CNN — Protests have erupted in parts of Kenya, with hundreds detained by police as citizens rejected planned tax hikes in the East African nation already grappling with escalating living costs.   Civil society groups said that at least 283 people have been arrested since Tuesday as protests flared over the proposed hikes.   The government faced backlash in the capital Nairobi on Tuesday over the controversial bill and was forced to amend it after dozens of demonstrators rallied outside the country’s parliament building.     Among the taxes suspended was a 16% value-added tax on bread and a 2.5% tax on motor vehicles, a statement from Kenya’s presidency said.   A proposed increase in mobile money transfer fees was also shelved along with taxes on vegetable oil. Additionally, levies on locally produced products, such as diapers and sanitary towels, have been dropped.   However, some Kenyans were not pleased with the changes and have called for the bill to be scrapped completely.   Demonstrators protest against proposed tax hikes in a finance bill that is due to be tabled in parliament in Nairobi, Kenya, Tuesday, June 18, 2024. Civil society groups say that despite the dozens of arrests, demonstrations and a planned sit-down outside the parliament buildings will continue. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku) RELATED ARTICLE Kenyan government scraps elements of controversial tax bill amid protests “We are rejecting the whole thing,” Kenyan John Wills Njoroge wrote on social media platform X. “We didn’t ask for amendments. We asked for the withdrawal of the entire bill,” he added.   Videos posted on social media Wednesday showed a group of protesters marching in the rain in Mombassa to express their displeasure over the bill.   In another location, protesters could be heard chanting: “Reject, not amend.”   Earlier on Wednesday, CNN affiliate NTV shared footage of police dispersing Mombasa protesters with teargas.   It’s not immediately known whether any arrests have been made in Mombasa, Kenya’s second-largest city.   Amnesty International’s Kenya office said it was “deeply outraged by the arbitrary arrest of peaceful protestors” in Nairobi on Tuesday.   The human rights organization said that the Kenyan Police Service had “shown a blatant disregard for the right to protest, opting instead to silence dissent through force and intimidation.”   CNN has contacted the Kenyan Police Service for comment.   An alliance of civil society groups called for the unconditional release of detained protesters, which it said included journalists.   “The use of excessive force, intimidation of civilians, violation of privacy through physical searches and arbitrary arrests is an outright infringement of the constitutional rights of the people of Kenya,” the alliance said

Vladimir Putin said Russia and North Korea have ramped up ties to a “new level,” pledging to help each other if either nation is attacked in a “breakthrough” new partnership announced during the Russian president’s rare visit to the reclusive state. Thousands of North Koreans chanting “welcome Putin” lined the city’s wide boulevards brandishing Russian and North Korean flags and bouquets of flowers, as Putin kicked off his first visit to North Korea in 24 years with a finely choreographed display of influence in the dictatorship. The pair then signed the new strategic partnership to replace previous deals signed in 1961, 2000 and 2001, according to Russian state news agency TASS. “The comprehensive partnership agreement signed today includes, among other things, the provision of mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties to this agreement,” Putin said after the meeting. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin exit a welcome ceremony at Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang on June 19. Gavriil Grigorov/Pool/AFP/Sputnik/Getty Images He said the deal encompasses the “political, trade, investment, cultural spheres, and the security sphere as well,” calling the pact “truly a breakthrough document.” Putin said joint drills involving the United States, South Korea and Japan were “hostile” toward North Korea,” characterizing the US policy as “confrontational.” Kim, meanwhile, called the new “alliance” a “watershed moment in the development of the bilateral relations.” But the deal between the two autocrats raised many questions, too – including whether Russia’s nuclear deterrent now extends to North Korea, and vice versa, or whether the two nations will now hold joint military drills. Putin greeted with fanfare Putin was met with exuberant celebrations at a welcome ceremony with his counterpart at Kim Il Sung Square in the heart of the North Korean capital, where mounted soldiers, military personnel and children holding balloons cheered against the backdrop of large portraits of the each leader. RELATED ARTICLEA NATO-style defense pact and an image boost – what Putin got from North Korean visit The two leaders presented their respective officials and stood together as the Russian national anthem played before riding off standing shoulder to shoulder in an open-top limousine as they smiled and waved to the crowds. The scenes of pomp and fanfare were a constant throughout the day, which closed with Kim escorting Putin to his plane late in the evening ahead of his trip to Vietnam. The staging reflected North Korea’s reliance on Moscow and was likely intended as a reminder to the West that Putin still holds considerable influence in at least some corners of the world, after his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The relationship is important to Russia, too. Multiple governments have accused Pyongyang of supplying arms to Moscow for its grinding war in Ukraine, a charge both countries have denied, despite significant evidence of such transfers. Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un attend a welcoming ceremony on June 19, 2024 in Pyongyang, North Korea. Stringer/Getty Images On Wednesday Putin gave Kim an Aurus car when the two leaders exchanged gifts, according to Russian state media – the second time Putin has given his counterpart this car model. According to Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov, the Russian leader also presented Kim with a tea set. Ushakov did not specify what Putin received, but said they were “also good gifts.” Putin landed in North Korea in the early hours of Wednesday local time, exactly 24 years to the day he was last in Pyongyang, for a visit heralding the countries’ deepening alignment in the face of shared animosity toward the West and international concerns over their growing military cooperation. In remarks ahead of talks between the two, Kim voiced his “full support and solidarity with the struggles of the Russian government, military and the people,” pointing specifically to Moscow’s war in Ukraine “to protect its own sovereignty, safety and territorial stability.” “Situations continue to be complicated and ever-changing, but I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate that we will continue to strengthen and closely engage in strategic communication with the (Russian) leadership,” Kim added. Putin hailed the countries’ ties as based on “equality and mutual respect,” and said an expected new bilateral agreement would “form the basis of relations between the two states for many years to come,” according to Russian state agency TASS. He also added that he hoped Kim would visit Moscow for their next meeting. The burgeoning relationship has sparked concern in both Seoul and Washington, not only over North Korea’s arms transfers to Russia, but also the prospect of Moscow transferring its superior military technology to aid Pyongyang’s heavily sanctioned weapons program. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un attend an official welcoming ceremony at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea June 19, 2024. Vladimir Smirnov/Sputnik/Pool/Reuters ‘Unwavering support’ Kim, the third generation leader of a dynasty that has ruled North Korea with an iron fist, beamed visibly as he greeted Putin at the airport in the early hours of Wednesday morning, video footage of the Russian leader’s arrival showed. The landmark visit marks a significant boost for Kim, who remains isolated on the world stage and has not hosted another world leader in his capital since the pandemic. It comes as tensions remain elevated on the Korean Peninsula, where Kim in recent months has ramped up bellicose language and scrapped a longstanding policy of seeking peaceful reunification with South Korea amid alarm in Pyongyang over tightening coordination between the US, South Korea and Japan. RELATED ARTICLEPutin may need arms from North Korea’s Kim, but what is he willing to give in return? North Korea state media appeared to play heavily into the close rapport between Kim and Putin, describing them as “exchanging their pent-up innermost thoughts and opened their minds to more surely develop (North Korea-Russia) relations,” as rode together from the airport to the Kumsusan State Guest House where Putin is staying. Putin’s trip follows Kim’s landmark visit

  U.S. President Joe Biden speaks at a state dinner held in his honor by French President Emmanuel Macron (not pictured), at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, France June 8, 2024. U.S. President Joe Biden speaks at a state dinner held in his honor by French President Emmanuel Macron (not pictured), at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, France June 8, 2024. Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters CNN — US officials are racing against the clock to finalize an agreement that could provide some $50 billion in loans to Ukraine using profits from frozen Russian assets – a top priority ahead of President Joe Biden’s meeting with G7 leaders in Italy this week – but the seven nations have yet to reach a final consensus, according to sources familiar with the US’s preparation ahead of the summit.   The Biden administration has been leading a campaign to persuade leaders of the fellow G7 nations – the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan – to sign off on a plan that it views as vital to giving Ukraine a shot at turning around its prospects on the battlefield as it continues to fend off the Russian assault.   The ultimate goal, sources said, is to iron out some of the thorniest financing details in the coming days so that an agreement can be announced as part of the G7 leaders’ communiqué this week. But questions about the modalities of such a program – including the precise form of disbursement and repayment assurances, among others – are still in the process of being worked out.   US officials argue that the dire situation for Ukraine makes the approval of such a loan deeply urgent. Even if the details behind what officials hope could amount to up to a $50 billion loan package have not yet been finalized, the G7 nations are in agreement on the urgency of the moment – and Ukraine’s desperate need for a lifeline.   The world’s richest economies coming together behind such a plan would send a stark message to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, US officials say, that Russia will not outlast the US and its allies’ continued support for Ukraine.   “This is a priority for the United States. We believe it’s a priority for the entire G7,” Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters last week. “We want to see every country come on board with a method by which we can mobilize resources for Ukraine at scale so that they are able to have what they need to be able to succeed in this war.”     Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will be present at the G7 gathering to once again press for more assistance on the global stage.   Biden’s upcoming trip to Italy will come on the heels of his multi-day visit to France, where the US’ support for Ukraine’s war efforts emerged as a major theme. Biden met with Zelensky as his administration announced a $225 million security assistance package for Ukraine.   As he vowed that the US is “not going to walk away from you,” Biden publicly apologized this week to Zelensky for Congress’ months-long delay in approving additional American assistance for Ukraine. The delay, US officials have said in recent months, undoubtedly resulted in Ukraine losing valuable ground on the battlefield.   “I apologize for the weeks of not knowing what’s going to pass, in terms of funding, because we had trouble getting the bill that we had to pass that had the money from some of our very conservative members who were holding it up, but we got it done,” Biden told his Ukrainian counterpart

  CNN — Ukraine has stabilized the northern Kharkiv front after Moscow launched an offensive a month ago, thanks to more weapons and permission to use them to target positions within Russia. But its forces are being stretched elsewhere along the 1,000km (620 miles) long front line and are defenseless against Russia’s deadly aerial glide bombs.   A senior officer in Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), who goes by the call sign Bankir, and is currently fighting in the Kharkiv region, told CNN the ability to hit Russian targets across the border was already having a positive impact.   “It is now possible to conduct local counter-attack operations and recapture the territories that, for example, were captured by the enemy a week ago,’ the SBU officer said.   For much of the war, Ukraine has been constrained when it comes to using powerful Western weapons against Russia.   Kyiv’s allies have long been adamant that their fighting machines must not strike within Russian territory for fear of provoking Moscow, limiting their use to targets within Ukraine, including in occupied areas.   But that changed in the wake of the Kharkiv offensive. First, European countries including France and Germany allowed Ukraine to strike targets within Russia, then, most significantly, the US gave the go ahead for Ukraine to use its weaponry around Kharkiv.   “Our policy using long-range strike weaponry to go into Russia hasn’t changed, but what we have done is provide Ukraine the ability to counterfire, to fire back at those Russian troops that are firing at them and to be able to take out their artillery batteries as they’re firing at the Ukrainians and I think that’s going to prove to be very, very helpful to Ukraine going forward,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.   Smoke rises after a Russian missile strike in Kharkiv on May 17. Smoke rises after a Russian missile strike in Kharkiv on May 17. Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters The US HIMARS system has become the go-to weapon system to hit the Russian positions, according to Yehor Cherniev, deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence.   Due to the threat of being hit by HIMARS, the Russians have begun to use S-300 and S-400 missile systems much less to fire at the Kharkiv region but glide bombs remain an issue. These are dropped from so high they are out of range of Ukrainian defenses.   “Unfortunately, we do not yet have permission to hit Russian aircraft at airfields with American weapons and we do not have permission to use ATACMS missiles on Russian territory,” said Cherniev, referring to a long-range missile system. “Because of this, we have not yet been able to resolve the problem of glide bomb strikes on our territory. Kharkiv and other border areas are still suffering from bombing attacks, and a lot of civilians die.”   While the Russian advance has slowed as assessed by the US and Ukraine, Moscow’s forces continue to press along the new front line in the north.   Russians are focusing on trying to push through the village of Hlyboke north of Kharkiv. If Russian forces manage to take hold there they could push through to the village of Lyptsi which sits 30 kilometers north of Kharkiv – bringing the city with historic, cultural and industrial importance within artillery range.   Ukrainian soldiers of the assault brigade defend the front line, which passes through the Ukrainian border city of Vovchansk, in Chuhuiv Raion, Kharkiv Oblast, on May 20, 2024. Ukrainian soldiers of the assault brigade defend the front line, which passes through the Ukrainian border city of Vovchansk, in Chuhuiv Raion, Kharkiv Oblast, on May 20, 2024. Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images Northeast of Kharkiv, Russian forces continue to maintain a foothold in the town of Vovchansk. The fighting has turned to close combat, with units fighting street by street, according to Nazar Voloshyn, a Ukrainian military spokesman in the east. But “most of the city is under the control of the Ukrainian Defense Forces” Voloshyn told CNN.   “To disperse the forces and means of our defense forces, the enemy launched an additional Kharkiv campaign… they partially succeeded, but the defense forces stabilized the situation,” said Yurii Fedorenko, a company commander with the 92nd Separate Mechanized Brigade currently fighting in the Kharkiv region.   The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) recorded a “significant increase” (31%) in civilians killed in Ukraine in May compared to April. According to HRMMU, more than half of the casualties occurred in the new northern front and because of “air-dropped bombs and missiles in populated areas such as communities near the front line and Kharkiv city.”   Ukraine-Frontline-HP-03.png RELATED ARTICLE Russia opens a new front: Mapping three key battles in the Ukrainian war To counter the Russians in Kharkiv, Ukraine has to divert men and arms from other parts of the front line in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. A main goal for Russia has been to exert complete control over the two eastern regions. And that’s exactly where Russia has been pressing quite actively, according to Voloshyn.   In the east, Moscow had set its sites on on the town of Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region. Russian troops have made some advances. Further south along the eastern front line, Russians have made advances to the west of the city of Avdiivka which fell to Russian forces in February.   “The Russian army is trying to do everything possible on the front line before the arrival of US aid to Ukraine and is trying to use this window of opportunity in all possible ways,” according to Voloshyn.   Russians are trying to seize the momentum as the weather and daylight hours make conditions more conducive to ground operations. They are also in race against the clock before more arms arrive from Ukrainian partners, particularly as the West is slowly coming around to allowing Ukraine to use the weapons on Russian

