Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the alliance between Tokyo and Washington would collapse if Japan failed to act in the event of an attack on the U.S. military during a conflict in Taiwan.
Detailing the Japanese response to a hypothetical Taiwan crisis, Takaichi appeared to dial back on her remarks in November that suggested Tokyo could intervene militarily during a potential attack on the island.
That comment provoked the ire of Beijing, which regards the democratic island as its own territory.
Ahead of a snap election in February, Takaichi was asked during a news program Monday about her remarks in November that suggested Tokyo could intervene militarily during a potential attack on Taiwan.
Takaichi pointed out that in the event of conflict, Japan and the United States might jointly conduct an evacuation operation to rescue Japanese and American nationals.
“If the U.S. military, acting jointly with Japan, comes under attack and Japan does nothing and runs home, the Japan-U.S. alliance will collapse,” she said on the TV Asahi program.
“If something serious happens there, we would have to go to rescue the Japanese and American citizens in Taiwan. In that situation, there may be cases where Japan and the U.S. take joint action,” the prime minister said.
She added: “We will respond strictly within the bounds of the law, making a comprehensive judgment based on the circumstances.”
In the wake of Takaichi’s comments in November, China has discouraged its nationals from traveling to Japan, citing deteriorating public security and criminal acts against Chinese nationals in the country.
Beijing is reportedly also choking off exports to Japan of rare-earth products crucial for making everything from electric cars to missiles. (JapanToday)
Cher Horowitz fans, rejoice: Amy Heckerling’s 1995 teen comedy is one of 25 classic movies chosen this year by the Library of Congress for its National Film Registry.
And if “Clueless” wasn’t your jam — whatever! — maybe this will send you deep into your dreams: Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending “Inception” is in the mix. Other films chosen for preservation include “The Karate Kid,” “Glory,” “Philadelphia,” “Before Sunrise,” “The Incredibles” and “Frida.” There are four documentaries, including “Brooklyn Bridge” by Ken Burns. From old Hollywood, there’s the 1954 musical “White Christmas,” and the 1956 “High Society,” Grace Kelly’s last movie before marrying into royalty.
Since 1988, the Library of Congress has selected 25 movies each year for preservation due to their “cultural, historic or aesthetic importance.” The films must be at least 10 years old.
The oldest of the 2025 picks dates from 1896, filmmaker William Selig’s “The Tramp and the Dog.” The newest of the group is from 2014: Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” which, the registry noted, involved “meticulous historical research at the Library of Congress to create visually striking scenery.”
Turner Classic Movies will host a TV special March 19 to screen a selection of the films.
“The Tramp and the Dog” (1896): Once deemed lost, but discovered in 2021 at the National Library of Norway, Selig’s silent film tells the story of a tramp who tries to steal a pie from a backyard windowsill — and is foiled by a dog. The registry notes it’s an early example of “pants humor” — “where a character loses (or almost loses) its pants during an altercation.”
“The Maid of McMillan” (1916): This 15-minute silent film, a “whimsical silent romance” shot by students at a drama club at Washington University in St. Louis, tells the story of the track team captain, Jack, who’s in love with Myrtle, “a pretty coed,” according to the university’s library. It is known, the registry says, as the first student film on record.
“Ten Nights in a Barroom” (1926): A silent film featuring an all-Black cast, it’s based on a stage melodrama adapted from “Ten Nights in a Bar-room and What I Saw There,” an 1854 “temperance novel” written to discourage readers from drinking alcohol.
“High Society” (1956): In what the registry calls “the last great musical of the Golden Age of Hollywood,” Bing Crosby appeared with Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly, in her last movie before retiring and marrying Prince Rainier of Monaco. Louis Armstrong appeared with his band. Kelly wore her Cartier engagement ring during filming, the registry notes.
“Brooklyn Bridge” (1981): Ken Burns’ first documentary broadcast on PBS, in which the filmmaker recounted the building of the iconic landmark. “More than just a filmmaker, Burns has become a trusted public historian,” the registry says.
“The Big Chill” (1983): Lawrence Kasdan’s era-defining story of a group of friends reuniting after a suicide features Glenn Close, William Hurt, JoBeth Williams, Kevin Kline, Jeff Goldblum and Meg Tilly in an ensemble that “portrays American stereotypes of the time — the yuppie, the drug dealer, the TV star — and deftly humanizes them.”
