Category: Latest News

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has refused to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States, claiming it would be tantamount to smuggling a terrorist back into the country, Reuters reported. 

During a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House, Bukele rejected the notion that he had any authority to comply with a US court order to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. The Salvadoran national had been living in Maryland and was deported despite a judge’s ruling protecting him from removal.

“How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” Bukele asked, reiterating allegations by US officials that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang. His lawyers strongly deny this, and a federal appeals court noted the government had failed to offer credible evidence.

Trump, who has made immigration a central issue, has deported hundreds—many Venezuelans—to El Salvador using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. He expressed enthusiasm for Bukele’s approach to crime, pledging US support to build more prisons.

Abrego Garcia is being held in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a facility widely criticised for its harsh conditions and alleged abuse of human rights. Bukele defended the mass arrests, saying, “We liberated millions,” drawing a smile from Trump who replied, “Can I use that?”

US Attorney General Pam Bondi said the court order only compels American cooperation if El Salvador agrees. Secretary of State Marco Rubio added that the president, not the courts, determines foreign policy.

Although a judge previously ruled Abrego Garcia faced serious danger if returned to El Salvador, the Trump administration said in a court filing that it had no duty to assist his release.

Protesters, including Abrego Garcia’s wife, gathered outside the White House chanting, “Bring Kilmar home.” The US has also recently deported 10 more alleged gang members to El Salvador, though advocates insist many of them were never given a fair chance to refute the accusations.

The European Union unveiled a list of seven nations designated as “safe” on Wednesday, proposing a controversial policy to fast-track migrant deportations by curtailing asylum rights for citizens of these countries across the bloc.

The European Commission said it was proposing to designate Kosovo, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Morocco and Tunisia as “safe countries of origin”.

The move, criticised by rights groups, is set to allow EU governments to process asylum applications filed by citizens of those countries more quickly by introducing a presumption that such claims lack merit.

“Many member states are facing a significant backlog of asylum applications, so anything we can do now to support faster asylum decisions is essential,” said Magnus Brunner, the EU’s commissioner for migration.

Brussels has been under pressure to clamp down on irregular arrivals and facilitate deportations, following a souring of public opinion on migration that has fuelled hard-right electoral gains in several countries.

On Wednesday, the commission said EU candidate nations would also, in principle, meet the criteria to be designated as safe countries.

But it also laid out exceptions, including when they are hit by a conflict — something that would, for example, exclude Ukraine.

The EU had already presented a similar list in 2015, but the plan was abandoned due to heated debates over whether or not to include Turkey, another candidate for membership.

The list published Wednesday can be expanded or reviewed over time and was drawn up looking at nations from which a significant number of applicants currently come, the commission said.

Several member states already designate countries they deem “safe” for asylum — France’s list, for instance, includes Mongolia, Serbia and Cape Verde.

The EU effort aims to harmonise rules and ensure that all members have the same baseline.

States can individually add countries to the EU list, but not subtract from it.

Asylum cases will still have to be examined individually, ensuring that existing safeguards remain in place and asylum-seekers are not rejected outright, the commission added.

The plan has to be approved by the European Parliament and member states before it can enter into force.

But it has already come under fire from human rights groups.

EuroMed Rights, an umbrella group, said some of the countries featured in the EU list suffered from “documented rights abuses and limited protections for both their own citizens and migrants”.

“Labelling them ‘safe’ is misleading — & dangerous”, it wrote on X.

Irregular border crossings detected into the European Union were down 38% to 239,000 last year after an almost 10-year peak in 2023, according to the EU border agency Frontex.

But led by hawks including Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands, EU leaders called in October for urgent new legislation to increase and speed up returns and for the commission to assess “innovative” ways to counter irregular migration.

Currently, less than 20% of people ordered to leave the bloc are returned to their country of origin, according to EU data.

Last month, the commission unveiled a planned reform of the 27-nation bloc’s return system, which opened the way for member states to set up migrant return centres outside the EU.

Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi Wednesday hailed the EU’s 

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Wednesday that Iran’s enrichment of uranium as part of its nuclear programme was “non-negotiable” after US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff called for a halt.

“Iran’s enrichment is a real, accepted matter. We are ready to build confidence in response to possible concerns, but the issue of enrichment is non-negotiable,” Araghchi told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

The remarks came as Araghchi and Witkoff are due to meet again in Oman on Saturday, a week after they held the highest-level talks between the longtime foes since US President Donald Trump abandoned a landmark nuclear deal in 2018.

Trump reimposed sweeping sanctions in a policy of “maximum pressure” against Tehran that he has reinstated since returning to office in January.

In March, he sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urging talks but warning of possible military action if they fail to produce a deal.

Both sides described Saturday’s meeting as “constructive”.

But on Tuesday, Witkoff said Iran must “stop and eliminate” its enrichment of uranium as part of any nuclear deal.

He had previously demanded only that Iran return to the 3.67% enrichment ceiling set by the 2015 accord between Iran and major powers that Trump withdrew from.

Araghchi condemned what he called the “contradictory and conflicting positions” coming out of the Trump administration ahead of Saturday’s talks.

“We will find out the true opinions of the Americans during the negotiation session,” he said.

Iran’s top diplomat said he hoped to start negotiations on the framework of a possible agreement, but said that required “constructive positions” from the United States.

“If we continue to (hear) contradictory and conflicting positions, we are going to have problems,” he warned.

On Tuesday, Khamenei cautioned that while the talks have proceeded well in their early stages, they could still prove fruitless.

“The negotiations may or may not yield results,” he said.

ISTANBUL: Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia — a 1,488-year-old architectural marvel that has transformed from church to mosque to museum and back to mosque — is undergoing a significant renovation aimed at preserving its grandeur and fortifying it against future earthquakes.

Long admired for its majestic dome, glimmering stone, and slender minarets that dominate the city’s skyline, the monument now bears the signs of restoration. 

Scaffolding currently blankets its eastern facade and one of its minarets, as engineers work to safeguard the historic structure for generations to come.

While “the renovation of course breaks a little bit the atmosphere of the appearance from the outside” and the “scaffolding takes away the aesthetic of the monument… renovation is a must,” said Abdullah Yilmaz, a guide.

Hagia Sophia, a World Heritage Site and Turkiye’s most visited landmark, “constantly has problems”, Hasan Firat Diker, an architecture professor working on the restoration, told AFP.

That is why it has undergone numerous piecemeal reconstructions over the centuries, he added.

‘Global’ makeover

The current makeover is the first time the site will undergo a “global restoration”, including the dome, walls and minarets, he said.

When it was first completed in AD 537, on the same spot where previous churches had stood, the Hagia Sophia became known as a shining example of the architecture of the Byzantine Empire, which ruled the city known as Constantinople at the time.

It served as a church until the fall of the city to the Ottomans in 1453, when it became a mosque.

In 1935, Mustafa Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey who forcibly remade the country into a secular one, turned the building into a museum.

It remained as such until 2020, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a practising Muslim who came to power at the head of an Islamist-rooted party, turned it back into a mosque.

Next big quake

Like the residents of this historic city, the Hagia Sophia has not only had to contend with the whims of its rulers — it faces the constant danger from earthquakes that have regularly struck the metropolis, the last major one in 1999.

Like many buildings in the city of 16 million, which lies just kilometres from an active seismic fault line, Hagia Sophia does not meet building earthquake standards.

Its dome collapsed in an earthquake in 558 and the building has been damaged in other quakes that have hit the city since.

So the main goal of the restoration under way is to “reinforce the building against the next big earthquake” so that the ancient structure “survives the event with the least damage possible,” said Ahmet Gulec, a member of the scientific committee supervising the works.

For the moment specialists are studying the dome to determine how best to both reinforce and restore it, Diker said.

The interior is for now free of any scaffolding. But eventually four huge pillars will be erected inside to support a platform from where specialists will restore the dome’s paintings and mosaics.