  CNN — William Anders, a NASA astronaut who was part of the 1968 Apollo 8 crew who were the first three people to orbit the moon, has died in a plane crash in Washington state, according to his son, Gregory Anders. He was 90 years old.   My “dad passed in an aircraft incident in the San Juan Islands,” Anders told CNN Friday evening. “The family is devastated and grieving the loss of a great pilot,” he added.   The San Juan County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release an aircraft went down off the coast of Jones Island.     The dispatch center got an initial report around 11:40 a.m. PT, which said an “older model plane was flying from north to south then went into the water near the north end of Jones Island and sunk,” the sheriff’s office said.   The United States Coast Guard later announced the pilot’s body was recovered by a dive team after an hourslong search that involved multiple agencies and covered 215 nautical miles. The San Juan Islands are located about 90 miles north of Seattle.   William Anders, born on October 17, 1933, in Hong Kong, graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1955 and after being commissioned in the US Air Force, he earned his pilot’s wings the following year, according to the US Naval Academy’s website.   Anders served as a fighter pilot in all-weather interception squadrons of the Air Defense Command in California and Iceland, according to NASA and the US Naval Academy.   While at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory in New Mexico, Anders was responsible for managing nuclear power reactor shielding and radiation effects programs, his NASA biography states.   Taken aboard Apollo 8 by William Anders, this iconic picture shows Earth peeking out from beyond the lunar surface as the first crewed spacecraft circumnavigated the Moon, with astronauts Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell aboard. Taken aboard Apollo 8 by William Anders, this iconic picture shows Earth peeking out from beyond the lunar surface as the first crewed spacecraft circumnavigated the Moon, with astronauts Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell aboard. William Anders/NASA He was selected in 1964 as an astronaut by NASA and served as backup pilot for the Gemini 11 mission in 1966 and the Apollo 11 flight in 1969. Anders logged more than 6,000 hours of flying time, according to NASA.   Anders and fellow astronauts Jim Lovell and mission commander Frank Borman, who died in November 2023, flew aboard the first lunar orbit mission in December 1968 on Apollo 8. Anders served as the lunar module pilot for the historic flight.   From the spacecraft, Anders captured an iconic image of Earth showing the moon’s surface in the foreground during the Apollo 8 flight on Christmas Eve 1968, titled “Earthrise.”   “We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth,” Anders famously said.   The photo, described as “legendary” by NASA in a tribute video for Anders on Friday, was taken as the crew snapped images of the lunar surface for geologic analysis, Anders said in a previous interview with NASA.   “Suddenly I looked out the window, and here was this gorgeous orb coming up,” Anders described of Earth.   “For me, it made me realize that the earth was small, delicate and not the center of the universe,” Anders said.   Anders, Lovell and Borman were recognized by Time Magazine as “Men of the Year” in 1968.   Anders served as Executive Secretary for the National Aeronautics and Space Council from 1969 to 1973, according to NASA. President Gerald Ford named him the first chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is responsible for nuclear safety and environmental compatibility.   NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday: “Bill Anders offered to humanity among the deepest of gifts an astronaut can give. He traveled to the threshold of the Moon and helped all of us see something else: ourselves.”   Nelson continued: “He embodied the lessons and the purpose of exploration. We will miss him.”   Anders and his wife, Valerie, had two daughters and four sons.   This story has been updated with additional information.   CNN’s Ashley Strickland contributed to this report

  Elana Milman traveled from Israel to Poland to meet Juliusz Gorzkoś, the brother she has only just discovered she has. Courtesy Elana Milman CNN —  When Elana Milman published an autobiography last year about her lifelong quest to find her birth parents, she had accepted she would never know the identity of her father. But thanks to a DNA test and some serious “genealogical detective work,” Milman, a 77-year-old retired teacher born in a displaced persons camp in Bergen-Belsen, has just returned from Poland, where she had an emotional meeting with the brother she didn’t know she had until earlier this year. Growing up on a kibbutz in northern Israel, Milman had no idea her mother and father were not her birth parents until she was six, when she recalls a friend shared the “very big secret” he had heard. “I remember this feeling like yesterday, like a kind of stab in my tummy,” Milman, a retired teacher, told CNN on a video call. When confronted, her parents admitted that they had not brought her into the world but said they loved her and were raising her to have a “wonderful life.” Over the years, whenever she tried to discuss it, she was told: “When you grow up, you’ll know.” Milman as a toddler with Eliezer and Hulda Rosenfeld, who adopted her in Israel in 1948. Courtesy Elana Milman It was only in her 30s that Milman finally discovered her birth certificate, which – after some meticulous research – led her to her birth mother in Canada. The birth certificate showed she was born Helena Lewinska to a Polish-Jewish woman called Franziska Lewinska in 1947 at the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp, close to the site of the former Nazi concentration camp of the same name. However, in 1948 she arrived in what was then Palestine – just months before Israel’s independence – as part of a group of unaccompanied children from war-torn Europe. She was adopted by a childless couple, Eliezer and Hulda Rosenfeld, from Kibbutz Merhavia, near Haifa. Against the odds, Milman eventually tracked down her biological mother, who had married and changed her name, in Canada and even spent a year there with her family. The pair grew close over several years and although her mother, known as Franka, shared much about her wartime past before she died in the 1980s – how she survived the Holocaust by escaping from the Warsaw Ghetto and living on the other side of the city under a false identity, and how her parents and siblings perished at the Nazis’ Treblinka extermination camp – she refused to divulge the identity of Milman’s father. He was listed as Eugeniusz Lewinski on Milman’s birth certificate, but her research hit a brick wall as she found no evidence of anyone by that name. Elana Milman’s father, Eugeniusz Gorzkoś Courtesy Elana Milman Elana as a young woman Courtesy Elana Milman “Every time I quizzed my mother – like, what happened to her during the war and who was my father – she gave me different stories,” she told CNN. “When I bugged her too much, she said ‘the only thing I can tell you is that he was a very good singer and dancer – and very handsome.’” Last year, Milman – who has four children and 10 grandchildren – published an autobiography aptly entitled “When you grow up, you’ll know.” In an interview with an Israeli magazine at that time, she said she had come to terms with never knowing who her father was. Little did she know that Gilad Japhet, founder and chief executive of genealogy platform MyHeritage, would read the article and pass it to his research team, asking “can we help?” With Milman’s consent, they embarked on “genealogical detective work,” according to Roi Mandel, MyHeritage’s director of research. RELATED ARTICLEGeorge Washington family secrets revealed by DNA from unmarked 19th century graves There were few clues to go on and it seemed as if Lewinska had, for whatever reason, given the “father” on the birth certificate the male version of her surname to create the impression they had been married. But then Milman took a DNA test, which proved crucial. It showed she was 50% Ashkenazi Jewish and 50% Eastern European and revealed a match with a Polish woman living in France. They shared 2.3% of their DNA – meaning they had a set of great-grandparents in common. The Polish woman could not explain the connection but she had a small family tree, which MyHeritage built upon using its extensive database of historical documents and with the help of a professional researcher who trawled the archives in Poland. “Luckily for us, the DNA test and the small match found for Elana with a Polish user was the little clue we needed,” Mandel told CNN in an email. “The research took six months, as part of which we mapped the family, mapping eight pairs of great-grandparents, and delved into each branch and its male descendants. We marked the potential candidates, who were in the right place, at the right time and of the right age.” That time, the researchers estimated, was somewhere between April 24 and 28 in 1946, leaving them with six prime suspects. Fortunately, they struck lucky first time, after deciding to focus on a man who shared a first name with the birth certificate entry: Eugeniusz Gorzkoś. Mandel’s team subsequently found and reached out to Gorzkoś’s son, Juliusz, a 72-year-old retired veterinarian in northern Poland. Shocked but intrigued, he agreed to a DNA test, which proved that he and Milman were half-siblings. Elana, right, and her biological mother Franziska (Franka), center, with her husband Yoseph Bursztajn and her other children, Mike and Diane, in 1981. Courtesy Elana Milman The pair first “met” at a virtual reunion facilitated by MyHeritage in March. Speaking through an interpreter, Milman told her brother that learning her identity had been the “project of my life.” Gorzkoś told his sister their father was a virtuoso violinist and a singer – which

  CNN —  One of Tokyo’s most popular tourist neighborhoods is making a move to curb bad behavior – by taking alcohol indoors. The measure, which is expected to take effect in October, will see drinking alcohol forbidden on streets or public places in Shibuya from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m. every day. The legal drinking age in Japan is 20. Shibuya City, which is a self-governed district within Tokyo, can make its own local regulations. Mayor Ken Hasebe recently told journalists: “We have been stepping up patrols and other efforts over the last year, but we have had people say, ‘Well, the rules say you can drink, don’t they?’ By establishing the rule, we would like to convey the district’s intentions, including during patrols — we would prefer people to enjoy their drinks inside restaurants.”   This news may not come as a surprise to local residents.   Last fall, Shibuya banned Halloween-related activities in the district, with alcohol cited as a main reason behind the prohibition. That included a ban on drinking alcohol outside of bars and restaurants. Mayor Hasebe says that local businesses supported the regulations in October 2023 and were behind the push to make them permanent.   “The damage caused by overtourism has become serious, resulting in property damage caused by drinking in the street, altercations with local residents, and littering of large amounts of empty cans and bottles,” the city said in a statement last October.   Shibuya is home to some of the capital’s most popular attractions, including the Meiji Shrine, Yoyogi Park and the “Shibuya scramble,” believed to be the world’s busiest intersection.   Maiko participate in a bean festival in Kyoto. RELATED ARTICLE ‘Geisha paparazzi’ are back in Kyoto – and the Japanese city is ready to take action Japan has struggled to cope with overtourism since fully reopening post-pandemic. More than three million visitors visited the country in both April and May of this year, with the trend likely to continue through the summer.   Educating visitors on the local culture has been a large component of dealing with the influx of international tourists.   In the historic city of Kyoto, where it’s possible to spot geisha and their apprentices (maiko) around the ancient alleyways, locals have tried to find ways to deter foreigners from harassing the women as they make their way to and from work.   Kyoto’s official tourism office has put up posters and distributed pamphlets about different social customs in Japan, from how to use toilets to whether to tip. The advice also extends to geisha, with visitors asked not to touch the women, pull on their kimonos, or take their photos without permission.   Local Gion residents have also taken some measures themselves, such as blocking off private alleys.   Despite those measures, though, “geisha paparazzi” and other nuisance tourists still cause conflict between visitors and locals.

CNN — Right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch tied the knot Saturday for the fifth time, according to British tabloid newspaper the Sun. The Sun, which is owned by Murdoch, released photos of the 93-year-old Australian billionaire alongside his 67-year-old wife, retired molecular biologist Elena Zhukova, at his vineyard in Bel-Air, California, where the ceremony took place. Zhukova is the mother of Russian American art collector Dasha Zhukova, the former wife of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. Murdoch sat for decades at the helm of Fox Corporation and News Corp, two media companies with outlets that include the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and Fox News. Murdoch, who has a net worth of $9.77 billion according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, announced in November 2023 he would step down as chairman of both organizations, handing the reins over to his son Lachlan. Murdoch at the time maintained he would continue an “active role” in News Corp and still serves in the capacity of chairman emeritus of the two companies. He began dating Zhukova last summer, according to the New York Times. The couple announced their engagement in March. Murdoch was most recently married to former supermodel Jerry Hall. The couple divorced in 2022. In March 2023, Murdoch proposed to Ann Lesley Smith but the engagement was called off two weeks later.

  CNN — Twelve people were injured after a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Dublin was hit with turbulence on Sunday.   The flight, which landed in Dublin shortly before 1pm local time, was met by emergency services, including airport police and the fire and rescue department.   According to a statement from Dublin Airport, six passengers and six crew members were injured in the incident, eight of which were taken to hospital following assessment. The Qatar Airways flight QR017 experienced turbulence while flying over Turkey, the statement said.   Dublin Airport said it was assisting passengers and staff and that operations were unaffected. The plane’s return flight to Doha, flight QR018, is scheduled to go ahead as expected, though its departure will be delayed, the airport said.   In a statement to CNN, Qatar Airways said that the flight landed safely in Dublin, but that “a small number of passengers and crew sustained minor injuries in flight and are now receiving medical attention.”   “The matter is now subject to an internal investigation,” the statement continued. “The safety and security of our passengers and crew are our top priority.”   It comes days after 104 passengers were injured and a man with a heart condition was killed on a Singapore Airlines flight that was hit with severe turbulence.   Flight SQ321 from London to Singapore was cruising at 37,000 feet on Tuesday when the plane dropped sharply before climbing several hundred feet, according to flight tracking data. It then repeatedly dipped and ascended for about a minute.   Is turbulence on the rise? About 65,000 aircraft suffer moderate turbulence every year in the US, and about 5,500 run into severe turbulence. These numbers, however, might be destined to grow.   Paul Williams, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, told CNN in 2022 that he believes climate change is modifying turbulence.   “We ran some computer simulations and found that severe turbulence could double or triple in the coming decades,” Williams said.   The findings, which were later confirmed by observations, highlight a type of turbulence called “clear air turbulence,” which isn’t connected to any visual clues such as storms or clouds. Unlike regular turbulence, it hits suddenly and is hard to avoid.   Singapore Airlines has previously said its flight encountered sudden turbulence. A spokesperson said Sunday that its investigations are ongoing. An earlier CNN analysis of satellite data found the flight entered an area where thunderstorms were developing, which can produce turbulence.   It is not yet known what kind of turbulence the Qatar Airways plane experienced.   CORRECTION: This article has been updated to reflect that the cause of the turbulence that hit the Singapore Airlines flight is yet to be determined and that investigations are ongoing. An earlier version also misstated the number of the Qatar Airways flight that experienced turbulence. It was flight QR017.

  CNN — A 60-year-old Argentine beauty queen’s run for Miss Universe may have come to an end, but she says her remarkable journey is the “first step of a change” in society’s perceptions.   Alejandra Rodriguez made headlines across the world in April when she was crowned Miss Buenos Aires, becoming the first sexagenarian to win a contest organized by the Miss Universe franchise.   While she was unable to repeat that triumph on Saturday to become Miss Argentina and earn the right to represent her country in the Miss Universe pageant, , she did win the “best face” category and celebrated her breakthrough as marking the beginnings of a shift in how beauty is perceived.   “This is the first step of a change that is coming,” Rodriguez, an attorney and journalist by profession, told CNN en Español after the contest.   “I hope this (my participating) marks a before and after. I think exterior beauty is always the main focus, I don’t think that it’s wrong to select a beautiful woman, but maybe the concept of beauty needs to expand,” she said.   Rodriguez’s participation was only made possible after the Miss Universe organization changed its rules related to age.     In a screengrab taken from a video, Chelsea Manalo is crowned as Miss Universe Philippines. RELATED ARTICLE First Black Filipino woman crowned as Miss Universe Philippines Until 2023, contestants had to be between the ages of 18 and 28 as of January 1 of the year in which they competed. As of 2024, there is no upper age limit.   “It was a change that is positive, I think it is little by little, like all changes,” she said, adding she was thankful to have “the opportunity to be the first.”   Ending the age limit was just one of a series of rule changes the pageant introduced in 2023 in an effort to modernize.   For the first time in its more than 70-year history, the franchise also greenlit the participation of women who are married or divorced, and who have given birth or are pregnant.   “There was also a 40-year-old woman who participated, another who is 37. It’s like the limits are already expanding,” Rodriguez said. “There were women who are mothers, things that were unthinkable before in Miss Universe.”   Rodriguez said that even though she fell short of the honor of representing her country, stereotypes related to beauty, age, shape and weight were slowly changing.   The winner on Saturday was Magalí Benejam, who at 29 would have been ruled too old to compete under the previous rules.