“The Karate Kid (1984): The first film in the franchise, starring Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita, is “as American as they come,” the registry says — “a hero’s journey, a sports movie and a teen movie — a feel-good movie, but not without grit.”
“Glory” (1989): Denzel Washington won an Oscar as Private Trip in this story of the 54th Regiment, a unit of Black soldiers who fought in the Civil War. The cast also included Morgan Freeman, Matthew Broderick, Cary Elwes and Andre Braugher.
“Philadelphia” (1993): Tom Hanks starred — and won an Oscar — in one of the first big studio movies to confront the HIV/AIDS crisis. The film is also known for Bruce Springsteen’s Oscar-winning song, “The Streets of Philadelphia.”
“Before Sunrise” (1995): The first film of Richard Linklater’s deeply romantic “Before” trilogy, starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. The registry notes Linklater’s “innovative use of time as a defining and recurring cinematic tool.”
“Clueless” (1995): Heckerling’s teen comedy, starring Alicia Silverstone, was a loose adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma” and forever enshrined the phrase “As if!” into popular culture. The registry hails “its peak-1990s colorful, high-energy, soundtrack-focused on-screen dynamism.”
“The Wrecking Crew” (2008): Danny Tedesco’s documentary — not to be confused with the 2026 buddy cop movie of the same name — looks at a group of Los Angeles studio musicians who played on hit songs of the ‘60s and ’70s like “California Dreamin’” and “The Beat Goes On.”
“Inception” (2010): In a movie that asks whether it’s possible to influence a person’s thoughts by manipulating their dreams, Nolan “once again challenges audiences with multiple interconnected narrative layers while delivering thrilling action sequences and stunning visual effects.” (JapanToday)
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments about European troops staying off the front lines in Afghanistan insulting and appalling, joining a chorus of criticism from other European officials and veterans.
“I consider President Trump’s remarks to be insulting and frankly appalling, and I’m not surprised they’ve caused such hurt for the loved ones of those who were killed or injured,” Starmer told reporters.
When asked whether he would demand an apology from the U.S. leader, Starmer said: “If I had misspoken in that way or said those words, I would certainly apologize.”
Britain lost 457 service personnel killed in Afghanistan, its deadliest overseas war since the 1950s. For several of the war’s most intense years it led the allied campaign in Helmand, Afghanistan’s biggest and most violent province, while also fighting as the main U.S. battlefield ally in Iraq.
Starmer’s remarks were notably strong coming from a leader who has tended to avoid direct criticism of Trump in public.
Trump told Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria” on Thursday the United States had “never needed” the transatlantic alliance and accused allies of staying “a little off the front lines” in Afghanistan.
His remarks added to already strained relations with European allies after he used the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos to again signal his interest in acquiring Greenland.
Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel condemned Trump’s remarks on Afghanistan, calling them untrue and disrespectful.
Britain’s Prince Harry, who served in Afghanistan, also weighed in. “Those sacrifices deserve to be spoken about truthfully and with respect,” he said in a statement.
“We expect an apology for this statement,” Roman Polko, a retired Polish general and former special forces commander who also served in Afghanistan and Iraq, told Reuters in an interview.
Trump has “crossed a red line”, he added. “We paid with blood for this alliance. We truly sacrificed our own lives.”
Britain’s veterans minister, Alistair Carns, whose own military service included five tours including alongside American troops in Afghanistan, called Trump’s claims “utterly ridiculous”.
“We shed blood, sweat and tears together. Not everybody came home,” he said in a video posted on X.
Richard Moore, the former head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service, said he, like many MI6 officers, had operated in dangerous environments with “brave and highly esteemed” CIA counterparts and had been proud to do so with Britain’s closest ally.
Under NATO’s founding treaty, members are bound by a collective-defense clause, Article 5, which treats an attack on one member as an attack on all.
It has been invoked only once – after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, when allies pledged to support the United States. For most of the war in Afghanistan, the U.S.-led force there was under NATO command.
Some politicians noted that Trump had avoided the draft for the Vietnam War, citing bone spurs in his feet.
“Trump avoided military service 5 times,” Ed Davey, leader of Britain’s centrist Liberal Democrats, wrote on X. “How dare he question their sacrifice.”
Poland’s sacrifice “will never be forgotten and must not be diminished”, Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said.
Trump’s comments were “ignorant”, said Rasmus Jarlov, an opposition Conservative Party member of Denmark’s parliament.
