Former US presidents, celebrities and thousands of members of the public have gathered to honour civil rights leader, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who died last month.
Former presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were among those who spoke at a memorial service in Chicago for the activist.
Mourners included former Vice President Kamala Harris, filmmaker Tyler Perry and former basketball star Isiah Thomas. The service also featured performances, including from singer and actress Jennifer Hudson.
Jackson, who worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr, twice ran to be the Democratic nominee for president and founded the Rainbow PUSH coalition, a social justice and civil rights non-profit.
While praising Jackson in his remarks at the service, Obama made a thinly veiled mention of US President Donald Trump. He said, “Each day we wake up to some new assault on our democratic institutions”.
He said the late reverend inspired people to take a harder path and called “on each of us to be heralds of change”.
Former Vice President Harris received a standing ovation when she spoke at the service. She appeared to take a jab at Trump, saying, “Let me just start out by saying: I predicted a lot of what is happening right now. I hate to say I told you so, but we did see it coming”.
But, she added, that she didn’t realise they would be tackling this moment without Jackson’s guidance.
Calling Jackson “impatient,” she noted, “He did not waste time waiting, even when the doors in front of him were barred and bolted, even if those on the other side hesitated or even ignored him. He always devised a way through”.
Civil rights leader, the Reverend Al Sharpton, who worked closely with Jackson during the civil rights movement, was also among the speakers. (BBC)
Pedro Sánchez has delivered a strong rebuttal to US President Donald Trump’s threat to end trade with Spain by restating his opposition to war and what he called the “breakdown of international law”.
In a 10-minute televised address, the Spanish prime minister reflected on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as the Iraq War more than 20 years ago, and said the Spanish government’s position could be summed up as “no to war”.
Trump threatened to impose a full trade embargo on Spain in response to its refusal to allow the US to use the jointly run bases at Morón and Rotafor to strike Iran.
“Spain has been terrible,” Trump said during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday.
“We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don’t want anything to do with Spain,” he added.
Merz said later he had told Trump very clearly that he could not conclude a separate trade agreement with Germany or all of Europe but not with Spain.
In response to the US economic threat, the Élysée Palace said French President Emmanuel Macron had conveyed his “solidarity” with Spain during a phone conversation with Sánchez on Wednesday. European Council President António Costa also said he had spoken to the Spanish leader “to express the EU’s full solidarity”.
Trump accused Spain on Tuesday of being a “terrible partner” in Nato for failing to increase its defence budget in line with a target of 5% of economic output (GDP).
Earlier this year, Sánchez drew Trump’s ire by speaking out against the US military incursion into Venezuela.
Sánchez said in his televised address from the prime minister’s official residence in Madrid on Wednesday that the government was studying economic measures to counter the impact of the conflict on Spaniards, though he avoided directly referring to Trump’s trade threat.
“The question is not if we are on the side of the ayatollahs [Iran’s clerical rulers] – nobody is. The question is whether we are in favour of peace and international legality,” he said.
“You cannot answer one illegality with another, because that is how the great catastrophes of humanity begin.”
Spain’s Socialist prime minister explained that the government’s position was comparable to its stance on Ukraine and Gaza. Sánchez has been a vociferous critic of Israel’s military response to the Hamas attacks in 2023.
Spain has been among Europe’s most outspoken governments on Gaza, describing Israel’s actions there as “genocide” and acknowledging a Palestinian state before many other EU members did.
That position was in step with his coalition partners to his left and, broadly speaking, with Spanish attitudes toward the Middle East.
Looking back to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which he said had failed to achieve its goals and had made life worse for ordinary people, he warned that the attacks on Iran could have a similar economic impact for millions.
His reference to the Iraq invasion will connect with many Spanish voters. Spain’s support at the time from the conservative People’s Party (PP) government was deeply unpopular, and triggered mass anti-war protests.
Many believe it also lay the groundwork for the Socialist Party’s surprise election victory in March 2004, days after Madrid had been hit by deadly jihadist bombings.
Sánchez reminded Spaniards of the “Azores trio” – the then-US President George W Bush, the UK’s Tony Blair and Spanish conservative leader José María Aznar – who had met on a Portuguese base in the region days before the Iraq invasion.
He said they had handed Europeans the “gift” of “a more insecure world and worse life”.
The Spanish leader’s stance contrasts strongly with that of Merz, who told German TV on Tuesday that regime change in Iran would leave the world “a little better off”, though he also said this was “not without risk and we would also have to bear the consequences”.