Three missionaries, including a married couple from the US, were killed in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, on Thursday evening. Davy and Natalie Lloyd “were attacked by gangs this evening and were both killed,” Natalie Lloyd’s father, Missouri state Rep. Ben Baker, said in a Facebook post. “They went to Heaven together.” “Please pray for my family we desperately need strength. And please pray for the Lloyd family as well,” Baker said. Mission director Jude Montis, 45, was also killed. All three worked for Missions in Haiti, Inc., which has been operated by Davy Lloyd’s parents for more than two decades, according to the group’s website. Davy Lloyd, 23, had a “love for Haiti,” his father David Lloyd told CNN. “His first language was Creole. He used to tell us when he was little that someday he was going to be a missionary in Haiti.” He and Natalie Lloyd, 21, were ambushed as they left church in Port-au-Prince on Thursday evening, according to David Lloyd. American missionaries Davy and Natalie Lloyd were killed in Haiti on Thursday, May 23, family members said. Missions in Haiti “Davy was taken to the house tied up and beat. The gang then took our trucks and loaded everything up they wanted and left,” a post on Missions in Haiti’s Facebook page said. Three hours later, the organization posted that the three missionaries “were shot and killed by the gang about 9 o’clock this evening. We all are devastated.” It’s still unclear how exactly the missionaries were killed. The investigation into the killings is ongoing, and Haitian police have not yet released any details on them. Local emergency response service Haitian Emergency Response Operations (HERO) assisted in coordinating and managing the operation to retrieve the bodies and transport the remains of the American couple to a hospital morgue. “Currently, we are working to retrieve the bodies of Natalie and Davy,” Baker said on social media Friday night, adding that the effort will involve obtaining a waiver. “After that, we have to find an airline that will be willing to do the transport. Prayers that this will all go smoothly.” He remembered the couple as people who put others before themselves, telling CNN Friday evening that he commends their bravery. “I don’t think you can find a better example of people who truly had a deep love for the people of Haiti and had a vision to help them in anyway that they could and made such an impact there among the different ministries they were involved in,” Baker told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source.” ‘Our last call’ David Lloyd told CNN that he was on the phone with his son during the attacks. The mission and church across the street have two security guards, but when the 23-year-old came out of the church around 6 p.m., “three pick-up trucks full of guys with guns overwhelmed them immediately,” he said. The armed men dragged Davy Lloyd to the house, tied him up, and started looting the compound, according to his father, who said children from the orphanage were in the compound at the time. After the gang left with its haul, Davy Lloyd called his father. “He was injured, and he was hurt. He was nervous, and very very scared,” David Lloyd said. “He was begging me to find someone to get in there and help him, and I did all I could but I couldn’t locate anybody.” Then more armed men arrived, he said. “He told me, ‘I have to go down, something else is going down. I gotta go see what it is,’” David Lloyd recalled. “That was basically our last call.” Around that time, someone shot one of the newly arrived gang members, sparking a violent backlash, he said. “Davy went in and barricaded himself in my personal home with his wife and (mission director) Jude Montis. The gang shot that place up until they got the door busted down and shot them, and set Davy and Jude on fire.” HERO, the ambulance service, confirmed to CNN that Davy Lloyd’s body was found burned at the scene. Haitian police will work with international law enforcement to investigate the killings, police spokesperson Gary Desrosiers told CNN on Friday. “This is an open investigation but we are sure we will arrest those involved. For now, we’re working on protecting the public and the community while actively searching for the perpetrators,” he said. This photo provided by Brad Searcy Photography shows Davy and Natalie Lloyd. Brad Searcy Photography via AP On Missions in Haiti’s website, Davy Lloyd can be seen talking about growing up in the Caribbean nation and doing manual labor on the mission compound. He previously survived a kidnapping in Port-au-Prince in 2005, when he was just 5 years old, his father said. According to a report that year by the Tulsa World newspaper, Davy Lloyd, his sister and foster sister were abducted in a carjacking on their way home from school. But police were able to locate the kidnappers, rescue the children and quickly return them to their parents, according to the report. “We got them back 21 hours later,” David Lloyd recalled. ‘The security situation in Haiti cannot wait’ In a statement to CNN Friday, the White House said it was aware of the reports and expressed condolences while urging for the expedited deployment of UN Security Council-approved international police force to the region. “We are aware of the reports of the deaths of U.S. citizens in Haiti. Our hearts go out to the families of those killed as they experience unimaginable grief,” a national security spokesperson told CNN. “The security situation in Haiti cannot wait. That is why yesterday, President Biden reiterated our commitment to support the expedited the deployment of the Multinational Security Support (MSS) Mission to bolster the Haitian National Police’s capabilities to protect civilians, restore the rule of law, and pave the way to democratic governance.” Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson also mourned the couple’s loss on X Friday morning, calling it “absolutely heartbreaking news.” Until now, the area around the

Brisbane, AustraliaCNN —  The fate of former US Marines pilot Daniel Duggan now rests with Australia’s attorney general after a magistrate ruled he was eligible to be extradited to the United States to face charges related to the alleged training of Chinese military pilots. After a short hearing on Friday, Magistrate Daniel Reiss found that Duggan met the conditions for extradition and ordered him to be moved to prison while lawyers for the US wait for Attorney General Mark Dreyfus to approve his removal. Duggan has 15 days to seek a review of the order, which comes 19 months after his arrest in rural New South Wales, just weeks after returning from China to join his family in Australia. Duggan’s wife Saffrine stood outside court with their six children, as she appealed to the Australian authorities to intervene. “We are absolutely heartbroken and still don’t understand how this could be happening to us,” she said as supporters held up signs saying “Free Dan Duggan.” “My husband is a good man, a great father, a wonderful friend and husband. He faces no Australian charges and has no criminal background whatsoever. Yet he is locked up by the say-so of the United States government,” she added. She described Friday’s hearing as “simply about ticking boxes.” “Now, we respectfully ask the attorney general to take another look at this case and bring my husband home.” Saffrine Duggan (center) speaks to media prior to her husband’s extradition hearing at Downing Centre Local Court, in Sydney, May 24, 2024. Bianca De Marchi/AAP Image/Reuters A 2017 indictment alleges Duggan trained Chinese military pilots between November 2009 and November 2012, when he was still a US citizen. Duggan met his Australian wife in 2011 and took Australian citizenship the following year. The indictment said that “as early as 2008,” Duggan received an email from the US State Department telling him he was required to register with the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls and apply for permission to train a foreign air force. Instead, it claims he conspired with others – including the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA) – to export defense services in violation of an arms embargo on China. In a statement to CNN in 2023, TFASA said it complies with the laws of every jurisdiction in which it operates. The statement said Duggan undertook one test-pilot contract for the company in South Africa between November and December 2012, and “never worked for TFASA on any of its training mandates in China.” Duggan maintains the students he trained were Chinese civilians, including plane enthusiasts and people with ambitions within the civilian aviation industry. His supporters believe he’s been caught up in geopolitics during a time of strained relations between the United States and China and have accused authorities of using him to send a message to former military personnel. Friday’s hearing at Downing Centre Local Court was delayed for almost an hour due to protests that required the proceedings to be moved to a smaller courtroom that became so crowded that some members of the public sat on the floor. Further delays occurred after Reiss asked the floor-sitters to leave the room, warning that anyone who didn’t “hold their tongue” could be prosecuted for contempt of court. A spokesperson for the Australian attorney general said the government doesn’t comment on extradition matters. Under Australia’s Extradition Act, Duggan is entitled to appeal directly to the attorney general as to why he shouldn’t be sent to the US. There is no set time period for the attorney general to make a decision, but by law it should be made as soon as practicable

Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce has spoken about the controversial comments Harrison Butker made at a commencement speech earlier this month, saying he does not agree with “just about any” of Butker’s views but did “cherish” him as a teammate. In an address to graduates at Benedictine College, a small Catholic school in Atchison, Kansas, Butker called Pride Month a “deadly sin” and said that a woman’s accomplishments in the home are more valuable than any academic or professional goals, among other things. RELATED ARTICLEKansas City Chiefs star Patrick Mahomes defends Harrison Butker following controversial commencement speech “I cherish him as a teammate. I think Pat [Mahomes] said it best where he is every bit of a great person and a great teammate,” Kelce said on the latest episode of the “New Heights” podcast he hosts with his brother, Jason “He’s treated friends and family that I’ve introduced to him with nothing but respect and kindness and that’s how he treats everyone. When it comes down to his views and what he said at Saint Benedict’s commencement speech, those are his. “I can’t say I agree with the majority of it or just about any of it outside of just him loving his family and his kids and I don’t think that I should judge him by his views, especially his religious views, of how to go about life. That’s just not who I am.” His comments echoed what Chiefs teammate and three-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback Mahomes told reporters on Wednesday. Mahomes said that Butker was a “good person,” despite “not necessarily agreeing” with his comments. Jason Kelce added: “There’s always going to be opinions that everybody shares that you’re going to disagree with. “And make no mistake about it, a lot of the things he said in his commencement speech are not things that I align myself with. But, he’s giving a commencement speech at a Catholic university, and, shocker, it ended up being a very religious and Catholic speech. “To me, I can listen to somebody talk and take great value in it, like when he’s talking about the importance of family and the importance that a great mother can make, while also acknowledging that not everybody has to be a homemaker if that’s not what they want to do in life.” Kelce and Butker have been teammates at the Chiefs since 2017. Arne Dedert/picture alliance/Getty Images Travis Kelce said he was grateful for his “beautiful upbringing” in Cleveland Heights, surrounded by “different social classes, different religions, different races and ethnicities.” “That’s why I love Cleveland Heights for what it was,” he added. “It showed me a broad spectrum, just a broad view of a lot of different walks of life. And I appreciated every single one of those people for different reasons, and I never once had to feel like I needed to judge them, based off of their beliefs.”

A judge in New Mexico denied Alec Baldwin’s motion to dismiss the involuntary manslaughter indictment against him in the “Rust” fatal shooting case, connected to the 2021 death of the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins. Baldwin’s attorneys had accused prosecutors of misconduct during the grand jury process and sought to have the case dismissed. In January, Baldwin pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the shooting. Hutchins was fatally shot and director Joel Souza was injured after a gun Baldwin was holding discharged a live round during a scene rehearsal on the New Mexico set of the western movie. It was the second time the actor pleaded not guilty to charges related to the shooting. RELATED ARTICLEAlec Baldwin had ‘no control of his own emotions’ on ‘Rust’ set, prosecutors claim in new legal filing Involuntary manslaughter charges were dropped against Baldwin in 2023, with prosecutors saying in a statement at the time that they could not “proceed under the current time constraints and on the facts and evidence turned over by law enforcement in its existing form” due to “new facts” in the case. He was charged for a second time and indicted in January. Baldwin’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the indictment in March. They accused prosecutors of engaging in misconduct and said prosecutors “publicly dragged Baldwin through the cesspool created by their improprieties – without any regard for the fact that serious criminal charges have been hanging over his head for two and a half years.” Baldwin’s lawyers claimed the prosecution presented false and inaccurate testimony to the grand jury, withheld exculpatory evidence from the grand jury, and gave them improper and prejudicial instructions. In response to Baldwin’s team’s March motion to dismiss the indictment, special prosecutors in New Mexico defended their case, saying Baldwin’s behavior on the “Rust” movie set contributed to “safety compromises” that led to the fatal shooting. In the order to deny Baldwin’s motion to dismiss, the judge said despite the defense’s claims,there was no prosecutorial bad faith, as Baldwin’s legal team had claimed, and proper procedures were followed in the grand jury process. In the ruling, the judge said “after review of transcripts from the January 18, 2024 and January 19, 2024 grand jury presentations, the Court does not find that the ‘prosecuting attorney assisting the grand jury’ engaged in ‘intentional misconduct’ reflecting ‘dishonesty of belief, purpose, or motive’ in the course of the attorney’s ‘presentation of evidence to the grand jury.’” The film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, who was responsible for firearm safety and storage on the movie’s set, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in March. She was sentenced in April to 18 months in prison and is appealing. In a short statement to CNN following a judge’s refusal to dismiss charges against Baldwin, Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro from the actor’s legal team said: “We look forward to our day in court.” This is a developing story and will be updated.

CNN —  On any other afternoon at any other tournament, Adam Hadwin’s seventh hole would have served up the most surreal scenes of the day. During the second round of the PGA Championship though, it was just another hole. Having lost his club to the waters of Kentucky’s Valhalla Golf Club on Friday, the Canadian golfer stood by as one overzealous fan took the plunge to return it to him. As an incredulous – but nonetheless entertained – audience of players, caddies and staff watched on, broadcast images showed the spectator strip down to his underwear and socks before paddling the short distance to retrieve the club. Ad Feedback Emerging from the lake to applause and a hand up from the club’s owner, the fan was promptly rewarded with a towel to dry himself off before play continued. Yet there was no happy ending to the hole for Hadwin, who went on to make bogey on the par-five. RELATED ARTICLEPGA Championship: ‘Shaking’ Scottie Scheffler warmed up in a jail cell. Then he climbed the leaderboard That didn’t stop wife Jessica from making light of events involving her husband. Replying to video of the fan incident on X, she contrasted the bizarre scenes to the “chill little kid free weekend” she had anticipated in Louisville. A one-over-par 72 was enough to see Hadwin through to the weekend at two-under par overall, 10 strokes behind leader Xander Schauffele. How exactly the club ended up in the lake remains unclear, but the one-time PGA Tour winner has previous. At The Players Championship in March, the 36-year-old vented his frustration at finding the water for the first time in his career at “the fifth major” by hurling his 8-iron into the drink. Hadwin also has a reputation for finding himself in bizarre situations. At last year’s Canadian Open, the world No. 51 was mistakenly leveled by a security guard while celebrating his friend Nick Taylor’s victory. Yet even he won’t have experienced a situation like world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler did on Friday, with the tournament favorite arrested, charged with felony assault and released from jail before stepping up to the tee. Scheffler was given a rousing reception before returning to the clubhouse with a stellar 66, capping a surreal day that saw some fans don t-shirts imprinted with his own mugshot – one taken at the jail he had warmed up in that morning. Scheffler walks past fans during the second round. Patrick Smith/Getty Images “The fans were tremendous today. I felt like they were cheering extra loud for me,” Scheffler told reporters. “I’ve kept myself in the tournament now with a pretty chaotic day,” he added. “So I’m going to go from here and focus on getting some rest and recovery and get ready for a grind the last two days.” Once again, Hadwin’s wife Jessica was on hand to lighten the mood, drawing comparisons between the tribulations of Scheffler and her husband. “There’s only one logical next step after this latest incident,” she wrote on X. “Have you been wrongfully arrested and / or tackled while at your job as a professional golfer? You might be entitled to compensation.