In addition to the British deaths, more than 150 Canadians were killed in Afghanistan, along with 90 French service personnel and scores from Germany, Italy and other countries. Denmark – now under heavy pressure from Trump to transfer its semi-autonomous region of Greenland to the U.S. – lost 44 troops, one of NATO’s highest per-capita death rates.
The United States lost about 2,460 troops in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, a figure on par per capita with those of Britain and Denmark. (JapanToday)
A Border Patrol agent shot and killed a man in Minneapolis on Saturday, local and federal officials said, the second such incident this month during a surge in immigration enforcement in the northern U.S. city that residents and local politicians have fiercely protested.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the Border Patrol agent fired in defense after attempting to disarm a man local police said was a U.S. citizen. Federal officials said the man who was shot approached them with a handgun and two magazines.
“This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement,” Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official leading local operations, said at a press conference. He said his agents had been searching for an immigrant before the shooting. Bovino did not provide details of what led to the shooting, which he said was being investigated.
Tensions are rising between Democratic state and local officials who say the presence of thousands of immigration agents has made the Minneapolis area less safe, and President Donald Trump and other Republican leaders, who accuse Democrats of fanning opposition and failing to protect immigration agents.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the man killed on Saturday was a 37-year-old city resident and a lawful gun owner with no criminal record other than traffic violations. O’Hara did not release the man’s name.
A video circulating on social media and aired on cable news stations showed people wearing masks and tactical vests wrestling with a man on a snow-covered street before shots are heard. In the video, the man falls to the ground, and several more shots are heard.
Video from the area later showed armed and masked agents deploying tear gas on a growing crowd of protesters, who chanted “shame” and called them “traitors.”
Local and state police arrived to face off against the crowd as federal agents left the scene.
O’Hara asked people to avoid the area and said the site of the shooting was a “volatile scene.”
“Please do not destroy our city,” he said.
The nearby Minneapolis Institute of Art said it had closed for the day due to safety concerns.
Hours later, after federal agents appeared to have left the scene, the situation appeared to have calmed, though chanting protesters remained in the area.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called for an immediate end to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations in the state.
“How many more residents, how many more Americans need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end?” Frey said at a press conference.
The state’s governor and two U.S. senators also called for federal agents to leave.
Trump, who has been briefed on the shooting, according to a White House official, accused local elected officials of stirring up opposition.
“The Mayor and the Governor are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric,” he wrote on social media.
The shooting came one day after more than 10,000 people took to the frigid streets to protest the presence of the 3,000 federal agents who have been ordered to the state by Trump.
Residents have been angered by several incidents, including the killing of U.S. citizen Renee Good, the detention of a U.S. citizen who was taken from his home in his shorts, and the detention of school children, including a 5-year-old boy.
Vice President JD Vance, who visited Minneapolis on Thursday, posted on social media Saturday that ICE agents wanted to work with local law enforcement “so that situations on the ground didn’t get out of hand. The local leadership in Minnesota has so far refused to answer those requests.” (JapanToday)
Major European Union states including Germany and France decried U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats over Greenland as blackmail on Sunday, as France proposed responding with a range of untested economic countermeasures.
Trump vowed on Saturday to implement a wave of increasing tariffs on EU members Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, along with Britain and Norway, until the U.S. is allowed to buy Greenland.
All eight countries, already subject to U.S. tariffs of 10% and 15%, have sent small numbers of military personnel to Denmark’s vast Arctic island, as a row with the United States over its future escalates.
“Tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral,” they said in a joint statement.
The Danish exercise in Greenland was designed to strengthen Arctic security and posed no threat to anyone, they said, adding that they were ready to engage in dialogue, based on principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a statement she was pleased with the consistent messages from other states, adding: “Europe will not be blackmailed”, a view echoed by Germany’s finance minister and Sweden’s prime minister.
“It’s blackmail what he’s doing,” Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel said on Dutch television of Trump’s threat.
Cyprus, holder of the rotating six-month EU presidency, summoned ambassadors to an emergency meeting in Brussels late on Sunday as EU leaders stepped up contacts.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, visiting his Norwegian counterpart in Oslo, said Denmark would continue to focus on diplomacy, referring to an agreement Denmark, Greenland and the U.S. made on Wednesday to set up a working group.
“Even though we are now being confronted with these threats, we will naturally try to stay on that path,” Rasmussen said.