“Once you’re inside… it’s perfect,” marvelled Ana Delgado, a 49-year-old tourist from Mexico as the hum of laughter, conversation and movement filled the building following afternoon prayers.

“It’s magic,” chimed in her friend, Elias Erduran, from the Dominican Republic.

Millions of visitors

Hagia Sophia saw 7.7 million visitors stream through its spacious interior last year.

Around 2.1 million of them are foreign tourists, many of whom pay 25 euros for an entry ticket, generating millions of euros annually.

Officials hope the inside pillars will not deter visitors from coming during the works, which are expected to last for several years. Officials have not said how much the renovation is expected to cost.

“The objective is that the visits and prayers continue” during the works, Gulec said.

And even if some visitors are disappointed not to have witnessed the building in all its glory, the important thing “is that one day my children will also be able to admire Saint Sophia,” said Yana Galitskaya, a 35-year-old visitor from Russia.

Donald Trump’s administration is using personal data, which is normally protected from dissemination, to find undocumented immigrants where they work, study and live, often with the goal of removing them from their housing and the workforce, reported The Detroit News.

Staffers of the Department of Government Efficiency have been given access to government databases, containing private information about where people work or live, reported The Independent.

This is being done all with the intention of identifying undocumented immigrants and assisting in Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

At agencies such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Social Security Administration and IRS, those databases contain private information that immigrants of all statuses have submitted about themselves, believing the information would not be used against them.

Officials are working at HUD on a rule that would ban mixed-status households or those with people who have different immigration or citizenship statuses from obtaining public housing, unnamed staffers.

Spearheaded by Elon Musk, DOGE is combing through HUD data to identify undocumented immigrants and then share that data with the Department of Homeland Security to have people removed from accessing public benefits.

This is being done even if they live with someone who has legal status.

In a string of moves to use government data to help back the executive branch’s priorities, the push is the latest.

Legal experts, however, say the moves risk breaking privacy rules and can sow distrust in the government.

“It’s not only about one subgroup of people, it’s really about all of us,” Tanya Broder, senior counsel for health and economic justice policy at the National Immigration Law Centre told the Post. “Everyone cares about their privacy. Nobody wants their health-care information or tax information broadcast and used to go after us.”

The White House, however, has backed the moves, saying sharing data to find migrants and remove them.

“Information sharing across agencies is essential to identify who is in our country, including violent criminals, determine what public safety and terror threats may exist, scrub these individuals from voter rolls, as well as identify what public benefits these aliens are using at taxpayer expense,” a Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs told the Post.

“American tax dollars should be used for the benefit of American citizens, especially when it comes to an issue as pressing as our nation’s housing crisis,” Secretary of HUD, Scott Turner, said in a statement. “This new agreement will leverage resources, including technology and personnel, to ensure the American people are the only priority when it comes to public housing.”

Officials at the IRS have agreed to share specific tax information related to undocumented immigrants with ICE. The agency could use that information to locate millions of people it suspects of being in the country illegally.

Crackdown on protesters

The administration opened investigations into whether five universities properly handled allegations of antisemitism in February.

According to documents and three attorneys with the Office for Civil Rights, Education Department political appointees told the attorneys handling the cases to ask the schools for the names and nationalities of protesters against Israel’s war in Gaza.

Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, Craig Trainor, when asked why the department was seeking the data on protesters and whether it related to immigration, said the information was necessary to assess how the universities handled the antisemitism cases.

His statement did not directly address the question of deportations.

Former United States president Joe Biden, in his first major speech since leaving the White House, railed Tuesday against his successor President Donald Trump’s frenetic government overhaul, claiming the “hatchet” effort put Americans’ retirement benefits at risk.

“Fewer than 100 days, this administration has done so much damage, and so much destruction, it’s kind of breathtaking it could happen that soon,” Biden told a conference of disability advocates in Chicago.

“They’ve taken a hatchet to the Social Security administration, pushing 7,000 employees out the door,” said the former president, referring to the national agency which pays out retirement and disability benefits.

Wearing a blue suit and tie and standing in front of American flags, the 82-year-old Democrat spoke for around a half-hour, displaying at times the signs of ageing that prompted him to abandon his re-election campaign last year.