DallasCNN —  In May 2016, near the zenith of its political sway, the National Rifle Association endorsed Donald Trump for president in a symbolic but forceful show of support for a Republican whose commitment to gun owners was still largely unknown. The group then spent more than $30 million to help elect Trump that November. Trump arrives here Saturday for the NRA’s annual convention having proven himself a reliable ally of Second Amendment activists over the intervening eight years. Significantly less clear, though, is how much the NRA can help Trump’s bid to win the White House once again. The NRA enters the 2024 election cycle with its future uncertain and relevance in question. A series of cascading scandals related to financial misconduct have badly damaged the reputation and coffers of the nation’s most prominent gun rights group, culminating in February with a New York jury finding the organization and top executives liable in a civil corruption case. Amid the turmoil, the NRA’s longtime CEO, Wayne LaPierre, stepped down. After several years of internal power struggles, the organization will attempt this weekend to install new leadership. It’s a stunning fall for a group that at its peak commanded enough Republican votes in Congress to stall almost any action to restrict firearms, even amid periods of national grief over mass shootings .   Suplina said Trump’s NRA appearance “shows that both the organization and the man are a bit desperate for each other. Trump needs the crowd, the NRA needs the political relevance.”   As with many issues, Trump’s stance on gun control has shifted throughout his decades in the public spotlight. Prior to running for office, Trump supported an assault weapons ban, but he backed away from that stance during his first presidential campaign.   After a gunman opened fire at a Parkland, Florida, high school in 2018, killing 17 students and staff, Trump appeared to briefly embrace a host of measures to restrict gun sales, only to quickly pivot again amid intense lobbying from the NRA.   Trump did address one concern of gun safety activists when his administration moved unilaterally to ban bump stocks, devices that enables a rifle to fire hundreds of rounds of ammunition per minute. The Supreme Court earlier this year heard oral arguments in a case seeking to overturn the Trump-era regulation.   “If President Trump regrets that decision, that’s something he should come out and say because gun owners are not going to forget that,” said Aidan Johnston, a lobbyist for the Gun Owners of America, an organization that has at times criticized the NRA for not being vigilant enough in pushing for fewer gun restrictions.   People browse guns for sale, during the Novi Gun and Knife Show at Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, Mich. on Feb. 24, 2018. RELATED ARTICLE Biden administration finalizes rule to close ‘gun show loophole’ in effort to combat gun violence Trump’s relative inaction stood at the heart of the stark divisions that emerged between Biden and Trump over firearms during their 2020 race. Among both gun safety advocates and gun rights groups, there’s little disagreement about the stakes in 2024.   Johnston called Biden “perhaps the most anti-gun president in American history.” Suplina said the current commander-in-chief was “the strongest gun-sense president in history.”   Biden as president has championed new restrictions on firearms, including bipartisan passage in 2022 of the most comprehensive gun safety legislation in three decades – a sweeping bill to strengthen background checks. Biden has also created the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and has issued a range of modest executive measures aimed at reducing gun violence.   Among them are new regulations on the makers of “ghost guns” kits, which allow people to build untraceable guns at home, requiring the same compliance with federal laws imposed on commercially sold firearms. If reelected, Biden has said he would continue to pursue a long-sought ban on the AR-15, the firearm linked to many of America’s deadliest mass shootings.   Trump in February vowed to undo any steps taken by Biden to regulate guns “my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day.” A top priority is halting a proposed rule from the Biden administration to bar hunters from using lead ammunition on certain federal lands.   “Firearm owners, gun manufacturers, and our beautiful 2A community know President Trump is the only one who has and will proudly stand for their Second Amendment rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution – which shall not be infringed,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to CNN.

New YorkCNN —  Walmart said Tuesday it is eliminating several hundred corporate jobs and will relocate most of its remaining remote office staff to its Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters. Walmart confirmed the move in a memo sent by Donna Morris, its chief people officer, to employees on Tuesday and obtained by CNN. Morris, in the memo, said the decision to relocate employees and ask other remote staff to come back into the office was made to facilitate better collaboration, innovation “and move even faster.” “We also believe it helps strengthen our culture as well as grow and develop our associates,” she said in the memo. RELATED ARTICLEWalmart will close all of its health care clinics The relocation will impact the majority of workers in Walmart’s Dallas, Atlanta and Toronto offices. While most relocations will be to its Bentonville headquarters, some workers will be relocated to Walmart offices in the San Francisco Bay Area or to Hoboken, New Jersey, and the New York area. “In addition, some parts of our business have made changes that will result in a reduction of several hundred campus roles,” Morris said in the memo. “While the overall numbers are small in percentage, we are focused on supporting each of our associates affected by these changes.” Walmart is expected to report its latest quarterly earnings on Thursday. The latest round of layoffs at the world’s largest retailer comes close on the heels of Walmart’s announcement last month that it was exiting its virtual healthcare services and was shuttering all 51 of its healthcare centers in six states. Also last month, the discount giant’s shoppers learned they could be entitled to as much as $500 as part of a class-action lawsuit settlement by the retailer over allegations that it overcharged customers for certain products.

CNN —  A deadly heat wave in Gaza in April, which saw punishing temperatures worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis, was made hotter and more likely by the human-caused climate crisis, according to an analysis published Tuesday. Gaza was not alone. Several heat waves spanning a vast area of the Asian continent last month during the world’s hottest April on record were made more intense and likely by the climate crisis, the analysis from the World Weather Attribution initiative (WWA) found. The WWA report divided the heat waves into three areas: West Asia, the Philippines and a region spanning South and Southeast Asia. In West Asia, the analysis focused on the Palestinian territories, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan, where temperatures spiked above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) last month. It found climate change made the heat in this region around five times more likely and 1.7 degrees Celsius hotter than it would have been before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels. Soaring temperatures had a particularly stark impact on the 1.7 million displaced people in Gaza, already struggling with insufficient water access and inadequate healthcare. There was little respite from the relentless heat for those crammed into makeshift tents and shelters, often covered with plastic sheets. At least three people, including two children, reportedly died from the heat, the analysis notes. In the Philippines, the extreme heat last month — which forced hundreds of schools to close as temperatures reached more than 42 degrees Celsius — had such a strong link to human-caused global warming the report concluded it would have been impossible without it.

CNN —  Acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof says he has fled his home country to an undisclosed location in Europe after a court in Iran sentenced him to prison on national security charges. Rasoulof condemned the Iranian government in an Instagram post on Monday, calling it a tyrannical and oppressive regime, and posting a video that showed him crossing the country’s mountainous border. “If geographical Iran suffers beneath the boots of your religious tyranny, cultural Iran is alive in the common minds of millions of Iranians who were forced to leave Iran due to your brutality and no power can impose its will on it. From today, I am a resident of cultural Iran,” he said. In a separate statement dated May 12, Rasoulof said he had decided to escape Iran after his lawyers told him his prison sentence would be implemented on short notice. “I had to choose between prison and leaving Iran. With a heavy heart, I chose exile,” he said in that statement, which was provided by a spokesperson. CNN has reached out to Iranian authorities for comment. His lawyer Babak Paknia said last week that an Iranian court had sentenced Rasoulof to eight years in prison and flogging after it found his films and documentaries to be “examples of collusion with the intention of committing a crime against the security of the country.” Rasoulof is among several high-profile artists to have been caught up in a widening crackdown on dissent by Iranian authorities since nationwide protests broke out over the 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly not wearing her headscarf properly. Rasoulof, whose recent films have been critical of the Iranian government, was among a group of artists and filmmakers who signed a letter criticizing the violent response of security forces to quell a 2022 protest over a building collapse in the southwestern city of Abadan that killed more than 40 people. Rasoulof won a Golden Bear for best film at the Berlinale festival in 2020 for “There Is No Evil” and his film “A Man of Integrity” was recognized for a “Certain Regard” honor at the Cannes Film Festival in France in 2017. RELATED ARTICLEIran sentences renowned director to 8 years in prison and flogging, lawyer says The filmmaker’s latest work, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” is set to premiere at Cannes next week, but it’s unclear if he will be able to attend. “We are very happy and much relieved that Mohammad has safely arrived in Europe after a dangerous journey,” said Jean-Christophe Simon, the distributor for Rasoulof’s latest film. The Films Boutique and Parallel45 executive added that he hopes that Rasoulof will be able to attend the Cannes premiere for his film “in spite of all attempts to prevent him from being there in person.” Rasoulof said on Instagram that he will now work to quickly finish the last technical steps of his film’s post-production. “Many people helped to make this film. My thoughts are with all of them, and I fear for their safety and well-being,” he said, accusing the Iranian government of pressuring members of his production team with interrogations, court filings and travel restrictions. Rasoulof didn’t specify how he escaped Iran, saying only that he did it secretly with the help of friends and acquaintances. In 2022, an Iranian court sentenced Rasoulof to one year in prison and banned him from making films for two years on the charge of “propaganda against the system,” according to Human Rights Watch. Iranian authorities have previously arrested him multiple times and confiscated his passport because of his work, HRW said. Additional reporting by Michael Rios

CNN — Two passengers and a pilot emerged unscathed from a small plane after it was forced to land without landing gear following a mechanical failure at Newcastle Airport in Australia’s New South Wales.   The plane, a Beach B-200 Super King, circled the airport for hours burning fuel before making a “textbook” wheels-up emergency landing, CNN affiliate Nine News reported.   Footage shows the plane approaching the runway without its landing gear activated before touching down and skidding along the tarmac until coming to a stop.   Emergency response vehicles were on standby and could be seen in the video racing to the aid of the plane.   Superintendent Wayne Humphrey from NSW police praised the 53-year-old pilot for executing a successful landing, saying that nobody was injured and the passengers had even been able to drive home, Nine News reported.   “It was a great result, really well done by the pilot,” Humphrey reportedly said. “I could hear him on the air, he sounded very calm to me.”   The plane had been circling the airport for several hours in order to burn fuel.   Those guiding the plane down in the control room burst into applause when they saw it had landed safely, Humphrey said.   The plane had been scheduled to make a 26-minute flight from Newcastle to Port Macquarie, about 400 kilometers (248 miles) north of Sydney.  

Analysis by John Blake, CNN  10 minute read CNN —  A month after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the historian Yuval Noah Harari made a bold claim that seemed delusional. Harari made his claim in an essay on the heroism of the Ukrainian people. He praised embattled Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who refused to flee his country when death seemed certain, telling his would-be rescuers that he needed ammunition, not a ride. He marveled at the outnumbered Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island who told a Russian warship to “go f**k yourself,” and the civilians blocking Russian tanks with their bodies. “Nations are ultimately built on stories,” said Harari, author of “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.” “Each passing day adds more stories that Ukrainians will not only tell in the dark days ahead, but in the decades and generations to come … This is the stuff nations are built from. In the long run, these stories count for more than tanks.” But there’s another type of story that’s gained traction in the US — the kind that can cause a nation to unravel. The new hit movie, “Civil War,” which has earned more than $100 million worldwide at the box office, is the latest example of a disturbing trend: We no longer seem to know how to tell well-crafted stories that counter those that depict American democracy as doomed. In “Civil War,” tanks trample democracy. The film depicts a near-future America that has been torn apart by seceding regions and militia violence. It features a fascist leader in the White House, an attempted coup and Americans casually killing one another in the streets. One critic called it writer-director Alex Garland’s “very in-your-face attempt to imagine the unimaginable in America.” It’s hard to imagine any other future for the United States when you consider the popularity of movies like “Civil War.” Most of the stories about the state of America that gain traction in popular culture are the ones that end in its failure. They’re the opposite of the hopeful, unifying stories any country needs to overcome tough times. “Civil War” is part of a growing entertainment genre that, to borrow a phrase from former President Donald Trump, could be called “American carnage.” Dystopian movies and TV shows like “The Walking Dead,” “The Purge,” “The Hunger Games,” “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Last of Us” all imagine a hellish future in America triggered by an environmental, political or civic collapse. There’s nothing wrong with dystopian thrillers. They serve as cautionary tales and are as old as the book of Revelation. But the messages they send may be more dangerous than the violence depicted onscreen: The collapse of democracy is inevitable. Americans can never transcend their tribalism. Resistance is futile. There’s something wrong when we churn out stories about superheroes in spandex banding together from different galaxies to save the universe, but we can’t tell a popular story that shows Americans coming together to save our country. ‘Casablanca’ offers a lesson for today’s Americans It didn’t used to be this way. There was another time when democracy in America was under threat, and filmmakers responded by making stirring movies aimed at lifting Americans’ spirit and equipping them for the battles ahead. Consider “Casablanca,” the classic 1942 film. It proves that you can tell a gripping story about patriotism without being sappy or boring. In the film, Humphrey Bogart plays Rick, the cynical owner of a Moroccan nightclub at the onset of World War II. The movie is remembered today for its classic lines (“Here’s looking at you kid”; “We’ll always have Paris”; “Round up the usual suspects”). Dooley Wilson, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in “Casablanca.” Everett Collection Yet there’s another classic line uttered by Rick — “I stick my neck out for nobody” — that hints at deeper reasons why “Casablanca” was made. The film is set before Pearl Harbor, when many Americans didn’t want to get involved in a European conflict. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi war machine seemed unstoppable. Fascism was on a global march. Democracy’s future seemed grim. Rick responds to the impending crisis with apathy and cynicism. But when his old flame, played by actress Ingrid Bergman, walks into his club one night, she not only rekindles their romance but his idealism. “The movie was a patriotic rallying cry that affirmed a sense of national purpose,” wrote Cristóbal S. Berry-Cabán in an essay. “The film emphasized group effort and the value of individual sacrifices for a larger cause. It portrayed World War II as a peoples’ war, typically featuring a diverse group of people and ethnic backgrounds who are thrown together, tested, and molded into a dedicated (force) fighting fascism.” Other films of that era made similar storytelling choices. Legendary Hollywood director Frank Capra made a series of seven patriotic films during World War II called “Why We Fight” that rallied Americans in the fight against fascism. The entertainer Frank Sinatra, a paragon of mid-20th century American masculinity, starred in a short film called “The House We Live In.” It would be labeled “woke” today. In the film, Sinatra intervenes when he sees a group of youths chasing a Jewish boy. He tells them that “religion makes no difference, except to a Nazi or someone who’s stupid.” The film was eventually selected by the Library of Congress as being “culturally and historically” significant. Sinatra would later record a song with the same title as the film, which he would perform throughout his career. It included lines like, “The faces that I see. All races and religions. That’s America to me.” Frank Sinatra in a still from “The House I Live In,” 1945). John Springer Collection/Corbis Historical/Getty Images Other World War II-era films like “Don’t be a Sucker,” which emphasized racial and religious tolerance in America, emphasized the same message. It went viral after the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Those black-and-white films may seem dated and idealistic in an America that has been through the Vietnam War, Watergate, 9/11 and January 6. But a country needs a unifying story like a human being needs oxygen. “Stories are essential to holding a nation together,” says Kermit Roosevelt III, a historian and author of “The Nation That

CNN —  Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed Andrey Belousov as Minister of Defense, replacing current minister Sergei Shoigu, the Kremlin said on Sunday night. “Sergei Shoigu was relieved of his post as Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation by presidential decree and was also appointed by decree of the President of the Russian Federation as Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said. Shoigu will also be Putin’s deputy in the Military-Industrial Commission of the Russian Federation, Peskov said. Nikolai Patrushev, the previous Secretary of the Security Council, was relieved of his position and is “due to a transfer to another job,” Peskov said. Belousov previously served as first deputy prime minister. This is a developing story and will be updated.

