fears

Powell has said he has no plans to step down early, adding that he considers the bank’s independence over monetary policy to be a “matter of law.”

Many economists agree that the administration’s tariff plans – which include a 10 percent “baseline” rate on imports from most countries – will put upward pressure on prices and cool economic growth.

Asked about the possibility that the US executive branch tries to fire Powell before the end of his term, European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde told CNBC on Tuesday she hoped this was “not on the table.”

The president does not have direct authority to fire Federal Reserve governors, but Trump could initiate a lengthy process to attempt to unseat Powell by proving there was cause to do so.

Powell had earlier warned that Trump’s sweeping tariffs could put the Fed in an unenviable position of having to choose between tackling inflation and unemployment.

Closing before Trump’s remarks, Wall Street stocks rebounded Tuesday after US officials were upbeat about trade talks with China.

All three major US indexes rose following White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s comments that Trump was “setting the stage for a deal with China.”

Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare put part of the rebound down to sentiment that Trump would not fire Powell, and instead was “simply setting him up now to take the blame in the event of an economic downturn.”

MOSCOW: A fire at a military base near Moscow caused several explosions on Tuesday, injuring four people. Hundreds of people living nearby were moved to safety, a local governor said.

Alexander Avdeev, governor of Vladimir Region, wrote on Telegram that ammunition had caught fire and shells had exploded at a storage area of the base in the region’s Kirzhach District.

The Defence Ministry said earlier that the fire had been caused by a breach of safety requirements and had resulted in the detonation of ammunition stored in a warehouse.

A state of emergency was declared, and local authorities were working with the Defence and Emergencies Ministries to make the area safe. Three of the injured were being treated in hospital.

Avdeev said the base had been evacuated along with residents of at least seven nearby settlements.

Unverified video published earlier on Telegram channels showed a huge fireball and clouds of thick smoke rising into the sky.

Baza, a Telegram channel close to security services, said at least 10–11 explosions had occurred and that firefighters from neighbouring regions had been called in to contain the blaze.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah on Tuesday for his third visit as premier to the oil-rich Gulf kingdom.

The trip comes a day after Modi held high-level talks with US Vice President JD Vance in India, with New Delhi looking to seal a trade deal with Washington and stave off punishing tariffs.

“India deeply values its long and historic ties with Saudi Arabia that have acquired strategic depth and momentum in recent years,” said Modi in a statement released by his office.

“Together, we have developed a mutually beneficial and substantive partnership.”

Pictures posted on Modi’s X account showed the premier being greeted by several Saudi officials after touching down in Jeddah in the afternoon.

India and Saudi Arabia are exploring joint projects in refineries and petrochemicals, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Arab News in an interview, as he began a two-day visit to the country on Tuesday.

“We are now working on feasibility studies for electricity grid interconnectivity between India and Saudi Arabia and the wider region,” he added.

Saudi Arabia has been a key supplier of oil to India, the world’s most populous country, for years.

India’s rapidly developing economy relies heavily on petroleum imports, with Saudi Arabia ranked as its third-largest supplier according to the Indian foreign ministry.

The Gulf kingdom is also home to more than two million Indian nationals who have long played a pivotal role in its labour market, helping construct many of the country’s mega-projects while sending billions of dollars in remittances back home each year.

During the two-day visit, Modi is scheduled to meet members of the Indian community, according to his office.

Both Modi and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman fostered close relations with US President Donald Trump during his first term in office.

Trump has flagged a visit to Saudi Arabia next month for what would be his first major diplomatic trip abroad of his second term.

SRINAGAR: Several people were feared dead as gunmen in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) opened fire on tourists on Tuesday — the worst attack on civilians in the disputed Himalayan region in years.

The attack occurred in Pahalgam, a popular destination in the scenic, mountainous region.

One security source put the death toll at 20, while the second put it at 24 and the third at 26. All three spoke on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.

“The firing happened in front of us,” one witness told broadcaster India Today, without giving his name. “We thought someone was setting off firecrackers, but when we heard other people (screaming), we quickly got out of there…, saved our lives and ran.”