Unlike Spain’s fellow Nato allies – the UK, France and Greece – it has not yet committed to any military involvement in response to the war.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday that Spain had “agreed to co-operate” with the US military after hearing Trump’s message “loud and clear” – a claim Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares categorically denied, telling local media that his government’s position “has not changed one iota”. (BBC)
Authorities have identified the three people fatally shot outside a bar in Austin, Texas when a gunman opened fire in the early hours of Sunday.
Ryder Harrington, 19, and Savitha Shan, 21, died in the shooting outside a bar popular with University of Texas students, police said. Authorities announced on Monday that third victim, Jorge Pederson, 30, had also died.
More than a dozen people were injured in the shooting, including some who remain in critical condition.
The alleged gunman, Ndiaga Diagne, was shot and killed by police. The FBI said it was looking into a potential “nexus of terrorism” link to the war in Iran, among other possibilities.
After responding to calls of an active shooter at around 02:00 local time (08:00 GMT) on Sunday near Buford’s bar in Austin, police said they shot and killed the suspect.
Diagne was a naturalised American citizen born in Senegal, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.
Officials said two of the victims were students but could not yet confirm which university they attended.
“We recognise that this is a very traumatic moment in our city,” Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said in briefing on Monday, adding: “I cannot imagine the grief, pain and loss these families are feeling today, and my heart is with them.”
Two sources familiar with the investigation told CBS News that the gunman was wearing a sweatshirt with the words “Property of Allah”.
CBS was also told by an official with knowledge of the investigation that officers who searched the gunman’s home found an Iranian flag and pictures of Iranian leaders.
The attack came on the weekend that the US and its ally Israel launched multiple strikes on Iran, killing its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said federal and state officials would investigate whether the violence had any connections to terrorism.
“We will not rest until every last trail or piece of information is pursued to determine if there’s anybody else involved in this whatsoever,” the governor said in a news briefing on Monday.
“And if so, obviously, we will track them down, find them, and bring them to justice.”
In an earlier briefing, Police Chief Davis said officers who were on patrol in the more popular, crowded bar district known as East Sixth Street quickly responded to reports of a man with a gun at Buford’s, located farther down on West Sixth Street.
She said a man in a large SUV driving by Buford’s put on the vehicle’s hazard lights, rolled down his window and fired a pistol, striking people on the patio and pavement outside the bar.
He parked the vehicle nearby, got out with a rifle and started walking back towards the bar, according to Davis. Three police officers confronted the suspect at an intersection, and shot and killed him.
The SUV was searched and was not carrying explosives, officials said.
However, Acting Special Agent in Charge Alex Doran, from the FBI’s San Antonio office, said there were indications in the SUV and on the suspect that suggested a “nexus to terrorism”.
But Doran said the investigation was in its early stages and he was “not prepared to release those details”.
“We are committed to seeing this process through to the very end,” he said.
Kelson Lee, 25, was within earshot when gunfire erupted at Buford’s. He walked inside to look for a friend, according to the Austin Current.
“I see about seven to eight bodies on the floor,” Lee told the local news outlet. “No-one should ever have to see that.
“I kind of blacked out, froze up. I felt kind of helpless because I wanted to help people.” (BBC)
Former President Bill Clinton denied wrongdoing in his relationship with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein as House Republicans grilled him on Feb. 27 about the late financier’s fundraising, numerous visits to the White House and pictures in Justice Department files.
Clinton, the first former president forced to testify before Congress, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in his opening statement that he “had no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing.” He dismissed the 20-year-old pictures from the department’s files and Epstein’s estate.
“I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” Clinton said. “As someone who grew up in a home with domestic abuse, not only would I not have flown on his plane if I had any inkling of what he was doing – I would have turned him in myself and led the call for justice for his crimes, not sweetheart deals.”
Upon exiting the session, Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Kentucky, said questioning the former president was “very productive” while declining to elaborate.
“You’ll see the video. … Everybody knows President Clinton. He’s got Southern people skills; he’s a charming individual,” the congressman said. “We picked up new facts; we asked the Clintons where we should go from here.”
The former president’s deposition at the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center, near the Clintons’ home in suburban New York, comes just a day after his wife and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified. The former first lady, who was also subpoenaed, told the committee on Feb. 26 she didn’t know Epstein and never flew on his plane. She called her deposition “repetitive” and a “fishing expedition.”
Video of the depositions will be released “within the next 24 hours,” Comer suggested.