He stumbled over some sentences as he read from a teleprompter and struggled to get through winding off-the-cuff anecdotes, cutting himself off with a favourite phrase, “anyways.”

President Trump, in a jab at Biden, posted a short video on social media of one of the rambling anecdotes, without comment.

Biden’s choice of topic, Social Security, aimed to ramp up pressure on Trump over his rampaging government overhaul efforts.

He highlighted staff reductions at the agency that Trump and his billionaire aide Elon Musk have pushed as part of their “Department of Government Efficiency,” saying the Social Security “website is crashing” and hindering retirees from getting their benefits.

The program, which more than 65 million Americans rely on, is colloquially known in Washington as the “third rail of politics” for its sensitivity to voters.

Many Americans “literally count on social security to buy food, just to get by,” Biden said, and “many of these beneficiaries, it’s their only income. If it were cut or taken away, it would be devastating, devastating for millions of people.”

He bashed Trump’s commerce secretary, former hedge fund manager Howard Lutnick, over a recent remark in which he said “fraudsters” would complain about a missing check, but not his mother-in-law.

Biden scoffed at that characterisation, saying, “what about the 94-year-old mother living all by herself, who doesn’t have a billionaire in the family?”

Forget spending hours researching holidays online. AI tools are rapidly reshaping the way we plan travel, offering tailored itineraries and bookings in a matter of seconds, AFP reported. 

Start-up Mindtrip has developed a generative AI that builds entire travel plans based on just a few lines of text. From flights and hotels to dining and excursions, the app can recommend options and link users directly to booking platforms.

“You don’t need to keep switching between sites,” explained CEO Andy Moss. “It’s all in one place.”

Mindtrip is not alone. Platforms like Vacay and Navan are competing in leisure and business travel, while tech giants like Google, OpenAI and Anthropic are promoting their own AI assistants for trip planning.

Travel industry staples are adapting too. Expedia now offers Romie, an AI assistant aimed at group travel, while Booking.com’s Smart Filter lets users specify niche requests. “Agentic AI will help us provide something unique,” said Rob Francis, Booking.com’s tech chief.

Club Med’s chairman Henri Giscard d’Estaing said the company’s new WhatsApp chatbot has drastically improved customer service times. “When a human answered, it took around 90 minutes,” he said.

Experts say AI’s impact goes beyond convenience. “If your travel plans change, the system can update your itinerary instantly—no phone calls needed,” said Jukka Laitamaki of New York University.

However, the pace of change may be slower than some expect. “The travel sector is dominated by small and mid-sized operators who lack the tech to integrate AI at scale,” said Eva Stewart from GSIQ consultancy.

While start-ups are innovating quickly, Stewart expects major online travel companies to leverage their resources and reassert control. Laitamaki agrees: “They’ve already got loyal customers—that’s their edge.”

Human agents, meanwhile, may only survive in the high-end market. “Ultra-luxury travellers still want a real person,” Laitamaki said. “But for everyone else, AI is the future of travel planning.”

WASHINGTON: The White House has said that the United States is ready to enter a trade deal with China, but stressed that it is up to Beijing to take the first step towards negotiations.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump is open to making a trade deal with China, but Beijing should make the first move.

“The ball is in China’s court: China needs to make a deal with us, we don’t have to make a deal with them,” Leavitt told a press briefing, saying Trump had given her that statement directly in an Oval Office meeting to use.

“China wants what we have… the American consumer, or to put another way, they need our money,” Leavitt said.

China raised its tariffs on imports of US goods to 125% on Friday in a retaliatory move against Trump, who effectively raised US tariffs on Chinese goods to 145%, while putting a pause on planned levies for other countries’ goods.

Trump has described Chinese President Xi Jinping in admiring terms, but neither man has backed down in an escalating trade war between their two countries.

“The president, again, has made it quite clear that he’s open to a deal with China. But China needs to make a deal with the United States of America,” Leavitt said.