“For four kilometers, we did not stop … I am shaking,” another witness told India Today.

The attack took place in an off-the-road meadow, and two or three gunmen were involved, the Indian Express newspaper reported, citing an unidentified senior police officer.

“The death toll is still being ascertained so I don’t want to get into those details,” IIOJK Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said in a post on X. “Needless to say, this attack is much larger than anything we’ve seen directed at civilians in recent years.”

The nationalities of the victims were not immediately known.

The regional government of IIOJK, where Pahalgam is located, told its legislature this month that nearly 84,000 non-locals, from within India, had been given domicile rights in the territory in the last two years.

India revoked IIOJK’s special status in 2019, splitting the state into two federally administered territories. The move also allowed local authorities to issue domicile rights to outsiders, allowing them to get jobs and buy land in the territory.

Attacks targeting tourists in IIOJK have become rare. The last deadly incident took place in June 2024 when at least nine people were killed and 33 injured after an attack caused a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims to plunge into a deep gorge.

Tuesday’s attack came a day after US Vice President JD Vance began a four-day, largely personal visit to India.

‘False flag drama’

Commenting on the attack, former foreign secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani highlighted the Indian tradition of creating a “false flag drama”, saying that Indian media’s propaganda against Pakistan is fabricated and false

“India wants to divert attention from the security situation in IIOJK,” he said while speaking to Geo News.

He said India hurled accusations at Pakistan without offering any evidence whenever any incident takes place.

“Indian agencies are involved in various terrorist incidents in Pakistan, Canada and other countries,” the former top diplomat said.

Recalling the past incident, Jillani said more than 30 Sikhs were killed in IIOJK and that too was blamed on Pakistan by India.

Later, investigation proved that the Chittisinghpura incident in 2000 was carried out by Indian intelligence agencies, he added.

He also called for the need to convince the international community that India has made it a habit to blame Pakistan for its domestic problems.

A false-colour image from a satellite has shown the intense heat coming from a pair of lava lakes that emerged on simultaneously erupting volcanoes in Congo.

Notably, the neighbouring peaks are among Africa’s most active and deadly volcanoes, reported Live Science.

Mount Nyamuragira and Mount Nyiragongo are roughly 6 miles (10 kilometres) apart and are located just north of the city of Goma, which is home to more than 1 million people.

Additionally, Nyamuragira is a dome-shaped shield volcano that stands up to 10,033 feet (3,058 metres) tall, while Nyiragongo is a stratovolcano, with a steep cone that towers up to 11,385 feet (3,470m) above ground level.

A few weeks after Nyamuragira began erupting for the first time since March 2012, the satellite photo was taken.

This eruption ceased in May 2016, but the volcano has since had two more eruptions: from November 2016 to May 2017, and again in April 2018, which is still ongoing.

Meanwhile, Nyiragongo has been continuously erupting since May 2002.

During the simultaneous eruptions, sizeable lava lakes were spotted at the summits of both volcanoes.

The lava lake at Nyiragongo is particularly interesting because stratovolcanoes do not normally support these features.

According to a 2021 study, at various points over the last two decades, this fiery pool has been the biggest lava lake on Earth.

As per the Nasa’s Earth Observatory, the image was captured in infrared, which makes the lava lakes appear to glow red and gives the surrounding vegetation a bright green colouration.

The volcanoes are highly active and have jointly erupted around 60 times since 1900.

DUBAI: In a major development, Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.

At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.

Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.

Iran, which says its nuclear programme is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.

Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.

“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.

“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”

The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.

Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”

Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.

Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy programme.

A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.

Despite the United States signalling reluctance to back a military strike, Israel is still considering a limited assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other sources familiar with the matter.

Israeli officers remain adamant that Tehran must never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding any talks result in the full dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program.

Over the past months, Israel has proposed to the Trump administration a series of options to attack Iran’s facilities, including some with late spring and summer timelines, the sources said.

The plans include a mix of airstrikes and commando operations that vary in severity and could set back Tehran’s ability to weaponise its nuclear program by just months or a year or more, the sources said.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Trump told Netanyahu in a White House meeting earlier this month that Washington wanted to prioritise diplomatic talks with Tehran and that he was unwilling to support a strike on the country’s nuclear facilities in the short term.