GOP committee members said they have questions for the former first couple because Epstein visited the White House 17 times while Bill Clinton was president and then Clinton traveled 27 times on his private plane after leaving office. Clinton also appeared in a number of pictures released in the Epstein files with celebrities or in more casual surroundings with the faces of women redacted.
Comer said documents from the Justice Department and Epstein’s estate portray the late financier as raising money for the Clinton Global Initiative, a foundation seeking action on issues such as the climate and health care. Hillary Clinton told the committee Feb. 26 to ask her husband about it because she was a senator during the period in question.
“This is a historical day for the United States Congress,” Comer said. “Nobody is accusing anyone of any wrongdoing. But I think the American people have a lot of questions.”
The inquiry comes as lawmakers and women who accused Epstein of abuse have forced the Justice Department to released 3 million pages of documents about his criminal investigation. But millions more pages remain sealed, and President Donald Trump has said the country should move on.
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of child sex trafficking. His associate Ghislaine Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison term for conspiring to transport minors for illicit sex. Critics of the investigation have questioned why more coconspirators haven’t been charged. (USAToday)
The president of Iran’s soccer federation says he does not know if the national team can play World Cup matches in the United States following the surprise U.S. and Israeli bombardment of his country.
“What is certain is that after this attack, we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope,” Mehdi Taj told sports portal Varzesh3 as Iran traded strikes with Israel as part of a widening war prompted by the bombardment.
The U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran continued for a second day on Sunday after the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threw the future of the Islamic Republic into uncertainty and raised the risk of regional instability.
Iran has been drawn in Group G at the World Cup and is scheduled to play in Los Angeles – where it faces New Zealand and Belgium on June 15 and 21, respectively – before it plays Egypt in Seattle on June 26.
The United States is hosting the tournament with Canada and Mexico from June 11-July 19.
Fans from Iran were already banned from entering the U.S. in the first iteration of the travel ban announced by the Trump administration.
FIFA did not immediately reply to an email from The Associated Press over the current situation regarding Iran’s participation in the World Cup. (JapanToday)
Israel launched a new wave of strikes on Tehran on Sunday and Iran responded with more missile barrages, a day after the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei pitched the Middle East and the global economy into deepening uncertainty.
Iran fired renewed missile barrages across the region. Israel’s ambulance service said nine people were killed in the town of Beit Shemesh, while the United Arab Emirates said Iranian attacks killed three people and Kuwait reported one dead.
Three U.S. service personnel were also killed and five seriously wounded, the first American casualties of the operation, the U.S. military said, without giving further information.
U.S. and Israeli strikes – and Iranian retaliation – sent shockwaves through sectors from shipping to air travel to oil, amid warnings of rising energy costs and disruption to business in the Gulf, a strategic waterway and global trade hub.
U.S. President Donald Trump has said the attack was intended to ensure Iran could not have a nuclear weapon, to contain its missile program and to eliminate threats to the United States and its allies.
In an interview with the Atlantic magazine on Sunday, Trump, who has encouraged the Iranian people to topple their government, said Iran’s leadership wanted to talk to him and he had agreed.
But he has yet to lay out his longer-term aims in Iran, which faces a power vacuum that could leave it in chaos, with unforeseeable consequences for the region.
Smoke rises following an explosion, after Israel and the U.S. launched strikes on Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 1, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
As the first U.S. casualties were reported, and with the vital Strait of Hormuz closed and the glittering Gulf cities of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha under bombardment, the scale of the risk taken by Trump in launching the attack was becoming clearer.
Only around one in four Americans approve of the operation, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll on Sunday, and if Hormuz, which is the passage for about 20% of world oil supplies, remains closed for more than a few days, squeezed U.S. consumers will start to feel the pressure on prices at the pumps, months before vital midterm elections.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday they had hit three U.S. and UK oil tankers in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, and attacked military bases in Kuwait and Bahrain with drones and missiles. Shipping data showed hundreds of vessels including oil and gas tankers dropping anchor in nearby waters with traders expecting sharp jumps in crude oil prices on Monday.
Global air travel was also heavily disrupted as continued air strikes kept major Middle Eastern airports, including Dubai – the world’s busiest international hub – closed in one of the biggest aviation interruptions in recent years.
In Iran, facing its biggest existential challenge since the 1980-88 war with Iraq, President Masoud Pezeshkian said a leadership council composed of himself, the judiciary head and a member of the powerful Guardians Council had temporarily assumed the duties of Supreme Leader.
Oman’s foreign ministry said Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi had indicated that Tehran was open to any serious efforts at de-escalation.