The couple owned properties in Florida but had separated Knezevich and Henao lived in Florida, where records show they own several properties in Fort Lauderdale. They are also listed as CEO and project manager of EOX Technology Solutions Inc., which provides computer support for businesses in south Florida. CNN contacted the company this week but did not immediately get a response. The couple was planning to divorce amid a separation that was contentious because Knezevich did not want to evenly split marital assets, court documents said. But Knezevich’s attorney told CNN in February that their separation was amicable, “with anticipation of a divorce.” Henao, 40, boarded a flight from Miami to Spain the day after Christmas, court records show. At the time of her disappearance six weeks later, her husband was in his native Serbia and had nothing to do with it, Padowitz said in February. Knezevich had spoken to Spanish police, provided his credit card details and other information and was cooperating in the investigation, the attorney said then. Padowitz is based in Florida. But federal officials said records show Knezevich flew from Miami to Turkey in January and then went to Belgrade, Serbia, where he rented a small Peugeot on January 29. The owner of the rental car agency told investigators that when the car was returned in mid-March, someone had tinted its windows and added a new license plate frame, and it had traveled nearly 4,800 miles, the criminal complaint said. Toll booth cameras captured images of the same model Peugeot, with tinted windows, near Madrid in the late night and early morning of February 2 and 3. It had license plates stolen from another vehicle on the Madrid street where Henao was living, the complaint said. A poster shows Ana Maria Knezevich Henao, 40, who vanished in Madrid in February. A poster shows Ana Maria Knezevich Henao, 40, who vanished in Madrid in February. Manu Fernandez/AP FBI spokesperson James Marshall declined to answer questions this week, citing an ongoing investigation. “We appreciate the public’s attention to our case and continue to encourage those with information, even if they’re not certain of its value, to come forward,” Marshall said. “To preserve the integrity and capabilities of the investigation, I cannot share details of the ongoing process.” Her friend received puzzling texts from her phone Henao was last seen on camera entering her building in Madrid’s upscale Salamanca neighborhood on the afternoon of February 2. At 9:27 p.m. that evening, records show the man in the helmet entered the building and tampered with the surveillance camera. He had “physical characteristics” that resembled her husband, court documents said. Henao, a US citizen originally from Colombia, was in constant communication with her loved ones while overseas. She was planning a trip to Barcelona with her friends on February 5, her brother told CNN, making her sudden lack of contact more concerning. Two days before the trip, her friend Sanna Rameau received a puzzling WhatsApp message from Henao indicating she was running off for a few days with a man she’d just met. The message, seen by CNN, read: “I met someone wonderful!! He has a summer house about 2h (hours) from Madrid. We are going there now and I will spend a few days there. Signal is spotty. I’ll call you when I get back.” The man had approached Henao on the street a day earlier while she was walking, the message said, adding: “Amazing connection. Like I never had before.” The entrance to Ana Maria Knezevich Henao’s apartment in Madrid. CNN Rameau said she’d spoken with Henao by phone hours before she went missing and she had not mentioned meeting a man. Concern grew when Henao did not show up at a Madrid train station for the trip as planned. Spanish firefighters entered her apartment for a welfare check and she was nowhere to be found, court documents said. Her phone, laptop and chargers were also missing. Now federal officials allege the text messages sent from her phone actually came from her husband. And they were written with the help of another Colombian woman Knezevich had met on a dating app months earlier, court documents said. On February 3 — the day after Henao was last seen alive — Knezevich sent the woman several English sentences to translate into “perfect Colombian,” according to the criminal complaint. He told her it was for a friend in Serbia writing a script that had a Colombian character. The message he sent to the unidentified Colombian woman to translate was the same one sent from Henao’s phone saying she’d met a new guy, court documents said. Investigators also identified other clues Investigators on both sides of the Atlantic searched for clues on what happened to the missing woman and who entered her building that day — and who might have abducted her. Then everything started coming together. Spanish investigators identified the brand of spray paint used to tamper with the camera and learned that a Madrid retailer had sold the same paint, along with two rolls of duct tape, to a man who resembled Knezevich the same day Henao was last seen, the criminal complaint said. And in a twist of fate, the woman Knezevich met on a dating app told her mother in Bogota about her new suitor, leading to yet another revelation. The woman’s mother Googled his name and saw news reports about his missing wife. She notified her daughter, who realized that the text attributed to Henao before she vanished matched the exact wording of the message she’d helped Knezevich put together, court documents said. Knezevich’s next court hearing is scheduled for Friday. But a key question remains: What happened to his wife? CNN’s Pau Mosquera, Denise Royal and Carlos Suarez contributed to this report.

AHMEDABAD, India, May 7 (Reuters) – Prime Minister Narendra Modi voted early as India held the third phase of a massive general election on Tuesday, and called for a strong turnout although he warned of the scorching summer heat. The world’s most populous nation began voting on April 19 in a seven-phase election in which nearly one billion people are eligible to vote, with ballots set to be counted on June 4. Modi is seeking a rare, third straight term in a vote which pits his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against an alliance of more than two dozen opposition parties. Surveys suggest he will win a comfortable majority. Advertisement · Scroll to continue “I urge all citizens to vote in large numbers and celebrate the festival of democracy… To all those working in the heat, I urge you to take care of your health and drink adequate water,” he said shortly after voting in his home state of Gujarat. Modi cast his ballot in the Gandhinagar constituency where his number two, Home Minister Amit Shah, is the BJP candidate. Clad in saffron and white, Modi was surrounded by hundreds of supporters and party members, signing autographs and talking to children on the way to the polling booth. Advertisement · Scroll to continue He was received by Shah as people beat drums and rang bells. Modi’s campaign began by showcasing his economic record, welfare measures, national pride and personal popularity. Item 1 of 11 India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi walks alongside Amit Shah, Indian Home Minister and leader of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the day he casts his vote, outside a polling station during the third phase of the general election, in Ahmedabad, India, May 7, 2024. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi [1/11]India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi walks alongside Amit Shah, Indian Home Minister and leader of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the day he casts his vote, outside a polling station during the third phase of the general election, in Ahmedabad, India, May 7, 2024. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab But it changed tack after the first phase of voting on April 19 and focused more on firing up BJP’s Hindu base by attacking rivals as pro-Muslim, even as surveys say jobs and inflation are the main concerns of voters. In an interview with broadcaster Times Now aired on Monday, Modi said he does not oppose Islam or Muslims and wants the community to think about their future growth as they vote. Advertisement · Scroll to continue Tuesday’s polling covers 93 seats in 11 states and territories, with Gujarat and Maharashtra in the west and Karnataka in the south accounting for 50 seats. That would complete voting for 283 of parliament’s 543 elected seats. In the 2019 elections, the BJP won more than 70 of 93 seats up for grabs on Tuesday, but faces tougher contests this time as the main opposition Congress party has gained strength in Karnataka and a regional partner has split in Maharashtra. Voter turnout of 66.14% and 66.71% respectively in the first two phases has been marginally lower than corresponding phases five years back, with analysts blaming the summer heat and the lack of a single strong issue to motivate voters. The Election Commission has since stepped up a campaign to encourage people to vote while consulting with weather officials and health and disaster management agencies to deal with the impact of the heat wave on Tuesday’s vote. “Weather conditions are predicted to be within normal ranges,” it said in a statement on the eve of the vote, calling on voters to “turn out in greater numbers at polling stations and vote with responsibility and pride”. It is also pushing voter awareness to raise participation through messages and songs during Indian Premier League cricket matches, Facebook alerts, announcements at train stations and on flights, messages on train tickets, milk pouches, at gas stations, and films and songs at cinema theatres, among others. Music app Spotify has created an “election playlist” to motivate voters, and celebrities are being used to make appeals through radio and TV commercials, it said.

UNITED NATIONS, May 6 (Reuters) – The United Nations General Assembly could vote on Friday on a draft resolution that would recognize the Palestinians as qualified to become a full U.N. member and recommend that the U.N. Security Council “reconsider the matter favorably.” It would effectively act as a global survey of how much support the Palestinians have for their bid, which was vetoed in the U.N. Security Council last month by the United States. An application to become a full U.N. member needs to be approved by the 15-member Security Council and then the General Assembly. Advertisement · Scroll to continue Report this ad Diplomats say the 193-member General Assembly is likely to back the Palestinian bid. But changes could still be made to the draft after some diplomats raised concerns with the current text, seen by Reuters, that also grants additional rights and privileges – short of full membership – to the Palestinians. Some diplomats say this could set a precedent for other situations, citing Kosovo and Taiwan as examples. Advertisement · Scroll to continue Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan on Monday denounced the current draft General Assembly resolution, saying it would give the Palestinians the de facto status and rights of a state and goes against the founding U.N. Charter. “If it is approved, I expect the United States to completely stop funding the U.N. and its institutions, in accordance with American law,” said Erdan, adding that adoption by the General Assembly would not change anything on the ground. US CONCERNS Under U.S. law, Washington cannot fund any U.N. organization that grants full membership to any group that does not have the “internationally recognized attributes” of statehood. The U.S. halted funding in 2011 for the U.N. cultural agency (UNESCO)after the Palestinians became a full member. “It remains the U.S. view that the path toward statehood for the Palestinian people is through direct negotiations,” said Nate Evans, spokesperson for the U.S. mission to the U.N. Advertisement · Scroll to continue Report this ad “We are aware of the resolution and reiterate our concerns with any effort to extend certain benefits to entities when there are unresolved questions as to whether the Palestinians currently meet the criteria under the Charter,” he said. The Palestinians are currently a non-member observer state, a de facto recognition of statehood that was granted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2012. The Palestinian mission to the U.N. in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its push for action in the General Assembly. The Palestinian push for full U.N. membership comes seven months into a war between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and as Israel is expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank, which the U.N. considers to be illegal. The United Nations has long endorsed a vision of two states living side by side within secure and recognized borders. Palestinians want a state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, all territory captured by Israel in 1967.

By Jack Queen, Luc Cohen and Andy Sullivan NEW YORK, May 6 (Reuters) – The judge in Donald Trump‘s criminal trial fined him $1,000 and held him in contempt of court for a 10th time on Monday for violating a gag order and warned that further violations could land the former president in jail. Justice Juan Merchan said the nine $1,000 fines he had imposed so far did not seem to be deterring the wealthy business mogul from violating the order, which bars him from speaking publicly about jurors and witnesses in the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president. Advertisement · Scroll to continue “I do not want to impose a jail sanction and have done everything I can to avoid doing so. But I will if necessary,” Merchan said before the jury entered. Imprisonment would be an unprecedented step in the historic trial, which stems from a hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels in the final weeks of the 2016 election. After Merchan’s ruling, jurors heard testimony from a former Trump employee that could bolster prosecutors’ case that Trump falsified business records to cover up the hush money payment. Advertisement · Scroll to continue Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies wrongdoing. As he imposed the fine, Merchan said he considered jail time “truly the last resort” as it would disrupt the trial, pose extraordinary security challenges and complicate the 2024 presidential election, in which the Republican Trump seeks to win the White House back from Democratic President Joe Biden. But he said Trump’s “continued, willful” violations of the gag order amounted to a “direct attack on the rule of law.” Merchan imposed the 10th $1,000 fine on Monday for an April 22 broadcast interview in which the former president said: “That jury was picked so fast – 95% Democrats. The area’s mostly all Democrat.” Merchan found that other statements flagged by prosecutors that mentioned witnesses Michael Cohen and David Pecker did not violate the order. The gag order prevents Trump from making statements about jurors, witnesses and families of the judge and prosecutors if meant to interfere with the case. Violations are punishable by fines of up to $1,000 or jail time of up to 30 days. Advertisement · Scroll to continue Report this ad Last week Merchan fined Trump $9,000 for nine social media posts that he ruled had violated the gag order. Trump complains frequently that the gag order limits his ability to make his case to voters in his comeback White House bid. “He’s taken away my constitutional right to speak,” Trump told reporters outside the courtroom before the start of the 12th day of trial. PAYMENT RECORDS DISPLAYED Prosecutors on Monday later showed jurors business records that documented payments totaling $420,000 from Trump to Cohen, his former fixer and personal lawyer. Those payments were listed as legal fees, but prosecutors say they were actually meant to reimburse Cohen for paying $130,000 to Daniels to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006. Trump denies ever having had sex with Daniels. Prosecutors say the $420,000 paid by Trump was meant to cover the $130,000 Cohen paid to Daniels, along with $50,000 in other expenses he had incurred. Trump doubled that total to account for taxes and also included a $60,000 year-end bonus, they say. A former controller in Trump’s organization, Jeffrey McConney, testified that he was not aware of any other instance in which the Trump Organization reimbursed someone so generously. He said he was told by the company’s top finance official Allen Weisselberg that the payments were reimbursements, not legal fees. He said he never spoke with Trump about the payments. Prosecutors also showed jurors ledger entries that payments to Cohen had not been listed among legal expenses the company paid to outside lawyers. Most of the jurors appeared to look intently at the email messages displayed on the screens in front of their seats as McConney testified. Prosecutors say Trump’s payment to Daniels corrupted the 2016 election by keeping the news from voters, at a time when his treatment of women was a central issue in his campaign against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. They say the altered business records covered up election-law and tax-law violations that elevate the 34 counts Trump faces from misdemeanors to felonies punishable by up to four years in prison. If found guilty, Trump could face up to four years in prison, though defendants typically face fines and probation. The main players in the case have yet to testify, including Cohen and Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. The case features sordid allegations of adultery and secret payoffs, but it is widely seen as less consequential than three other criminal prosecutions Trump faces. It is the only one certain to go to trial before the Nov. 5 presidential election. The other cases charge him with trying to overturn his 2020 presidential defeat and mishandling classified documents after leaving office. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all three.

The United States is studying Hamas’s response to a ceasefire proposal and will discuss it with allies in the Middle East in the coming hours, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. “I can confirm that Hamas has issued a response. We are reviewing that response now and discussing it with our partners in the region,” Miller said on Monday afternoon, confirming that a response was received in the last hour or 90 minutes and that discussions would take place in the coming hours. CIA director Bill Burns is in the region “working on this in real time,” Miller said. The Hamas announcement came hours after Israel ordered the evacuation of parts of Rafah, the city on Gaza’s southern edge that has served as the last sanctuary for around half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents. That appeared to signal that an operation on Rafah will go ahead, despite Washington’s repeated warnings, including by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on a visit to Israel last week, where he also focused on increasing humanitarian aid to Gaza.Miller reiterated that the United States could not support an operation in Rafah “as it is currently envisioned” by Israel. “A Rafah operation would make it incredibly difficult to sustain the increases in humanitarian assistance that we have been able to deliver over the past few weeks,” Miller said. White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters: “We want to get these hostages out, we want to get a ceasefire in place for six weeks, we want to increase humanitarian assistance,” Kirby said, adding that reaching an agreement would be the “absolute best outcome.””

Displaced Palestinians, who fled Rafah after the Israeli military began evacuating civilians from the eastern parts of the southern Gazan city, ahead of a threatened assault, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, travel in a vehicle, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip May 6, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed The White House said on Monday it was reviewing a response by Hamas to a ceasefire and hostage release deal, and continued to press Israel not to launch a large-scale military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. White House spokesperson John Kirby declined to provide any details of what had been agreed, saying he did not want to jeopardize any deal. Kirby said U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for about 30 minutes about Rafah and the hostage and ceasefire proposal, before the Hamas response was received. He described it as a constructive discussion. “It wasn’t a pressure call, it wasn’t about twisting his arm towards a certain set of parameters,” Kirby said. He said CIA Director William Burns was discussing the Hamas response with Israel. “We are at a critical stage right now,” he said. “It wasn’t like we had a heads up about it.” Kirby told reporters Biden reiterated his clear position to Netanyahu that the United States does “not support ground operations in Rafah,” adding that Israel should not proceed with an invasion plan unless it shows how to protect hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians there. CIA Director William Burns was in the region having discussions with Israel about the Hamas response. “We are at a critical stage right now,” Kirby said. “It wasn’t like we had a heads up about it.” Kirby told reporters Biden reiterated his clear position to Netanyahu that the United States does “not support ground operations in Rafah,” adding that Israel should not proceed with an invasion plan unless it shows how to protect hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians there.