But Israeli officials now believe that their military could instead launch a limited strike on Iran that would require less US support. Such an attack would be significantly smaller than those Israel initially proposed.

It is unclear if or when Israel would move forward with such a strike, especially with talks on a nuclear deal getting started. Such a move would likely alienate Trump and could risk broader US support for Israel.

Parts of the plans were previously presented last year to the Biden administration, two former senior Biden administration officials told Reuters. Almost all required significant US support via direct military intervention or intelligence sharing. Israel has also requested that Washington help Israel defend itself should Iran retaliate.

In response to a request for comment, the US National Security Council referred Reuters to comments Trump made on Thursday, when he told reporters he has not waved Israel off an attack but that he was not “in a rush” to support military action against Tehran.

“I think that Iran has a chance to have a great country and to live happily without death,” Trump said. “That’s my first option. If there’s a second option, I think it would be very bad for Iran, and I think Iran wants to talk.”

The Israeli prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A senior Israeli official told Reuters that no decision has been made yet on an Iranian strike.

A senior Iranian security official said Tehran was aware of Israeli planning and that an attack would provoke “a harsh and unwavering response from Iran.”

“We have intelligence from reliable sources that Israel is planning a major attack on Iran’s nuclear sites. This stems from dissatisfaction with ongoing diplomatic efforts regarding Iran’s nuclear program, and also from Netanyahu’s need for conflict as a means of political survival,” the official told Reuters.

Biden administration pushback

Netanyahu received pushback from the Biden administration when he presented an earlier version of the plan. The former senior Biden officials said Netanyahu wanted the US to take the lead on airstrikes but the Biden White House told Israel it did not believe a strike was prudent unless Tehran moved to accelerate its enrichment of nuclear material or expel inspectors from the country.

The Biden officials also questioned the extent to which Israel’s military could effectively carry out such an attack.

Former officials and experts have long said that Israel would need significant US military support — and weapons — to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities and stockpiles, some of which are in underground facilities.

While the more limited military strike Israel is considering would require less direct assistance — particularly in the form of US bombers dropping bunker-busting munitions that can reach deeply buried facilities — Israel would still need a promise from Washington that it would help Israel defend itself if attacked by Tehran in the aftermath, the sources said.

Any attack would carry risks. Military and nuclear experts say that even with massive firepower, a strike would probably only temporarily set back a program the West says aims to eventually produce a nuclear bomb, although Iran denies it.

Israeli officials have told Washington in recent weeks that they do not believe US talks with Iran should move forward to the deal-making stage without a guarantee that Tehran will not have the ability to create a nuclear weapon.

“This can be done by agreement, but only if this agreement is Libyan style: They go in, blow up the installations, dismantle all of the equipment, under American supervision,” Netanyahu said following his talks with Trump. “The second possibility is … that they [Iran] drag out the talks and then there is the military option.”

From Israel’s perspective, this may be a good moment for a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

A top Israeli official, speaking with reporters earlier this month, recognized there was some urgency if the goal was to launch a strike before Iran rebuilds its air defenses. But the senior official refused to state any timeline for possible Israeli action and said discussing this would be “pointless”.  

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday announced an Easter truce in the conflict in Ukraine starting this evening and lasting till midnight on Sunday.

The short-term ceasefire proposal from Russia comes as President Donald Trump has been pressing both Moscow and Kyiv to agree a truce, but has failed to extract any major concessions from the Kremlin.

“Today from 1800 (1500 GMT) to midnight Sunday (2100 GMT Sunday), the Russian side announces an Easter truce,” Putin said in televised comments, while meeting Russian chief of staff Valery Gerasimov.

Easter, a major holiday for Christians, is celebrated on Sunday.

“I order for this period to stop all military action,” Putin said, calling the truce “based on humanitarian reasons”.

“We are going on the basis that the Ukrainian side will follow our example, while our troops must be ready to resist possible breaches of the truce and provocations by the enemy, any aggressive actions,” Putin said.