But it remained unclear what the longer-term prospects were for Iran to rebuild its leadership and replace the 86-year-old Khamenei, who had held power since the death of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989.
Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced Khamenei’s death as a cynical murder and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi described it as “blatant killing”.
Israel, which has pressed successive U.S. administrations to take action against Iran, claimed responsibility for killing Khamenei, in what it said was a “precise, large-scale operation” guided by intelligence, while he was in his central leadership compound in the heart of Tehran.
It said it aimed to dominate the skies over Tehran, giving no sign of planning an end to the biggest aerial operation in its history, involving hundreds of fighter jets.
“We have the capabilities and the targets to keep going on for as long as necessary,” Israeli military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said.
Trump warned that the U.S. would hit Iran “with a force that has never been seen before” if it struck back.
Trump said on social media the U.S. military had destroyed nine Iranian warships so far and was “going after the rest.”
Inside Iran, some grieved for Khamenei while others celebrated his death, exposing a deep fault line in a country stunned by the sudden demise of the man who ruled for decades.
Thousands of Iranians were killed in a crackdown authorized by Khamenei against anti-government protests in January, the deadliest wave of unrest since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
Footage from Tehran showed mourners packed into a square, dressed in black and many of them weeping.
But videos posted on social media also showed joy and defiance elsewhere, with people cheering as a statue was toppled in the city of Dehloran in Ilam province, dancing in the streets of Karaj city, near Tehran in Alborz province, and celebrating in the streets of Izeh in Khuzestan province. Reuters has verified the locations of these videos.
Khamenei, who built Iran into a powerful anti-U.S. force and spread its sway across the Middle East during his 36-year iron-fisted rule, was working in his office at the time of Saturday’s attack, state media said. The raid also killed his daughter, grandchild, daughter-in-law and son-in-law. (JapanToday)
Iranian state media have confirmed that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed at his office in the Israeli-US attacks on Iran, following earlier reports of his killing by US and Israeli officials.
A 40-day mourning period for the longtime Iranian leader has been announced.
The Sunday confirmation comes after Iran’s Tasnim and Mehr news agencies initially reported that Khamenei remained “steadfast and firm in commanding the field”.
US President Donald Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform earlier in the day that 86-year-old Khamenei was killed in the joint US-Israeli strikes, which began early on Saturday.
“He was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do,” Trump wrote.
“This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country,” he said. “Hopefully, the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots.”
While Iranian authorities have long planned for the possible killing of Khamenei in the event of a war with the US and Israel, his assassination injects new uncertainty into an unfolding conflict that has already spurred concerns that fighting could escalate and expand further.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier also claimed that there were “growing signs” that Khamenei had been killed.
Additionally, the Reuters news agency, citing an unnamed senior Israeli official, had reported that Khamenei’s body had been located.
Khamenei has been Iran’s supreme leader since 1989, succeeding the founder of the post-shah Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who steered Iran’s 1979 revolution.
The supreme leader holds ultimate authority over all branches of government, the military and the judiciary, while also acting as the country’s spiritual leader.
Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera that Iran “has a plan” in place in the event that Khamenei’s death is confirmed.
“There will probably be a council that will be set up to run the country. It may already have been running the country, as far as we know,” she said.
Saturday’s strikes on Iran targeted 24 provinces, killing at least 201 people, according to Iranian media reports, citing the Red Crescent.
Among the attacks, Israel struck two schools in Iran, killing at least 108 people at the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in the southern city of Minab, and two others at a school east of the capital, Tehran.
Netanyahu said in his address that many “senior figures” had been “eliminated” in the wave of attacks targeting senior leaders, as Trump called for the government to be toppled.
Israel, Netanyahu said, had killed “commanders in the Revolutionary Guard and senior officials in the nuclear programme. And we will continue.”
Trump indicated on his Truth Social post that “heavy and pinpoint bombing” of Iran would go on “uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary”.
Iran’s counterattacks on Saturday triggered air-defence interceptions in several countries where airbases with US assets are hosted, including Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
On Saturday evening, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said that the third and fourth waves of “retaliatory” strikes on US and Israeli positions were ongoing, according to a statement carried by the IRNA news agency.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told an emergency meeting of the Security Council that he deeply regretted that an opportunity for diplomacy had been “squandered”.
“Military action carries the risk of igniting a chain of events that no one can control in the most volatile region of the world,” he told the 15-member body. “I call for de-escalation and an immediate cessation of hostilities”.
Addressing the Security Council, Iran’s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, said the US and Israel had “initiated an unprovoked and premeditated aggression”, attacking “civilian populated areas in multiple large cities of Iran, where millions of people reside”.