“The U.S. is also more than the U.S. president. I’ve just been there. There are also checks and balances in American society.” he added.
Meanwhile, a source close to Emmanuel Macron said the French President was pushing to activate the Anti-Coercion Instrument, which could limit access to public tenders, investments or banking activity or restrict trade in services, in which the U.S. has a surplus with the bloc, including digital services.
Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said that while there should be no doubt the EU would retaliate, it was “a bit premature” to activate the instrument.
And Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is closer to the U.S. President than some other EU leaders, described the tariff threat on Sunday as “a mistake”, adding she had spoken to Trump a few hours earlier and told him what she thought.
“He seemed interesting in listening,” she told a briefing with reporters during a trip to Korea.
British Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said allies needed to work with the United States to resolve the dispute.
“Our position on Greenland is non-negotiable … It is in our collective interest to work together and not to start a war of words,” she told Sky News.
The U.S. tariff threats call into question trade deals struck with Britain in May and the EU in July.
The limited agreements have already faced criticism about their lopsided nature, with the U.S. maintaining broad tariffs, while their partners are required to remove import duties.
The European Parliament looks likely now to suspend its work on the EU-U.S. trade deal. It had been due to vote on removing many EU import duties on January 26-27, but Manfred Weber, head of the European People’s Party, the largest group in parliament, said late on Saturday that approval was not possible for now.
German Christian Democrat lawmaker Juergen Hardt also mooted what he told Bild newspaper could be a last resort “to bring President Trump to his senses on the Greenland issue”, a boycott of the soccer World Cup that the U.S. is hosting this year. (JapanToday)
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday blamed President Donald Trump for weeks of demonstrations that rights groups said have led to more than 3,000 deaths.
“We consider the U.S. president criminal for the casualties, damages and slander he inflicted on the Iranian nation,” Khamenei said, according to Iranian state media.
The protests erupted on December 28 over economic hardship and swelled into widespread demonstrations calling for the end of clerical rule in the Islamic Republic.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene, including by threatening “very strong action” if Iran executed protesters.
But on Friday, in a social media post, he thanked Tehran’s leaders, saying they had called off mass hangings. Iran said there was “no plan to hang people”.
In comments that appeared to respond to Trump, Khamenei said: “We will not drag the country into war, but we will not let domestic or international criminals go unpunished,” state media reported.
Iran’s ultimate authority Khamenei said “several thousand deaths” had happened during the nationwide protests, which are Iran’s worst unrest in years. He accused Iran’s longtime enemies the U.S. and Israel of organizing the violence.
“Those linked to Israel and the U.S. caused massive damage and killed several thousand,” he said, adding that they started fires, destroyed public property and incited chaos. They “committed crimes and a grave slander,” he said.
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, or HRANA, said it had verified 3,090 deaths, including 2,885 protesters, and over 22,000 arrests.
Last week, Iran’s prosecutor general said detainees would face severe punishment. Those held included people who “aided rioters and terrorists attacking security forces and public property” and “mercenaries who took up arms and spread fear among citizens,” he said.
“All perpetrators are mohareb,” state media quoted Mohammad Movahedi Azad as saying, adding that investigations would be conducted “without leniency, mercy or tolerance”.
Mohareb, an Islamic legal term meaning to wage war against God, is punishable by death under Iranian law.
Reuters has not been able to independently verify the numbers of casualties or details of disturbances reported by Iranian media and rights groups. The crackdown appears to have broadly quelled protests, according to residents and state media.
Getting information has been complicated by internet blackouts, which were partly lifted for a few hours early on Saturday. But internet monitoring group NetBlocks said the blackout seemed to have been reimposed late on Saturday.
“Internet connectivity continues to flatline in #Iran despite a minor short-lived bump in access earlier today,” NetBlocks said on X. “As the shutdown enters day ten, confusion surrounds whether the regime intends to restore service soon, or at all.”
A resident of Karaj, west of Tehran, reached by phone via WhatsApp, said he noticed the internet was back at 4 a.m. on Saturday. Karaj experienced some of the most severe violence during the protests. The resident, who asked not to be identified, said Thursday was the peak of the unrest there.
A few Iranians overseas said earlier on social media that they had also been able to message users in Iran early on Saturday.
State media has reported the arrest of thousands of “rioters and terrorists” across the country, including people linked to opposition groups abroad that advocate the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.
The arrests included several people Iranian state media described as “ringleaders”, including a woman named as Nazanin Baradaran, who was taken into custody following “complex intelligence operations”.