Producer Sean “Diddy” Combs is facing new allegations of sexual assault, at least the third civil complaint filed against him in as many weeks. According to new complaint filed Wednesday and obtained by CNN, Combs is accused of sex trafficking and gang rape, among other allegations, naming him along with Harve Pierre, former president of Combs’ company Bad Boy Entertainment, along with a third assailant. Combs responded to the suit in a statement through his representative Nathalie Moar: “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. For the last couple of weeks, I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy. Sickening allegations have been made against me by individuals looking for a quick payday. Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family and for the truth.” CNN has attempted to reach representatives of Bad Boy Entertainment and Pierre for comment on the allegations. The suit is being brought by a woman referred to in the suit as Jane Doe, who the complaint states was 17 at the time of the alleged assault in 2003. It was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. As a result of the alleged assault, Jane Doe has “suffered significant emotional distress and [feelings] of shame that have plagued her life and personal relationships for 20 years,” according to the complaint. Jane Doe is seeking unspecified monetary damages. “As alleged in the complaint, Defendants preyed on a vulnerable high school teenager as part of a sex trafficking scheme that involved plying her with drugs and alcohol and transporting her by private jet to New York City where she was gang raped by the three individual defendants at Mr. Combs’ studio,” Douglas H. Wigdor, founding partner of Wigdor LLP, said in a statement to CNN. “The depravity of these abhorrent acts has, not surprisingly, scarred our client for life.” Jane Doe is suing the defendants for violation of the New York Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law. According to the New York City Council, the law gives “survivors of gender-motivated acts of violence more time to pursue civil actions by extending the statute of limitations” and also “applies to such acts committed by parties who direct, enable, participate in, or conspire in a gender-motivated act of violence.” A two-year window opened in March, allowing survivors of gender-based violence to take legal action in civil court even if a statute of limitations on the alleged offenses has expired. The law will expire in 2025. Combs was sued for rape and abuse in November by former partner, singer Cassie Ventura, who filed her lawsuit under the now-expired The New York’s Adult Survivors Act. The parties reached a settlement one day after Ventura filed the suit. “I have decided to resolve this matter amicably on terms that I have some level of control. I want to thank my family, fans and lawyers for their unwavering support,” Ventura said in a statement obtained by CNN at the time. A representative for Combs said in a statement to CNN that the settlement was “in no way an admission of wrongdoing” and “does not in any way undermine his flat-out denial of the claims.” Following Ventura’s lawsuit, CNN reported Combs faced another lawsuit filed under the New York Adult Survivors Act. That suit accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman and victimizing her through “revenge porn.” Combs, through his representative, has denied all allegations made against him.

An Indian judge has dismissed a woman’s complaint that her husband committed “unnatural sex,” because under Indian law it’s not illegal for a husband to force his wife to engage in sexual acts. The ruling, made in the Madhya Pradesh High Court last week, shines a light on a legal loophole in India that doesn’t criminalize marital rape by a husband against his wife, if she’s over age 18. Campaigners have been trying to change the law for years, but they say they’re up against conservatives who argue that state interference could destroy the tradition of marriage in India. A challenge to the law has been winding its way through the country’s courtrooms, with the Delhi High Court delivering a split verdict on the issue in 2022, prompting lawyers to file an appeal in the country’s Supreme Court that is still waiting to be heard. RELATED ARTICLEMarried to my rapist: The Indian women saying no According to the Madhya Pradesh High Court order, the woman told police her husband came to her house in 2019, soon after they were married, and committed “unnatural sex,” under Section 377 of India’s penal code. The offense includes non-consensual “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal,” and was historically used to prosecute same sex couples who engaged in consensual sex, before the Supreme Court decriminalized homosexuality in 2018 According to court documents, the woman alleged the act happened “on multiple occasions,” and that her husband had threatened to divorce her if she told anyone about it. She finally came forward after telling her mother, who encouraged her to file a complaint in 2022, the court heard. The husband challenged his wife’s complaint in court, with his lawyer claiming that any “unnatural sex” between the couple was not criminal as they are married. Delivering his judgement, Justice Gurpal Singh Ahluwalia pointed to India’s marital rape exemption, which does not make it a crime for a man to force sex on his wife, a relic of British rule more than 70 years after independence. “When rape includes insertion of penis in the mouth, urethra or anus of a woman and if that act is committed with his wife, not below the age of fifteen years, then consent of the wife becomes immaterial … Marital rape has not been recognized so far,” the judge said. India’s Supreme Court increased marital consent from the age of 15 to 18 in a landmark judgement in 2017. The woman also accused her in-laws of mental and physical harassment “on account of nonfulfilment of demand of dowry,” the court order said. A trial is pending. Ahluwalia’s remarks have once again raised questions over India’s treatment of women, who continue to face the threat of violence and discrimination in the deeply patriarchal society. The world’s largest democracy of 1.4 billion has made significant strides in enacting laws to better safeguard women, but lawyers and campaigners say its reluctance to criminalize marital rape leaves women without adequate protection. According to the 2019-2021 National Family Health Survey by the Government of India, 17.6% of more than 100,000 women ages 15-49 surveyed said they were unable to say no to their husband if they didn’t want sex, while 11% thought husbands were justified in hitting or beating his wife if she refused. Women alleging rape in India have some avenues of potential legal action against their husbands. For example, they can seek a restraining order under civil law or charges under Section 354 of India’s Penal Code, which covers sexual assault short of rape, and Section 498A, which covers domestic violence. These laws are open to interpretation and judges can use them to impose prison sentences for sexual assault in cases where a married woman has alleged rape, but many don’t, lawyer Karuna Nundy previously told CNN. Many married women are also ignored when they try to file a police complaint, a 2022 study showed. The study examined records from three Mumbai public hospitals from 2008 to 2017 and found that of 1,664 rape survivors, no rape cases were filed by police. At least 18 of those women reported marital rape to the police, including 10 women who alleged rape by a former partner or husband. Four women were explicitly told by police that they could not do anything as marital rape was not a crime, the report said. CNN’s Esha Mitra contributed reporting.

Retail space under refurbishment which will be opening soon as a new Michael Kors store on Bond Street on 14th August 2023 in London, United Kingdom. Mike Kemp/In Pictures/Getty Images The US Federal Trade Commission said on Monday it was suing to block Coach parent Tapestry’s $8.5 billion deal to buy Michael Kors owner Capri, saying it would eliminate competition. This comes at a time when several US lawmakers have sought increased scrutiny from the FTC of several multi-billion dollar deals that might risk higher prices and affect consumers. US antitrust enforcers had also come out with new merger guidelines in December, in a bid to encourage fair, open and competitive markets. “The proposed merger threatens to deprive millions of American consumers of the benefits of Tapestry and Capri’s head-to-head competition, which includes competition on price, discounts and promotions, innovation, design, marketing and advertising,” FTC said in a statement. Tapestry had offered to buy Capri in August, hoping to create a US fashion behemoth that could effectively battle bigger European rivals such as Louis Vuitton parent LVMH and potentially get more share in the global luxury market. But the FTC requested more information from the firms on their deal in November. “Capri Holdings strongly disagrees with the FTC’s decision,” the company said in a statement. “The market realities, which the government’s challenge ignores, overwhelmingly demonstrate that this transaction will not limit, reduce, or constrain competition.” Tapestry, in a statement, also said “there is no question that this is a pro-competitive, pro-consumer deal and that the FTC fundamentally misunderstands both the marketplace and the way in which consumers shop.” Earlier in April, the companies had received regulatory clearance from the European Union and Japan for their deal, that would bring top luxury labels such as Kate Spade and Jimmy Choo under one roof.

Columbia University, the epicenter of pro-Palestinian protests at US college campuses in recent days, says all classes at its main campus will be hybrid — technology permitting — until the spring semester ends. The last day of classes is April 29, according to Columbia’s academic calendar. “Safety is our highest priority as we strive to support our students’ learning and all the required academic operations,” the university said in an announcement Monday night. The turmoil at the Ivy League school ramped up Monday as simmering tensions on campus halted in-person classes and officials scrambled to ease security fears. That unrest has spread to a number of other schools, including Yale University, where dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested Monday, and nearby New York University. Earlier Monday night, NYU students and faculty members were arrested during protests on the school’s campus, the New York City Police Department confirmed to CNN. NYU asked the NYPD to enter campus and “enforce the law,” according to a police spokesperson. The spokesperson would not confirm how many people have been arrested. CNN has reached out to NYU for comment. At Columbia’s main campus, classes were already virtual Monday due to security concerns as Passover was set to begin. In a clear sign of the spiraling crisis, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik announced the extraordinary step in a statement posted shortly after 1 a.m. ET, citing a desire to “deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps.” As the New York Police Department has built up a “large presence” around Columbia, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul visited the campus to address security concerns. “Students are scared,” Hochul said in a video posted on X. “They are afraid to walk on campus. They don’t deserve that.” Jacob Schmeltz, a senior at Columbia, told CNN he was going home instead of celebrating Passover, a major Jewish holiday, on campus as he has done in previous years. “Jewish students have had enough and it’s gotten to the point that we feel safer off campus than on it,” he said. RELATED LIVE-STORYProtests at Columbia and other schools escalate Even the US president has weighed in. “I condemn the antisemitic protests,” Biden said when asked about the situation at Columbia. Shafik is under pressure from all sides. Some faculty members are slamming her decision to call in the NYPD last week to disperse a pro-Palestinian protest, even as others are demanding she invite police back to clear a revived encampment of protesters. US House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik and fellow New York Republicans wrote a letter to Shafik on Monday blaming her for the situation on campus and urging her to step down after less than a year at the helm of the prestigious university. “Over the past few days, anarchy has engulfed the campus of Columbia University,” the lawmakers wrote. Billionaire Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots and a prominent Columbia graduate, called for school officials to immediately end the protests and suggested he is withholding donations to the university because he’s “no longer confident that Columbia can protect its students and staff.” “The school I love so much – the one that welcomed me and provided me with so much opportunity – is no longer an institution I recognize,” Kraft, founder of the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, said in a statement on X. “I am not comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken.” Columbia spokesperson Samantha Slater responded to Kraft by telling CNN in a statement that the university is “grateful to Mr. Kraft for his years of generosity and service to Columbia.” “This is a time of crisis for many members of our community and we are focused on providing the support they need while keeping our campus safe,” the Columbia spokesperson said. Schmeltz, who is vice president of the Jewish on Campus Student Union, said the campus was “an absolute disaster” in recent days. “Jewish students are extremely scared and extremely frightened,” he added. A man walking his dog stops to look at pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University in New York on Monday. Caitlin Ochs/Reuters Organizers of the campus protest – Columbia University Apartheid Divest and Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine – said in a statement, “We have been peaceful,” and distanced themselves from non-student protesters who have gathered outside the campus, calling them “inflammatory individuals who do not represent us.” “We firmly reject any form of hate or bigotry and stand vigilant against non-students attempting to disrupt the solidarity being forged among students – Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish, Black and pro-Palestinian classmates and colleagues who represent the full diversity of our country,” the statement continued. Demonstrations are also taking place at other campuses. Pro-Palestinian students at Boston’s Emerson College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology set up protest encampments as an act of solidarity with students at Columbia University, according to The Boston Globe. And in addition to Yale and NYU, solidarity rallies have also taken place at Harvard, the University of Michigan. the University of North Carolina, Boston University and the University of California, Berkeley. Protests and counter protests continue As Columbia students moved to virtual learning, scores of protesters were camped out on the university’s West Lawn Monday morning, opposite the lawn where the original encampment took place. More than a dozen tents were pitched and tables were stocked with supplies of clothes and food. Signs along the perimeter include ones reading, “End the siege on Gaza now” and “Welcome to the People’s University of Palestine.” The encampment is only open to those affiliated with campus. Activities are being held inside the encampment, including teach-ins, dances, poetry readings and film screenings. On Monday, some students were quietly finishing assignments, while others were painting posters. The inside of the encampment was quiet as most of the noise came from protestors outside the gates of campus, who were chanting, “I believe that we will win” and “Long live the Intifada.” There was a smaller group of pro-Israeli protesters, who chanted back “Down with Hamas” and “Victory to Israel.” Meanwhile, one professor criticized the protesters outside the gates

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has announced their 2024 class of inductees. In the performer category, this year’s inductees are Mary J. Blige, Cher, Dave Matthews Band, Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Kool & The Gang, Ozzy Osbourne and A Tribe Called Quest. Jimmy Buffett, MC5, Dionne Warwick and Norman Whitfield were selected as the recipients for the Musical Excellence Award. The announcement was made Sunday during the “Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Night” episode on “American Idol.” The inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame were selected among nominees announced earlier this year, and have “created music whose originality, impact, and influence has changed the course of rock & roll,” according to the organization. Nominees this year included Sinéad O’Connor, Lenny Kravitz and Mariah Carey. To be eligible for nomination for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, an individual artist or band must have released its first commercial recording at least 25 years prior to the year of nomination. The 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will happen live on Saturday, October 19 at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, Ohio. The 2024 ceremony will once again stream live on Disney+ with a special airing on ABC at a later date and available on Hulu the following day.

New YorkCNN —  Former President Donald Trump is on the cusp of scoring a major financial bonanza – at least on paper. As long as Trump Media & Technology Group’s share price doesn’t spectacularly implode before Tuesday’s closing bell, Trump is on track to receive another 36 million shares as the owner of Truth Social. This milestone is on track to be hit after the market closes on Tuesday. Even though Trump Media is losing money and Truth Social is very tiny, those new shares Trump is in line to receive would be valued at about $1.3 billion at current prices. Trump’s net worth has been on a roller coaster ride ever since his social media company finalized its deal to go public late last month. The former president is the dominant shareholder in a stock that has been called a “meme stock on steroids.” Although Trump Media’s share price has been cut in half since peaking on March 27, it’s still trading comfortably above levels that would trigger certain performance provisions in the merger agreement. According to SEC filings, Trump Media can issue additional shares to pre-merger shareholders such as the former president if the dollar volume-weighted average price equals or exceeds $12.50 for any 20 trading days within any 30 day trading period beginning on March 25. The full earnout of 40 million shares would be triggered if that price metric equals or exceeds $17.50 over the same timeframe. Tuesday marks the 20th trading day and Trump Media’s share price has not traded below the $17.50 level at any point since the clock started on March 25. “It seems almost certain to me that the earnout conditions will be satisfied at this point, given how high the share price has been,” said Michael Ohlrogge, an associate professor at the NYU School of Law. Trump’s dominant stake The merger agreement calls for Trump to receive 90% of those earnout shares, translating to 36 million additional shares. Enter your email to receive CNN’s nightcap newsletter. close dialog We read all day so you don’t have to. Get our nightly newsletter for all the top business stories you need to know. Sign Me Up By subscribing you agree to our privacy policy. That would give Trump an even more dominant stake of 114.75 million shares, amounting to 65% of the total outstanding shares, according to filings. Of course, Trump Media’s share price is subject to extreme volatility, meaning the value of this stake can swing wildly. There are also practical and legal restrictions that would likely prevent Trump from cashing in this stock anytime soon. RELATED ARTICLE‘This thing is going crazy.’ Why Trump Media stock is subject to extreme turbulence According to filings, the earnout shares Trump appears to be in line to receive are subject to the lock-up restrictions that prevent insiders from selling or borrowing against their stock for months after the merger closed. Even if Trump was able to get around this lock-up agreement, experts say it would be practically difficult for him to sell a sizable chunk of his stake without causing a crash in the share price. After all, Trump is the largest shareholder, chairman and most popular user on Truth Social. ‘Grossly overvalued’ Even though Trump Media’s share price has retreated since spiking to $66 last month, experts warn it remains overvalued based on fundamental metrics. One common way to value stocks is to compare its price relative to its revenue. The average social media stock trades at a price-to-sales ratio of roughly 10x, according to Matthew Kennedy, senior IPO strategist at Renaissance Capital. That peer group includes Facebook owner Meta, Pinterest, Snap, Reddit and Rumble. By comparison, Trump Media is trading at north of 1,200 times sales, according to Kennedy. “The stock appears to be grossly overvalued,” said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida. Ritter, who has been studying IPOs for four decades, expects Trump Media’s share price to eventually plunge to just $1 or $2 per share. Trump Media gives short-selling prevention tips Ohlrogge, the NYU professor, said Trump Media’s share price is “responding primarily to non-rational factors.” For instance, Ohlrogge pointed to how the stock plunged last week after the company indicated it plans to register new shares. RELATED ARTICLEPro-Trump network OAN and Smartmatic settle 2020 election defamation case “There should have been nothing surprising about that filing since it was just doing precisely what the company said it would do after it went public…There was no real rational reason to have a negative impact on the price,” he said, adding that the price reflects the “whims and sentiments of very uninformed traders, driving the price this way and that.” In a sign that Trump Media is worried about its share price, the company took the unusual step last week of telling its shareholders how to avoid their stock from being loaned to short sellers betting against it. Trump Media updated a FAQ section on its website to include the short-selling prevention tips. “That is highly unusual,” said Peter Byrne, a securities lawyer at Cooley who focuses on companies going public. “We don’t typically see companies publish information like this.”