“This is not only an act of aggression, it is a war crime, and a crime against humanity,” he said.
The US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, insisted that the military action was lawful. “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” he said. “That principle is not a matter of politics. It’s a matter of global security.”
China’s UN ambassador, Fu Cong, said Beijing was very concerned by “the sudden escalation of regional tensions”.
Russia’s ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, condemned the US-Israeli air strikes, demanding that the US and Israel “immediately cease their aggressive actions”. (AlJazeera)
The chair of the US’s top media regulator claimed on Wednesday that journalists had been tricked into covering claims by the late-night host Stephen Colbert that he had been blocked by his network from interviewing a Texas Senate candidate.
Brendan Carr, the avowedly pro-Trump chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), made his comments after Colbert accused the Trump administration and CBS of censorship.
CBS has countered Colbert’s claims in a statement, saying it had not blocked him from interviewing James Talarico, a Texas Democrat, but had merely provided legal guidance that such an interview might trigger equal time regulations that would require him to also platform Talarico’s campaign rivals.
“I think yesterday was a perfect encapsulation of why the American people have more trust in gas station sushi than they do in the national news media,” Carr said, speaking at an FCC meeting in his first public comments on the controversy. “I think you guys should feel a bit ashamed for having been lied to and then run with those lies.”
In guidance issued in January, the FCC said that daytime and late-night talkshows would not automatically be eligible for exemptions to the equal time rule, which was enacted as part of the Communications Act of 1934. Based on Colbert’s comments, CBS had faced criticism for “corporate capitulation”, as the lone Democrat on the FCC, Anna M Gomez, put it, for enforcing the rule even before the network had received a complaint.
But Carr told reporters that the FCC was simply enforcing the rules on the books. “If you have a legally qualified candidate on, you have to give comparable air time to all other legally qualified candidates, and we’re going to apply that law,” he said. “There was no censorship here at all.”
Networks can request exceptions for what are called bona fide news interviews – but Carr said that CBS and ABC’s parent company, Disney, had not done so. Late-night and daytime shows had previously operated under the assumption that host-conducted interviews with politicians would qualify for the exception, based on past precedent.
A day after his initial broadside against his bosses, Colbert on Tuesday night harshly criticized a statement released by the network that contested his version of events. In the end, Colbert aired the interview – but only on YouTube, where it has piled up nearly 6.1m views by the time of publication, far greater than the average traditional television viewership for the Late Show. The controversy has also been a boon for Talarico’s campaign, which has said it raised $2.5m in the 24 hours since Colbert’s initial comments.
On Wednesday, Carr also confirmed to the Guardian that the FCC had opened an enforcement action into ABC’s The View over an appearance Talarico made on the program earlier in the month. He declined to provide further comment on the nature of the investigation.
“Every single broadcaster in this country has an obligation to be responsible for the programming that they choose to air, and they’re responsible whether it complies with FCC rules or not, and if it doesn’t, those individual broadcasters are also going to have a potential liability,” Carr said.
But, in her own remarks, Gomez took a different approach. “This equal time rule issue is just one of a long pattern of this administration using the FCC to go after content it doesn’t like,” she said in response to a question from the Guardian. “What you are seeing is using and weaponizing our enforcement process in order to pressure broadcasters to self-censor.”
Colbert, whose show ends in May, said it was “really surprising” that CBS had not consulted him on the statement it released on Tuesday afternoon, which he said seemed to be written by a panel of lawyers. At the end of his segment, Colbert picked up a printed copy of the statement as if it was pet waste.
“Here’s where I do want to tell the lawyers how to do their jobs: they know damn well that every word of my script last night was approved by CBS lawyers who, for the record, approve every script that goes on the air,” Colbert told viewers. “They told us the language they wanted me to use to describe that equal time exception. So, I don’t know what this is about.”
While it’s unusual for a network host to criticize their employer, Colbert said he did not wish to start a war with CBS – though he did take a shot at the network.
“For the record, I’m not even mad,” he said. “I really don’t want an adversarial relationship with the network. I’ve never had one. I’m just so surprised that this giant global corporation would not stand up to these bullies.”
Gigi Sohn, who served as counselor to then-FCC chair Tom Wheeler during Barack Obama’s administration, said she was less concerned about the equal time rule than about what she fears is unequal enforcement of it to crack down on liberal media opposition to Trump.