The reports said that Baradaran operated under the pseudonym Raha Parham on behalf of Reza Pahlavi – the exiled son of Iran’s last shah – and had played a leading role in organizing the unrest. Reuters could not verify the report or her identity.
Pahlavi, a longtime opposition figure, has positioned himself as a potential leader in the event of regime collapse and has said he would seek to re-establish diplomatic ties between Iran and Israel if he were to assume a leadership role in the country.
Israeli officials have expressed support for Pahlavi. In a rare public disclosure this month, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio that Israel had operatives “on the ground” in Iran.
He said they aimed to weaken Iran’s capabilities, though he denied they were directly working to topple the leadership. (JapanToday)
US President Donald Trump on Saturday escalated his quest to acquire Greenland, threatening multiple European nations with tariffs of up to 25 percent until his purchase of the Danish territory is achieved.
Trump aimed his ire at Denmark, a fellow NATO member, as well as several European countries that have deployed troops in recent days to the vast, mineral-rich territory at the gateway to the Arctic with a population of 57,000.
If realized, Trump’s threats against Washington’s NATO partners would create unprecedented tension within the alliance.
From February 1, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland would be subject to a 10-percent tariff on all goods sent to the United States, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network.
“On June 1st, 2026, the Tariff will be increased to 25%. This Tariff will be due and payable until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland,” he wrote.
“These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable,” Trump said.
“Therefore, it is imperative that, in order to protect Global Peace and Security, strong measures be taken so that this potentially perilous situation end quickly, and without question.”
It was not immediately clear what authority the US leader would invoke to impose the threatened tariffs of up to 25 percent.
Since returning to the presidency, Trump has unleashed sweeping tariffs on goods from virtually all trading partners, to address what Washington says are unfair trade practices and as a tool to press governments on US concerns. (Vanguard)
Scott Adams, the creator of the popular comic strip “Dilbert,” has died, according to an announcement on his social media pages.
Adams, who was 68, announced in May that he’d been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer.
“Dilbert,” a chronicle of the indignities of American office work, was one of the country’s most widely read comic strips from its breakout success in the 1990s until February 2023, when Adams made racist comments against Black Americans, calling them a “hate group” that white people should “get the hell away from,” in response to a dubious poll about whether it’s “OK to be white.” Hundreds of newspapers stopped carrying “Dilbert” within days, and the strip was soon dropped by its distributor.
Adams, also a longtime outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump, began self-publishing the strip, in a “spicier version” called “Dilbert Reborn,” on his website for a subscription fee. He stopped personally drawing “Dilbert” in November 2025 due to cramping and partial paralysis in his hands, he said, though he continued to write scripts and have them illustrated for him.
Adams’ ex-wife Shelly Miles announced his death on Tuesday’s episode of the livestream “Coffee with Scott Adams,” which he hosted daily until his death, with a written statement from Adams.
“I had an amazing life,” Scott Adams wrote in the statement, composed on New Year’s Day. “I gave it everything I had. If I get any benefits from my work, I’m asking that you pay it forward as best as you can. That’s the legacy I want. Be useful, and please know, I loved you all to the very end.”
Adams, a New York native, worked as a bank teller from 1979 until 1986, the same year he graduated with an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. (He was twice held at gunpoint as a teller, he wrote in the 20-year retrospective “Dilbert 2.0.”) He debuted “Dilbert” in 1989 while working as an engineer at the telephone company Pacific Bell, whose sterile setting and zany employees inspired his strip.
“For the future of ‘Dilbert,’ you could say that the group I was in was a target-rich environment,” he told EE Times, an electronics industry publication, in 2005.
“Dilbert” didn’t become a hit until a few years into its run, when Adams started to set most of its strips in his bespectacled office drone’s workplace. “It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do, but it worked,” he told the Associated Press when he won the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben award for the best comic strip of 1997.
He credited Dilbert’s blankness — his absence of visible eyes, for one, but also the lack of any particulars about his location or role at his company — with making the strip so popular.
“People have no reason to think it’s not just like their experience,” Adams told EE Times. “For instance, there are both engineers and programmers who are convinced Dilbert is one of them.”
And for decades, “Dilbert” was. Readers recognized their own upward-failing managers in Dilbert’s clueless “pointy-haired boss,” or identified with the everyman hero’s losing battle against incompetence in meetings with his dim coworkers. Adams included his email address in strips for years to gather stories from readers struggling in their own offices, material that “keeps me going,” he told the New Yorker in 2008.