Trump has said he expects something positive to come out of the trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies. But, unlike multiple other nations who have responded to his plans for tariffs by seeking deals with Washington, Beijing has raised its own levies on US goods and not sought talks.

NEW YORK: US President Donald Trump has warned he may revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status after the institution rejected government demands to overhaul its academic policies or risk losing federal funding.

US President Donald Trump threatened to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status on Tuesday and said the university should apologise, a day after it rejected what it called unlawful demands to overhaul academic programmes or lose federal grants.

Beginning with Columbia University, the Trump administration has rebuked universities across the country over their handling of the pro-Palestinian student protest movement that roiled campuses last year.

Trump has called the protests anti-American and antisemitic, accused universities of peddling Marxism and “radical left” ideology, and promised to end federal grants and contracts to universities that do not agree to his administration’s demands.

Some professors, students and university presidents have said the protests are being unfairly conflated with antisemitism as a pretext for an unconstitutional attack on academic freedoms.

Columbia, a private school in New York City, agreed to negotiations after the Trump administration said last month it had terminated grants and contracts worth $400 million, mostly for medical and other scientific research.

Harvard President Alan Garber, in a letter on Monday, said demands the Trump administration made of the Massachusetts university — including an audit to ensure the “viewpoint diversity” of its students and faculty, and an end to all diversity, equity and inclusion programmes — were unprecedented “assertions of power, unmoored from the law” that violated constitutional free speech rights and the Civil Rights Act.

Like Columbia, he said Harvard had been working to fight antisemitism and other forms of discrimination on its campus while preserving academic freedoms and the right to protest.

Hours after Garber released his letter, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism said it was freezing more than $2 billion in contracts and grants to Harvard, the country’s oldest and richest university. The administration did not respond to questions about which grants and contracts had been cut, and Harvard did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump, a Republican, said in a social media post on Tuesday he was mulling whether to seek to end Harvard’s tax-exempt status if it continued pushing what he called “political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’”

He did not say how he would do this. Under the US tax code, most universities are exempt from federal income tax because they are deemed to be “operated exclusively” for educational purposes.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Trump wanted to see Harvard apologise for what she called “antisemitism that took place on their college campus against Jewish American students.”

She accused Harvard and other schools of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination by recipients of federal funding based on race or national origin.

Under Title VI, federal funds can be terminated only after a lengthy investigation and hearings process and a 30-day notification to Congress — which has not happened at Columbia or Harvard.

Five people, including a Pakistani worker, died, and 19 others were injured — two critically — after a fire broke out in a high-rise residential building in Sharjah’s Al Nahda neighbourhood, local police said Tuesday.

“The blaze broke out at approximately 11:30am, when Sharjah Police received an emergency call reporting flames shooting out from a top floor apartment,” the police said in a statement.

The injured are being treated at Al Qasimi Hospital, and authorities have launched an investigation into the incident, while forensic experts have examined the site to determine the cause of the blaze, according to the officials.

Eyewitnesses said the fire broke out suddenly on the top floor of the 52-storey building, which housed around 1,500 residents of diverse ethnicities.

Emirati authorities expressed their condolences in a statement, saying, “We extend our heartfelt sympathies to the families of the deceased and share in their grief during this difficult time.”

Further updates are expected as the investigation continues.

The most recent incident before the Sharjah high-rise fire, in which Pakistani nationals lost their lives in a fire in the UAE, was reported on January 25, 2024, by Gulf media.

The blaze that broke out in an apartment in Sharjah’s Muwaileh area claimed the lives of a Pakistani man and his 11-year-old daughter. His wife and two other children were hospitalised in critical condition following the incident.

Sixteen people were killed and nine were injured in a Dubai residential building fire in April 2023. The fire engulfed the five-storey building in the Al-Ras neighbourhood, one of the oldest parts of Dubai and home to many migrant workers and traders, according to Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National.

Sharjah is one of seven emirates that make up the UAE, where several residential compounds and hotels have been hit by fire in recent years.

In some of those cases, experts said the flames may have been encouraged to spread by the exterior cladding.