LondonCNN —  British actor Dominic West has opened up about the furor surrounding images taken in 2020 of him with his former co-star Lily James, calling the situation “absurd” and “deeply stressful” for his family. “The Wire” actor said in an interview with the Sunday Times that the situation was “horrible” for his wife, Catherine FitzGerald, but added that, “we do joke about it sometimes.” In 2020, images emerged of West and James, who were co-stars in the television miniseries “The Pursuit of Love,” at a restaurant and on an electric scooter together in Rome, Italy. After the photos were published, West and FitzGerald posed for the press outside their home, holding a piece of paper with the handwritten message: “Our marriage is strong and we’re very much still together. Thank you.” “Whenever we went out together, the papers would always say we were ‘putting on a show of unity.’ Even if we’d just been rowing about parking the car or whatever, even if that couldn’t be further from the truth,” West told the Sunday Times. “And so when we go out, we do sort of say, ‘Shall we go and have a show of unity up in London?’” “It was an absurd situation. It was deeply stressful for my wife and my kids, but there were lighter moments,” West told the British newspaper. West said that he was able to use his experience of the media frenzy surrounding the pictures in his professional career, channeling it when portraying then-Prince Charles in Netflix’s “The Crown.” RELATED ARTICLE‘The Crown’s’ cast draw the curtain on Netflix’s royal ‘soap opera’ “I’d had a very acute understanding of what it’s like to feel the horror of your name or your photograph coming up in the newspapers,” he said. “There is that dreadful freezing moment when something is being revealed about you.” “I’d been through it a couple of years previously [to filming ‘The Crown’] and it must have informed how I approached it,” the actor continued. “That gut feeling of horror isn’t something you get inured to.” In a 2022 interview, James also seemed to address the media frenzy, telling Rolling Stone magazine: “Women in the public eye at some point experience some sort of difficult situation in that relationship between privacy and your life being in the tabloids,” adding that “it was a lot. It’s a story as old as time.” West is set to star in Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge” at London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket this summer.

It was a little more than a year ago, on April 3, 2023, that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg announced a 34-count criminal indictment against former President Donald J. Trump. Now the trial against Trump is set to begin, with opening statements scheduled to get underway Monday at 9:30 a.m. Joey Jackson Jeremy Freeman/CNN Trump stands accused of falsifying invoices and business ledgers and sending reimbursement checks to his then-attorney Michael Cohen under the pretext that they were payments for legal services rendered. Prosecutors say they were no such thing, but were rather reimbursement to Cohen for a $130,000 payment he made on Trump’s behalf to former adult actress Stormy Daniels. Daniels was paid, they say, to keep her from outing Trump ahead of the election in order to conceal their liaison and thereby enhance his election prospects. In New York state, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor carrying a penalty of up to a year in jail. However, if it can be demonstrated that the reason for the falsification was to commit some other crime, as prosecutors say is the case here, it becomes a felony punishable by up to four years in jail. That means that prosecutors have two orders of business in their bid to secure a conviction against the former president. First, they must establish the fraudulent nature of the business records which underlie the alleged scheme. Secondly, they must demonstrate that Trump’s intention in falsifying the records was related to the 2016 presidential election. That, in the simplest terms, is the prosecution’s case against the former president. RELATED ARTICLEOpinion: Trump followers were asleep at the switch One cannot help but wonder what’s going through the minds of the jurors — the statements they made during the jury selection process notwithstanding. Are they starstruck? Intimidated? Biased for or against Trump? We really won’t know until after the proceedings are over and the jury speaks with their verdict. At that point, the jurors may or may not choose to publicly provide an explanation regarding their decision. Trump has said that prosecutors have “no case” against him. We will soon find out whether that’s true. Prosecutors most certainly will take a very different position when opening statements get under way. But each side will be mindful to tailor their opening arguments to the target audience: the jury. They are the ones whose opinions matter most in this trial. The court has seated an 18-member panel consisting of 12 jurors and six alternates who are critically important, since one or more of them might be called to step in should one of the jurors need to be excused — for instance if they have a personal emergency or simply beg off the case. The longer the trial goes on, the more likely that that could happen. With regard to the primary jury panel of 12, I am struck by how many professionals have been seated. It includes two lawyers, a tech worker, a software engineer, finance professionals, a teacher and a salesperson, among others. In my view, that’s a group that’s going to zero in on facts, logic, documents and evidence. That could be very good for Trump because they likely would not be inclined to base their verdict on politics — his or theirs. It could also work against him, however, since the jurors may turn out to be dispassionate, unemotional and otherwise unpersuaded by defense claims of prosecutorial unfairness, governmental overreaching or witch hunts. Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “Meanwhile in China” Newsletter. close dialog What’s happening in China and what does it mean for the rest of the world? Sign Me Up By subscribing you agree to our privacy policy. Opening statements are not evidence, but are designed to provide a preview of what the evidence will show, and I expect them to come out swinging. We can anticipate a logical rendition of the proof they intend to present, consisting of ledgers, invoices, checks, text messages, emails, audio recordings and other documents. RELATED ARTICLEOpinion: Mike Johnson is testing to see if the MAGA Republican fever can be broken We can also expect them to differentiate the message from the messenger. Cohen, for instance, is a convicted felon and perjurer, as many people know. Daniels has led a life that some would find unsavory. Expect prosecutors to talk about that freely, as they did during jury selection. But they will also condition the jury by making the point that jurors need not rely upon the word of any one witness. Prosecutors instead will ask the jury to focus on documentary evidence that corroborates and buttresses witness claims. That means you can expect them to focus first and foremost on the documents that they say lay out the hush money scheme. The witnesses are just “messengers” underscoring facts that have already been established by compelling hard evidence. Prosecutors will attempt to lessen the sting of defense attacks on the credibility of their witnesses by arguing that the message itself — the evidence relating to Trump’s guilt — is unmistakable. The texts, emails and documents irrefutably prove his guilt, they will insist. On the issue of Trump’s intent, prosecutors will note that it defies common sense and logic that he would have paid the hush money for any other reason than to hide it from voters. Not only will they point to the timing of the payment just days before the 2016 election, but they will almost certainly point to communications and statements in meetings in which they say the scheme and its purpose were discussed. I don’t expect prosecutors to get into the weeds on Monday with respect to what the evidence will show, but I do expect that their overview will be organized, focused and tethered to a meticulous timeline of events, facts and participants. The defense team’s opening arguments are more of a wild card fraught with challenges, but they have a few options. The first would be to commit to an actual defense. But what might that look like, and will

The Biden administration on Friday adopted a tightlipped approach that reflected US officials’ desire to keep a level of distance from Israel’s decision to strike back against Iran in what appeared to be a limited retaliation for last weekend’s attack. Israel has not commented on the strike, which was reported after three explosions were heard close to a major military airbase near Isfahan, state media reported early Friday morning. Iranian officials have said air defenses intercepted three drones and there were no reports of a missile attack. American officials, who said they received warning from Israel of their plans, neither endorsed nor condemned the counterstrike. Israel had told the US on Thursday that it would be retaliating against Iran in the coming days, a senior US official said, adding that the US “didn’t endorse the response.” Instead, the US sought to make clear the choice was Israel’s alone. “We were not involved,” one official said. Israel informed the US through a variety of different channels ahead of its counterstrike against Iran, a person familiar with the matter said, adding that the warning did not come far in advance but did not catch the US off-guard. Speaking at the G7 foreign ministers’ summit in Capri, the Italian foreign minister said the US received word from Israel at the “last minute” of its plans to retaliate. The person familiar said the heads-up came on Thursday. In his first public remarks since the counterstrike, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declined nearly all comment on the matter while speaking at a G7 meeting in Capri, Italy. But, he said, G7 countries were committed to Israel’s security while seeking to avoid the conflict from further spiraling. ”We’re also committed to de-escalating – to trying to bring this tension to a close,” Blinken said during a news conference. He also said the countries shared “a commitment to hold Iran to account.” US anticipated limited Israeli response Even though President Joe Biden counseled restraint last weekend in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – suggesting to his counterpart that because of the successful interception of nearly all of Iran’s missiles and drones, a counterattack might not be necessary – there were few inside the White House who believed Israel would do nothing. Instead, officials believed what Israel was planning would be limited in scope and designed to send Iran a message. Officials had asked Israel for advance warning of the plans. Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “Meanwhile in China” Newsletter. close dialog What’s happening in China and what does it mean for the rest of the world? Sign Me Up By subscribing you agree to our privacy policy. Senior US officials spent a good part of Thursday in virtual conversations with top Israeli officials to discuss, among other topics, the attack last weekend by Iran and efforts to boost Israeli security. The talks, led by US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, included Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, a top confidante of Netanyahu, and Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi. Before expanding to a larger group of senior officials, the US and Israeli sides discussed in a smaller format last weekend’s attack, as well as Biden’s decision to apply new sanctions on Iran. The sanctions, applied in conjunction with other Western nations, appeared designed to send a message that retaliating against Iran didn’t necessarily require a military component. It’s not clear how much the Israeli side briefed the American officials on the plans to respond to the Iran attack. The larger meeting focused on another topic of disagreement between the Biden administration and the Israeli government: plans for a ground invasion of Rafah to go after Hamas. The White House said afterward that American officials “expressed concerns with various courses of action in Rafah, and Israeli participants agreed to take these concerns into account.” The disagreement was an indication even amid the back-and-forth with Iran that the war against Hamas in Gaza continues apace – with negotiations for a ceasefire stalled and with a humanitarian crisis worsening. The latest counterstrike adds to increasing tensions in the Middle East following Iran’s unprecedented strike against Israel last weekend, in which it lobbed more than 300 drones and cruise missiles toward Israel, nearly all of which were intercepted. That attack was retaliation for a suspected Israeli strike on Iran’s embassy compound in Syria earlier this month.

An unclaimed aerial attack in central Iran on Friday comes fresh on the heels of tit-for-tat Iranian and Israeli strikes earlier this month, marking a potentially dangerous escalation of the Middle East conflict. Israel carried out the strike inside Iran Friday morning, a US official told CNN. Iranian officials have so far sought to play down the incident, and Israel has not claimed responsibility for what appears to be the latest salvo fired as a decades-long shadow war between the two countries emerges into the open – ratcheting up fears of an escalation into a wider regional war. Iranian air defenses intercepted three drones, a Tehran official said Friday, after reports of explosions near an army base in the central province of Isfahan. There were no reports of a missile attack, Iran’s National Cyberspace Center spokesperson Hossein Dalirian said on social platform X. A loud blast near Isfahan city was caused by “air defense firing at a suspicious object,” a senior Iranian military commander said, adding there was no “damage or incident,” according to the state-aligned Tasnim news agency. All facilities around Isfahan were secure, including significant nuclear sites, Iranian media reported. The United Nations nuclear watchdog confirmed no Iranian nuclear sites were damaged. The attack on Iran follows an unprecedented Iranian assault on Israel last weekend that Tehran said was retaliation for a deadly suspected Israeli airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Syria on April 1. The reprisals marked the first time the Islamic Republic had launched a direct assault on Israel from its soil. In the wake of Iran’s retaliatory attack, countries including the United States called for restraint from Israel to prevent an escalation, as Israel’s ongoing war against Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza has already sent tensions between it and its neighbors soaring. The US “didn’t green light” an Israeli response, another senior US official told CNN. Prior to Friday’s strike, the US expectation was that Israel would not target civilian or nuclear facilities, the second US official said. Why is this happening now? Friday’s attack follows Iran’s launch of hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel last Saturday, which triggered air raid sirens and the activation of Israel’s air defenses. That assault appeared designed to maximize spectacle while minimizing casualties as the vast bulk of the projectiles were downed by Israel and its allies. Israel last week pledged, however, that it would “exact a price” from Iran in response to that aerial barrage. Israel’s war cabinet met periodically this week without announcing any definitive action. RELATED ARTICLEIsrael has carried out a strike inside Iran, US official tells CNN, as region braces for further escalation Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told CNN Thursday the intent of last weekend’s strikes “stayed within a minimum of frameworks” and the action was “legitimate defense” in response to what Tehran has said was an Israeli strike on its consulate in Damascus on April 1. That airstrike destroyed the consulate building, killing at least seven officials including Mohammed Reza Zahedi, a top commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), and senior commander Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said at the time. The Israeli military has not acknowledged responsibility for attack in Syria, telling CNN at the time it does not comment on foreign reports. However, a military spokesperson said Israel believes the target struck was a “military building of Quds forces” — a unit of the IRGC responsible for foreign operations. The Pentagon also said the US’ assessment was that Israel had carried out that airstrike. Rescue workers search in the rubble of a destroyed Iranian consulate building in Damascus on April 2 following a suspected Israeli airstrike. Louai Beshara/AFP/Getty Images How is this related to Gaza? The tit-for-tat attacks have played out amid Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza against Palestinian militant group Hamas. The conflict in the enclave has caused a major humanitarian crisis and thousands of civilian deaths, putting the region on edge. Israel launched its war following Hamas’ October 7 attack on its territory, which Israeli officials said killed more than 1,200 people and saw around 250 taken hostage. Iran, which has a network of proxies throughout the region and is seen as a long-time backer of Hamas, has denied involvement in that attack. But since the outbreak of war in Gaza, Iran’s proxies have launched attacks on Israel and its allies and wreaked havoc on global shipping by launching missiles and drones at commercial vessels in the Red Sea. Tehran is believed to back but not fully control its proxies, including powerful Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. The US has been a staunch supporter of Israel during its war against Hamas. However, US President Joe Biden and senior members of his national security team have told their Israeli counterparts the US will not participate in any offensive action against Iran, according to US officials familiar with the matter, CNN reported earlier this week. What’s next? Despite calls from allies for Israel to show restraint, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said Israel will make its “own decisions” when responding to Iran’s airstrikes. Hours before the first reports of explosions in Iran emerged Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian had warned that Tehran’s response would be “immediate and at a maximum level” to any further Israeli military action against it. “If the Israeli regime commits the grave error once again our response will be decisive, definitive and regretful for them,” Amir-Abdollahian told CNN. “We do not seek to create tension and crisis or increase such situations in the Middle East and we sincerely hope the Israeli regime does not repeat the previous egregious error,” he said. RELATED ARTICLEIran’s military response will be ‘immediate and at a maximum level’ if Israel attacks, foreign minister says The details of a potential “maximum response” have been planned by Iran’s armed forces, he added. Iranian media, however, appeared to downplay the severity of Friday’s attack, publishing footage and images of calm scenes in Isfahan and the northwest city of Tabriz. Israel would need significant support from Western allies to enter into a full-blown war in the Middle East, according to Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center research