He said that Gerasimov had told him Ukraine “more than 100 times… breached an agreement on not striking energy infrastructure”.

Russia on Friday abandoned a moratorium on striking Ukrainian energy targets after each side accused the other of breaking a supposed deal without any formal agreement put in place.

The latest truce proposal will show “how sincere is the Kyiv’s regime’s readiness, its desire and ability to observe agreements and participate in a process of peace talks,” Putin said.

Previous attempts at holding ceasefires for Easter in April 2022 and Orthodox Christmas in January 2023 were not implemented after both sides failed to agree on them.

For much of history, cooking has remained an art passed down orally and not often documented in writing. 

According to Live Science, mass-produced cookbooks, cooking how-to videos and recipe blogs may be relatively recent inventions, however, our ancestors liked cooking too.

Remnants of food resembling our own have been found by the archaeologists all over the world. These include traces of burnt porridge on Stone Age pots to “beer loves” of bread in ancient Egypt.

So what’s the oldest known recipe?

The answer hails back to one of the oldest civilisations, even though their recipes look a little different from the ones we see today.

Figuring out if an ancient document is a recipe actually poses big challenges for archaeologists, while it may seem obvious with modern-day recipes.

According to Farrell Monaco, an honorary visiting fellow and doctoral candidate at the University of Leicester who specializes in ancient Roman breads, “recipes” as we know them are a modern invention.

Ancient instructions for making food often didn’t have weights and measures the way today’s cookbooks do; precisely measured recipes became common only within the past few hundred years, Monaco said.

Additionally, in the 1980s, archaeologist Jean Bottéro confirmed that the Babylonian tablets were actually recipes.

Still, he declared the food described on the tablets as inedible. It wasn’t until recently that any of the recipes were revisited.

Parallel to this, Gojko Barjamovic, a senior lecturer and senior research scholar in Assyriology at Yale, worked with an interdisciplinary team at Harvard to translate and recreate the recipes.

Because many of the tablets were damaged, this was a challenge as it made them difficult to read.

Barjamovic’s team was able to fill in the blanks to reconstruct the ancient foods even though some important ingredients on the tablets were untranslatable.

It was found that the tablets contained instructions for broths, a pie stuffed with songbird, green wheat, 25 types of vegetarian and meat-based stews, and some sort of small, cooked mammal.

The recipes resembled modern-day food from Iraq in many ways, with ingredients such as lamb and cilantro.

Notably, these tablets are the oldest known recipes, and there are also no known recipes that come after them for a long time. 

The United States and Iran will begin the second round of nuclear dialogue in Rome on Saturday in an attempt to end their decades-long impasse over Tehran’s atomic ambitions, under the threat from the US administration of military action if diplomacy fails.

A week after a first round of negotiations in Muscat that both parties characterised as fruitful, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will engage in indirect talks through mediators from Oman.

Tehran has sought to tamp down expectations of a quick deal, after some Iranian officials speculated that sanctions could be lifted soon. Iran’s utmost authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said this week he was “neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic”.

For his part, Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”

Trump, who ditched a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six powers during his first term in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on Tehran, has revived his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran since returning to the White House in January.

Washington wants Iran to halt production of highly enriched uranium, which it believes is aimed at building an atomic bomb.

Tehran, which has always said its nuclear programme is peaceful, says it is willing to negotiate some curbs in return for the lifting of sanctions, but wants watertight guarantees that Washington will not renege again as Trump did in 2018.

Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy programme.

A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity, listed Iran’s red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal. Iran also rejects negotiating about defence capabilities such as missiles.

While both Tehran and Washington have said they are set on pursuing diplomacy, there is still a wide gap between them on the dispute that has rumbled on for more than two decades.

Witkoff and Araqchi interacted briefly at the end of the first round last week, but officials from the two countries have not held direct negotiations since 2015, and Iran said the Rome talks would also be held indirectly through the Omani mediators.

Russia, a party to Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement, has offered “to assist, mediate, and play any role” that will be beneficial to Iran and the United States.