“My feeling is that if Stephen Colbert is going to give James Talarico 20 minutes to basically give a campaign speech, then CBS should provide equal opportunity,” she told the Guardian in an interview. “In theory, I don’t oppose what he’s doing. What I worry about is that it’s going to be unevenly unenforced.”
Sohn also said that the onus was on rival candidates, not the FCC, to request and pursue the equal time opportunity.
“It’s not for the FCC to go around sniffing around what The View did three months ago,” Sohn said. “[Carr] has a tendency to start his own investigations when nobody is complaining. If Carr sets his enforcement bureau out to find liberal bias shows and starts to go after them, that’s not how the equal opportunities rule is supposed to work.”
Carr ended his comments to reporters with an attack on Colbert, who has relentlessly mocked him on his show. Carr said that Colbert sees that, with the cancellation of his show, his time in the limelight is “coming to an end”.
“That’s got to be a difficult time for him. I get it,” he said. “But that doesn’t change the facts of what happened here.” (Guardian)
President Donald Trump said on Saturday he will raise a temporary tariff from 10% to 15% on U.S. imports from all countries, the maximum level allowed under the law, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his previous tariff program.
The move came less than 24 hours after Trump announced a 10% across-the-board tariff on Friday after the court’s decision. The ruling found the president had exceeded his authority when he imposed an array of higher rates under an economic emergency law.
The new levies are grounded in a separate but untested law, known as Section 122, that allows tariffs up to 15% but requires congressional approval to extend them after 150 days. No president has previously invoked Section 122, and its use could lead to further legal challenges.
Trade experts and congressional aides are skeptical the Republican-majority Congress would extend the tariffs, given polls that show growing numbers of Americans blame the duties for higher prices.
In a social media post on Saturday, Trump said he would use the 150-day period to work on issuing other “legally permissible” tariffs. The administration intends to rely on two other statutes that permit import taxes on specific products or countries based on investigations into national security or unfair trade practices.
“I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been ‘ripping’ the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level,” he wrote in a Truth Social post.
The Section 122 tariffs include exemptions for certain products, including critical minerals, metals and energy products, according to the White House.
Wendy Cutler, a former senior U.S. trade official and senior vice president at the Asia Society think tank, said she was surprised Trump had not opted for the maximum Section 122 rate on Friday, adding that his rapid-fire change underscored the uncertainty trading partners faced.
The Supreme Court’s decision, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, concluded the law Trump had used for most of his tariffs, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, did not grant the president the powers he claimed.
Roberts was joined in the majority by fellow conservatives Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both Trump appointees, and the court’s three liberal justices.
Trump reacted with fury to the ruling, calling the justices in the majority “fools” and describing Gorsuch and Barrett in particular as “embarrassments,” while vowing to continue his global trade war.
Some foreign leaders applauded the decision. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday the ruling showed it is good for democracies to have counterweights to power and the rule of law.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he expected the decision would ease the burden on German companies. He said he would use his upcoming U.S. trip to reiterate that “tariffs harm everyone.” (JapanToday)
All 104 matches of the 2026 World Cup will be “sold out,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said on Wednesday, even though tickets are still available ahead of the tournament’s June 11 kickoff.
“The demand is there. Every match is sold out,” Infantino told CNBC.
Infantino, in an interview from President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, said that there had been 508 million ticket requests in four weeks for some seven million available tickets.
He said requests during the main sales phase in January came from more than 200 countries.
“(We’ve) never see anything like that — incredible,” said Infantino, adding that football’s global governing body has kept “some tickets back” for the last-minute sales phase that will begin in April and run until the end of the World Cup on July 19.
Infantino addressed the issue of ticket prices, described as “exorbitant” by supporters associations and which have already reached record levels on resale sites.
“I think it is because it’s in America, Canada and Mexico,” he said. “Everybody wants to be part of something special.
“Ticket prices have been fixed but you have, in the US in particular, something called dynamic prices, meaning the prices will go up or down.
“You are able as well to resell your tickets on official platforms, secondary markets, so the prices as well will go up.
“That’s part of the market we are in.”
Infantino estimated that the first 48-team World Cup would bring FIFA some $11 billion or more in revenue, adding that “every dollar” will be reinvested in football in FIFA’s 211 member countries.
He put the World Cup’s impact on the US economy at around $30 billion “in terms of tourism, catering, security investments and so on.”
Infantino estimated that in addition to seven million spectators, the World cup would also attract 20 to 30 million tourists and create “185,000 full-time jobs”.
“It’s a big impact,” he said. “I hope this impact will not just be limited to the World Cup but for the future as well.” (Punch)
English