Dubai, UAECNN —  The scenes from Dubai this week seemed apocalyptic to residents who are more used to the tranquil nature of the sunny metropolis in the desert. This city hadn’t witnessed a natural disaster of such magnitude since records began, and the destruction it left behind only became apparent after the storm cleared. The United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is part, saw the heaviest rainfall in at least 75 years, with more than a year’s worth of precipitation in 24 hours. Life for many in the glitzy tourism and financial hub came to a near halt. VIDEO RELATED VIDEORecovery efforts are underway in Dubai after historic rainfall Emergency services worked round the clock, and no deaths in the city were reported, although a 70-year-old man died after flooding swept away his vehicle in neighboring Ras Al-Khaimah emirate. The chaos that ensued was short-lived, but it showed the city’s vulnerability to natural disasters. As runways went underwater, flights were canceled at one of the world’s busiest airports. Flashy malls were soaked with rain seeping through ceilings, and elevators stopped functioning in skyscrapers, forcing residents to climb stairs up dozens of floors. Unable to return home, some motorists slept in their cars due to blocked roads. The images were shocking for the hi-tech city, a leading international tourist destination which boasts a world-class infrastructure, some of which gave in to natural disaster. Rain is scarce in the Persian Gulf region and urban planning does not account for the possibility of major storms. Abandoned vehicles on a flooded highway after a rainstorm in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on Wednesday. Christopher Pike/Bloomberg/Getty Images Dubai has a unique demographic model. Of its 3.5 million people, 92% of are foreigners who come from 200 countries to live and work in the city, lured by its tax-free status and relaxed lifestyle. It is the world’s second-best tourist destination, according to one report, with more than 17 million visitors arriving last year, drawn by year-round sunshine, gourmet eateries and luxury shopping. The disruptions this week impacted almost everyone, from tourists and migrant workers to the minority citizen population and Western expatriates. RELATED ARTICLEChaos in Dubai as UAE records heaviest rainfall in 75 years The authorities called on people to stay home, but many ventured out anyway, only to find themselves unable to return due to waterlogged streets. “The scary part is that there was nowhere you can go,” said Sofie, an expatriate resident who declined to provide her last name. She ended up stranded by the submerged roads for nearly 12 hours, some of which were spent sleeping in her car. Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “Meanwhile in the Middle East” Newsletter. close dialog Want to understand the Middle East? Sign up for CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter. Sign Me Up By subscribing you agree to our privacy policy. On Sheikh Zayed Road, a 16-lane thoroughfare in Dubai lined with gleaming glass skyscrapers, motorists reported near-complete blockage in some areas, with cars going against the traffic to escape the gridlock. In the financial district, home to the regional operations of some of the world’s top banks, luxury cars were seen almost entirely underwater as the streets turned into lakes. In the man-made Dubai Marina, a popular destination for Western and Russian visitors, furniture from nearby restaurants and coffee shops was swept away by the current. Significant damage When the waters receded, streets were left strewn with debris. Images in local media showed highways with lanes of abandoned cars; in some neighborhoods, they had yet to be removed by Thursday morning. The economic damage from the storm could go into billions of dirhams, with significant impact to vehicles, properties and infrastructure, said Avinash Babur, chief executive of InsuranceMarket.ae, an insurance broker in the UAE (1 dirham is equivalent to $0.27). “The current damage is significant, with notable effects on both public and private properties, including key infrastructure,” he told CNN. “While Dubai has experienced storms in the past, the unique intensity of this event has posed new challenges.” The volume of calls and enquiries for insurance companies has jumped tenfold, he said, with a surge in demand for home insurance. People stand as flood water caused by heavy rains covers the stairs of a residential building, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on Wednesday. Amr Alfiky/Reuters As some residents became trapped in their houses without electricity and unable to leave due to flooding outside, some opted to swim through swamps to escape. With landline use becoming increasingly rare, those without electricity relied on power banks to use their smartphones. For many, the confinement was reminiscent of Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020. Heavily reliant on foreign visitors and capital, Dubai was one of the first cities to come out of lockdowns as tourist numbers dwindled and property prices fell, and the UAE was among the first countries to achieve 100% vaccination in November 2021. Babur said the current situation presents an opportunity for Dubai “to showcase its resilience and rapid recovery capabilities, similar to its effective management during the Covid-19 pandemic.” Reliance on smartphones With food apps suspending deliveries during and after the storm, some residents had to resort to canned food, or whatever was left in their fridges, for sustenance. Those without electricity used barbeques to cook frozen food left thawing in freezers. Some fared even worse, with homes inundated with water, sometimes up to the waist, according to videos shared in local media, with belongings, furniture and appliances destroyed. The UAE has one of the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world, at 96% (the United States is at 90%, while China is at 72%). Residents rely heavily on home deliveries for everything from groceries and car fuel to ice cream and pedicures at the tap of a screen, a phenomenon that took off during the Covid-19 lockdowns. A man walks in flood water caused by heavy rains, with the Burj Khalifa tower visible in the background, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, April 17, 2024. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky Amr Alfiky/Reuters On a normal day, the city’s streets are teeming with bikers rushing to make deliveries for companies

Unprecedented, torrential rainfall plunged parts of the United Arab Emirates underwater last week, bringing life to a standstill in Dubai and elsewhere. The flooding that resulted from the UAE’s largest deluge on record was so intense that satellites were still able to see it from space days after the clouds cleared and the last drops of rain fell. A firehose of heavy rain gushed over a large portion of the UAE from late Tuesday, April 16, through Wednesday, April 17. Dubai – the country’s most populous city – recorded a year’s worth of rain in just 12 hours as areas farther east recorded nearly 2 years’ worth of rain in under 24 hours. The heaviest rain targeted areas north and east of the country’s capital city of Abu Dhabi. Rainfall totals of 4 to 8 inches (about 100 to 200 mm) were common, but a few locations recorded nearly 10 inches (250 mm). RELATED ARTICLECan this ocean-based carbon plant help save the world? Some scientists are raising red flags Floodwaters rose quickly and were slow to recede as a result of the historic deluge, which was the most extreme event in the country since records began 75 years ago. Less than two days after the rain relented, the Landsat 9 satellite passed over the UAE on Friday, April 19, and captured images of large, lingering pools of floodwater. The satellite collects detailed imagery of Earth’s surface and is operated by NASA and the United States Geological Survey. Images taken over the Jebel Ali area, located on the southern outskirts of Dubai, capture the area before and after historic flooding. NASA Pools of deep blue in the images above highlight floodwaters that stand in stark contrast against the region’s typically dry ground, which appears tan or light brown. The flooding shown is in the southernmost portion of Dubai, but the city’s highly urbanized central hub isn’t captured. These images were taken with Landsat 9’s false color products to make the presence of water stand out against the dry ground. The colors shown are not exactly how they would appear to a person peering down from space, but make differences in the land easier to spot. The satellite also captured significant flooding in Abu Dhabi. Small, shallow bodies of water appear light blue. The larger and deeper pools of floodwater are dark blue. Large sections of dry, tan ground also gain a light green tint after the rainfall. This likely shows that the ground in many areas retained a dampness from the rain, even if they did not fully flood. Satellite imagery captures Abu Dhabi before (left) and after (right) historic flooding. NASA While these images may have missed out on the absolute worst extent of flooding in the country, they provide an incredible snapshot of just how much the stormy weather left behind. The torrential rain was associated with a larger storm system last week traversing the Arabian Peninsula and moving across the Gulf of Oman. This same system also brought deadly flooding to nearby Oman. Extreme rainfall events like this are becoming more common as the atmosphere warms due to human-driven climate change. A warmer atmosphere is able to soak up more moisture like a towel and then ring it out in the form of torrential rainfall. Dry areas that lack the infrastructure to deal with intense rain are more likely to struggle with bouts of significant flooding as a result. Vehicles drive through floodwater caused by heavy rain in Dubai on Thursday. Christopher Pike/AP

Hong KongCNN —  Multiple days of heavy rains have lashed southern China, unleashing deadly floods and threatening to upend the lives of tens of millions of people as rescuers rush to evacuate residents trapped by rising waters. Guangdong province, an economic powerhouse home to 127 million people, has seen widespread flooding that has forced more than 110,000 people to be relocated, state media reported, citing the local government. The floods have killed at least four people in Guangdong, including a rescue worker, state news agency Xinhua reported Monday. At least 10 people remain missing, it added. Since April 16, sustained torrential rains have pounded the Pearl River Delta, China’s manufacturing heartland and one of the country’s most populated regions, with four weather stations in Guangdong registering record rainfall for April. The Pearl River basin is subject to annual flooding from April to September, but the region has faced more intense rainstorms and severe floods in recent years as scientists warn that the climate crisis will amplify extreme weather, making it deadlier and more frequent. Houses submerged in floodwaters in Qingyuan, Guangdong province, on April 22, 2024. Tingshu Wang/Reuters “Judging from the flood control situation in recent years, climate warming and temperature rise have intensified, and extreme heavy rainfall occurs every year, leading to torrential rains and floods,” Yin Zhijie, chief hydrological forecaster at the Ministry of Water Resources, told state-run outlet The Paper. Last year, China encountered “more intense and extreme” downpours during the flood season than in previous years, with 72 national weather stations registering record daily rainfall and 346 stations breaking monthly records, according to the China Meteorological Administration. Since last week, at least 44 rivers in the Pearl River basin have swelled above the warning line, threatening to burst their banks, according to state broadcaster CCTV. On the Bei River, which flows into the Pearl River, authorities have warned of a “once a century” flood expected to reach 5.8 meters (19 feet) above the warning limit. The tributary had already burst its banks on April 8, marking the earliest arrival of its annual flood season since records began in 1998, according to Guangdong authorities. RELATED ARTICLEAre cities ‘spongy’ enough to handle floods? New climate resilience report points to nature for solutions The “massive flood” at the Bei River is the earliest on record to hit China in the highest category of a four-tier classification system, according to Yin, the forecaster. Floods of this magnitude usually occur after late June, he said. Aerial footage aired by CCTV on the weekend showed villages inundated by murky flood waters, with only roofs and treetops visible in some places. In Guangning county, Zhaoqing city, footage shared by residents on short video app Douyin shows muddy brown water gushing through village streets and sweeping away cars. In Shaoguan, a man is seen pushing his scooter through shoulder-high flood waters. And in Qingyuan city, social media footage shows strong gales and rain felling trees and flipping over motorcycles. The heavy downpours have also triggered landslides near Shaoguan city in the province’s mountainous north, injuring six people, according to Xinhua. Authorities raised the flood control emergency response for the Pearl River Delta to level 2 on Sunday – the second highest in a four-tier system. Many cities have suspended schools and hundreds of flights have been canceled in the metropolises of Guangzhou and Shenzhen. More than 80 houses have either collapsed or been severely damaged, resulting in a direct economic loss of nearly 140 million yuan ($20 million), Xinhua reported. Further heavy rainfall is expected to hit Guangdong this week, according to the province’s Meteorological Bureau.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The uncanny resemblance between features on Europa’s frozen surface and a landform in Greenland that sits atop a sizable pocket of water are providing intriguing new indications that this moon of Jupiter may be capable of harboring life. A study published on Tuesday explored similarities between elongated landforms called double ridges that look like huge gashes across Europa’s surface and a smaller version in Greenland examined using ice-penetrating radar. Double ridges are linear, with two peaks and a central trough between them. “If you sliced through one and looked at the cross section, it would look a bit like the capital letter ‘M,’” said Stanford University geophysicist Riley Culberg, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Communications. Radar data showed that refreezing of liquid subsurface water drove the formation of Greenland’s double ridge. If Europa’s features form the same way, this could signal the presence of copious amounts of liquid water – a key ingredient for life – near the surface of this Jovian moon’s thick outer ice shell. In the search for extraterrestrial life, Europa has attracted attention as one of the locales in our solar system that may be habitable, perhaps by microbes, owing to a global saltwater ocean detected deep beneath its ice shell. Innumerable water pockets closer to the surface would represent a second potential habitat for organisms. “The presence of liquid water in the ice shell would suggest that exchange between the ocean and ice shell is common, which could be important for chemical cycling that would help support life,” Culberg said. “Shallow water in particular also means there might be easier targets for future space missions to image or sample that could at least preserve evidence of life without having to fully access the deep ocean.” NASA’s robotic Europa Clipper is scheduled for a 2024 launch to further investigate whether this moon possesses conditions suitable for life. The shallow depth of Europa’s potential water pockets – perhaps within six-tenths of a mile (1 km) of the surface – also would place them near chemicals vital for the formation of life that may exist on its surface. With a diameter of 1,940 miles (3,100 km), Europa is the fourth-largest of Jupiter’s 79 known moons, a bit smaller than Earth’s moon but bigger than the dwarf planet Pluto. Europa’s ocean may contain double the water of those on Earth. Life first emerged on Earth as marine microbes. Europa’s double ridges, sometimes extending hundreds miles (km), generally are around 490-650 feet (150-200 meters) tall, with the peaks about three- to six-tenths of a mile (0.5-1 km) apart. Scientists have debated how they formed. Culberg was struck by their resemblance to a landform he knew from northwestern Greenland, with peaks about 6.5 feet (2 meters tall), separated by about 160 feet (50 meters) and extending about a half mile (800 meters). “The Greenland double ridge feature formed from the successive refreezing, pressurization and fracture of a near-surface water pocket. We see two ridges, rather than one, because the shallow water pocket was also split in two by a fracture filled with refrozen water,” Culberg said. The water pocket in Greenland was about 50 feet (15 meters) below the surface, likely less than 33 feet (10 meters) thick and about a mile (1.6 km) wide. If the same process spawned Europa’s many double ridges, each associated water pocket could boast a volume similar to Lake Erie, one of North America’s Great Lakes. “Between having two potential habitats and the fact that double ridges – and the near-surface water bodies they may imply – are among the most common features on Europa’s surface, it makes this moon a very exciting candidate for habitability indeed,” Stanford geophysics professor and study co-author Dustin Schroeder added.