Following the success of the strip, Adams felt unstoppable: “For a while, everything I touched turned to gold,” he told Bloomberg in 2017.
Confident in his ability to sell just about anything, he entered the food business, with much less success. In 1997, he opened a restaurant near his California home called Stacey’s Cafe. He eventually took over as boss at its sister location, where employees described him to the New York Times as “dramatically clueless about the harsh realities of the restaurant industry,” despite his years satirizing oblivious bosses. Both Stacey’s locations went “belly-up” sometime before 2017, Bloomberg reported.
He was also briefly the purveyor of the “Dilberito,” a frozen vegetarian burrito named for his cartoon and marketed as a nutrient-packed alternative to unhealthy microwavable meals. (The AV Club in 2020 remembered the product as “stomach-ruining.”) The Dilberito, launched in 1999, was discontinued in 2003. Adams told the New Yorker a few years later that “the world wasn’t interested in being healthy, so I got out of that business eventually.”
Adams started to become better known for his conservative politics when he began praising President Donald Trump in 2015, correctly predicting ahead of the 2016 election that Trump would win. Adams, who described himself as a “trained hypnotist,” said he found similarities between the persuasive methods of hypnosis and Trump’s rhetorical style.
He began blogging about Trump almost daily following the candidate’s 2015 debate against Hillary Clinton, and the new subject helped boost his readership, social media following (where he had a prolific presence up until his death) and TV news appearances.
“I could go on for pages about how Trump has good-but-not-world-class skills in a variety of areas,” he wrote on a now-defunct Dilbert blog, per Bloomberg. “And when you put all of those talents together it makes him the most persuasive human I have ever observed.”
His outspoken support for the president led to an invitation to the White House following Trump’s 2016 victory. The pair stayed in touch: In November, he publicly pleaded with the president for access to a new cancer treatment. Trump responded “on it.” Adams posted that he was scheduled to receive the drug two days after making the request, and he credited the Trump administration.
Adams began calling himself a “disgraced and canceled cartoonist” after “Dilbert” was pulled from syndication in 2023. His beliefs about race, though, had been visible well before that: In the 2005 EE Times interview, he said he “actually was told that as a Caucasian male, I had no future with the company,” referring to Pacific Bell, which he left in 1995, a few years after “Dilbert” debuted. He also wrote in “Dilbert 2.0” that the animated series based on his comic was canceled after two seasons because “the network made a strategic decision to focus on shows with African-American actors.” (CNN)
Denmark’s Prime Minister said Sunday that her country faces a “decisive moment” in its diplomatic battle over Greenland after U.S. President Donald Trump again suggested using force to seize the Arctic territory.
Ahead of meetings in Washington from Monday on the global scramble for key raw materials, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that “there is a conflict over Greenland”.
“This is a decisive moment” with stakes that go beyond the immediate issue of Greenland’s future, she added in a debate with other Danish political leaders.
Frederiksen posted on Facebook that “we are ready to defend our values – wherever it is necessary – also in the Arctic. We believe in international law and in peoples’ right to self-determination.”
Germany and Sweden backed Denmark against Trump’s latest claims to the self-governing Danish territory.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson condemned U.S. “threatening rhetoric” after Trump repeated that Washington was “going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not”.
“Sweden, the Nordic countries, the Baltic states, and several major European countries stand together with our Danish friends,” he told a defense conference in Salen where the U.S. general in charge of NATO took part.
Kristersson said a U.S. takeover of mineral-rich Greenland would be “a violation of international law and risks encouraging other countries to act in exactly the same way”.
Germany reiterated its support for Denmark and Greenland ahead of the Washington discussions.
Before meeting U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadehpul was to hold talks in Iceland to address the “strategic challenges of the Far North”, according to a foreign ministry statement.
“The legitimate interests of all NATO Allies, as well as those of the inhabitants of the (Arctic) region, must be at the centre of our discussions,” Wadehpul said.
“It is clear that it is exclusively up to Greenland and Denmark to decide questions of Greenland’s territory and sovereignty,” he previously told Germany’s Bild daily.
“We are strengthening security in the Arctic together, as NATO allies, and not against one another,” German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil said ahead of an international meeting on critical raw materials in Washington.
