UNITED STATES
Trump to meet over tariffs
President Donald Trump was yesterday to meet with his top trade advisers to decide whether to activate threatened tariffs on billions of US dollars in Chinese goods, a senior official said. Trump is due to unveil revisions to his initial tariff list targeting US$50 billion of Chinese goods today. People familiar with the revisions said that the list would be slightly smaller than the original, with some goods deleted and others added, particularly in the technology sector. Another official said that a draft document showed that the new list would still be close to US$50 billion, with about 1,300 product categories, but both the dollar amount and quantity of products were still subject to change.
UNITED STATES
Conditions to worsen fires
Fierce winds and bone-dry conditions were expected yesterday across a five-state region, where firefighters are wrangling several wildfires that have forced thousands to flee their homes. Red flag warnings have been issued for parts of Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, where winds gusts could reach 65kph and humidity could drop to 5 percent, the National Weather Service said. Weather conditions along with possible dry lightning could contribute to “extreme fire behavior” in the southwest, where more than two dozen wildfires are burning, the service said. The largest and most threatening blaze, the 416 Fire, has scorched 11,088 hectares of grass, brush and timber at the edge of the San Juan National Forest in southwestern Colorado. Crews had contained 15 percent of the blaze, fire officials said.
SOUTH AFRICA
Two killed at mosque
A man stabbed two people to death in an attack at a mosque early yesterday, before being shot dead by officers, police said. Several people were also wounded in the attack in the town of Malmesbury near Cape Town. “The suspect believed to be in his 30s and armed with a knife charged at the police who tried to persuade him to hand himself over,” Western Cape Police spokesperson Noliyoso Rwexana said. The motive for the attack was not immediately clear.
Philippines
Aussie given life for abuse
An Australian man on Wednesday was sentenced to life as part of a notorious child sexual abuse case in which prosecutors say he chained the victims like dogs. Peter Scully still faces another trial and dozens more charges, including allegations he made child pornography and murdered a young girl. Scully was convicted of trafficking and rape three years after he was arrested in the southern Philippines and accused of sexually abusing and filming girls, including an 18-month-old baby. The Cagayan de Oro court sentenced Scully and his local partner to life in prison without parole and imposed a fine of 5 million pesos (US$93,850) for trafficking girls then aged 10 and 12, the regional prosecutor said.
JAPAN
‘Dead’ man returns home
A woman has told police the body she thought was of her missing husband belonged to a stranger after her spouse turned up alive a year later. Tokyo police on Wednesday said that the body found in a river in eastern Tokyo in June last year was of another man reported missing about the same time. Police apologized for the mix-up and said the remains would be returned to the right family.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
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