European nations have scrambled to coordinate a response after the White House said this week that Trump wanted to buy Greenland and refused to rule out military action.
On Tuesday, leaders of seven European countries including France, Britain, Germany and Italy signed a letter saying it is “only” for Denmark and Greenland to decide the territory’s future.
Trump says controlling the island is crucial for U.S. national security because of the rising Russian and Chinese military activity in the Arctic.
NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Alexus Grynkewich told the Swedish conference that alliance members were discussing Greenland’s status. The US general added that while there was “no immediate threat” to NATO territory, the Arctic’s strategic importance is fast growing.
Grynkewich said he would not comment on “the political dimensions of recent rhetoric” but that talks on Greenland were being held at the North Atlantic Council.
“Those dialogues continue in Brussels. They have been healthy dialogues from what I’ve heard,” the general said.
A Danish colony until 1953, Greenland gained home rule 26 years later and is contemplating eventually loosening its ties with Denmark. Polls indicate that Greenland’s population strongly oppose a U.S. takeover.
“I don’t think there’s an immediate threat to NATO territory right now,” Grynkewich told the conference.
But he said Russian and Chinese vessels had been seen patrolling together on Russia’s northern coast and near Alaska and Canada, working together to get greater access to the Arctic as ice recedes due to global warming. (JapanToday)
Iranians took to the streets in new protests against the clerical authorities overnight despite an internet shutdown, as rights groups warned on Sunday that authorities were committing a “massacre” to quell the demonstrations.
The protests, initially sparked by anger over the rising cost of living, have now become a movement against the theocratic government that has ruled Iran since the 1979 revolution and have already lasted two weeks.
The mass rallies are one of the biggest challenges to the rule of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, coming in the wake of Israel’s 12-day war against the Islamic Republic in June, which was backed by the United States.
The protests, initially sparked by anger over the rising cost of living, have now become a movement against the theocratic government that has ruled Iran since the 1979 revolution and have already lasted two weeks.
The mass rallies are one of the biggest challenges to the rule of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, coming in the wake of Israel’s 12-day war against the Islamic Republic in June, which was backed by the United States.
The internet blackout “is now past the 60 hour mark… The censorship measure presents a direct threat to the safety and well-being of Iranians at a key moment for the country’s future”, monitor Netblocks said early Sunday.
Several circulating videos, which have not been verified by AFP, allegedly showed relatives in a Tehran morgue identifying bodies of protesters killed in the crackdown.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said it had confirmed the deaths of 116 people in connection with the protests, including 37 members of the security forces or other officials.
But activists warned that the shutdown was limiting the flow of information and the actual toll risks being far higher.
The US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said it had received “eyewitness accounts and credible reports indicating that hundreds of protesters have been killed across Iran during the current internet shutdown”.
“A massacre is unfolding in Iran. The world must act now to prevent further loss of life,” it said.
It said hospitals were “overwhelmed”, blood supplies were running low and that many protesters had been shot in the eyes in a deliberate tactic.
In comments to state TV late Saturday, Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni insisted that acts of “vandalism” were decreasing and warned that “those who lead the protest towards destruction, chaos and terrorist acts do not let the people’s voices be heard”.
National police chief Ahmad-Reza Radan said authorities made “significant” arrests of protest figures on Saturday night, without giving details on the number or identities of those arrested, according to state TV.
Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani drew a line between protests over economic hardship, which he called “completely understandable”, and “riots”, accusing them of actions “very similar to the methods of terrorist groups”, Tasnim news agency reported.
In Tehran, an AFP journalist described a city in a state of near paralysis.
The price of meat has nearly doubled since the start of the protests, and while some shops are open, many others are not.
Those that do open must close at around 4:00 or 5:00 pm, when security forces deploy in force.
On Saturday, mobile phone lines appeared to have gone down as well, rendering nearly all communication impossible.
Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the ousted shah, who has played a prominent role in calling for the protests, called for new actions later Sunday.
“Do not abandon the streets. My heart is with you. I know that I will soon be by your side,” he said.
US President Donald Trump has spoken out in support of the protests and threatened military action against Iranian authorities “if they start killing people”.
On Sunday, Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Iran would hit back if the US launched military action.
“In the event of a military attack by the United States, both the occupied territory and centres of the US military and shipping will be our legitimate targets,” he said in comments broadcast by state TV.
He was apparently also referring to Israel, which the Islamic Republic does not recognise and considers occupied Palestinian territory. (Channels)
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