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Japan Airlines will introduce the robots for trial run at a Tokyo airport amid country’s surge in inbound tourism and worsening labour shortagesJapan’s famously conscientious but overburdened baggage handlers will soon be joined by extra staff at Tokyo’s Haneda airport – although their new colleagues will need to take regular recharging breaks.Japan Airlines will introduce humanoid robots on a trial basis from the beginning of May, with a view to deploying them permanently as a solution to the country’s chronic labour shortage. Continue reading...

Pakistan officials dismiss Afghan media reports and official statements about strikes on university in Kunar province as ‘blatant lie’Mortars and missiles fired from Pakistan on Monday struck a university and civilian homes in north-eastern Afghanistan, killing seven people and wounding at least 85, Afghan officials said.Pakistan denied the accusation of targeting a university. Continue reading...

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday warned that the United States is being “humiliated” by Iran and risks getting trapped in a quagmire there like it did in Afghanistan and Iraq.“The Iranians are clearly stronger than expected and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either,” Merz told students at the Carolus-Magnus-Gymnasium in Marsberg, North Rhine-Westphalia. “The problem with conflicts like this is always: You don’t just have to get in, you have to get out again. We saw that very painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years. We saw it in Iraq.”“At the moment, I do not see what strategic exit the Americans will choose, especially since the Iranians are clearly negotiating very skillfully—or very skillfully not negotiating,” the Christian Democratic Union leader continued. “An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, particularly by the so-called Revolutionary Guards.”US President Donald Trump on Saturday abruptly canceled a planned trip by special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Islamabad, Pakistan to negotiate a ceasefire with Iranian officials after prior talks ended without an agreement.Nearly two months of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran have killed more than 3,400 people, at least 2,100 of them civilians—including 503 women, 413 children, 91 health workers, and 9 journalists, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.The Lebanese Health Ministry said Monday that the death toll from Israeli bombing of its northern neighbor has topped 2,500, including hundreds of women and children. At least 14 people were killed on Sunday by Israeli strikes, despite a US-brokered ceasefire.The head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society said Saturday that the organization has submitted evidence of US and Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which in 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes—including murder and forced starvation—in Gaza, where more than 250,000 people have been killed or injured since October 2023.Merz said Monday that the US-Israeli war on Iran is harming his country.“It is at the moment a pretty tangled situation,” he said. “And it is costing us a great deal of money. This conflict, this war against Iran, has a direct impact on our economic output.”Merz said that Germany was still open to deploying minesweeping warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has blocked almost all international shipping. However, the chancellor said such a move would only come after fighting stops.The German leader also told students at the school that their country must assume a greater leadership role within the European Union.“If we were to unite more effectively and do more together,” he said, “we could be at least as strong as the United States of America.”Some observers asserted that the US isn’t the only country being humiliated, pointing to Germany’s support for Israel, which is rooted in deep-seated guilt over the country’s systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews during the Nazi-era Holocaust.In addition to brutally cracking down on pro-Palestine protests and suppressing speech critical of Israel’s obliteration of Gaza, Germany initially planned to intervene in the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also in The Hague.However, Berlin said last month that it will not intervene in the ICJ case in support of Israel so that it can better focus on its own defense in a separate case before the tribunal filed by Nicaragua accusing Germany of enabling Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza via arms sales.

President Donald Trump has weaponized Vice President JD Vance to absorb blame over failed negotiations with Iran, an analyst reported on Monday.Salon's Amanda Marcotte described how Trump has forced Vance into a situation he didn't want to be in and by doing so, has put his political future in question."The vice president didn’t even want to be there, a feeling he has apparently made clear through anonymous leaks from either himself or his associates to journalists, which haver [SIC] resulted in flattering stories alleging that the vice president tried to talk Trump out of launching a war on Iran," Marcotte wrote. "These accounts are likely true enough, but not because Vance has some noble objection to needless killing. At 41, the vice president has enough wits about him to see what was very obvious, something the [SIC] Trump has refused to see: that this war would be a political debacle for the administration — and for Vance’s future plans to run for president."Although Vance publicly claims support for the war, his private efforts tell a different story, according to Marcotte. "Vance’s efforts to discreetly paint himself as opposed to the war, though, are backfiring," Marcotte wrote. "The more the Iran war drags on, the more the vice president finds himself getting sucked into the quagmire at the risk of becoming as much the face of the fiasco as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or even Trump himself."But Vance will continue to face this predicament. "Perhaps the dam will break, but right now, it seems like the vice president could be stuck for a long time in the hellhole of trying to negotiate the end of a war he didn’t want with very few cards to play, and a boss who won’t admit that they have been defeated," Marcotte added. "All of which means that, while Trump hits the links at Mar-a-Lago or rests behind his desk while answering reporters’ questions in the Oval Office, it will be Vance whose face is out front on coverage of the war. It will be Vance striding toward planes in photographs and Vance standing behind podiums to explain why negotiations aren’t working."

The White House took swift action after Australian flags were placed on the streets of Washington, D.C., to mark the arrival of King Charles III of Britain.On Friday, Photos shared on social media showed Australian flags lining 17th Street. Freelance reporter Andrew Leyden shared several of the photos on X."After a short lunch break (and geography lesson) DC public work crews have decided to replace the Australian flags with the British flag around the White House," Leyden explained several hours later.

President Donald Trump has sent envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Islamabad, Pakistan, this weekend for continued negotiations with Iran — but Vice President JD Vance did not plan to attend — something a CNN analyst said was telling in a report on Friday. Vance, who previously attended marathon talks with the Iranians earlier this month, will be on standby and available to join by phone or travel if need be, CNN reported. Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran's Speaker of the Parliament, who the White House views as Vance's counterpart and head of the Iranian delegation, will not attend either.The timeline for the ongoing war has remained uncertain, with Trump telling reporters on Thursday "Don't rush me."CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangel signaled that the Iran strategy has appeared to shift within the White House. "Let's be hopeful. Let's be optimistic. It's moving in in the right direction," Gangel said. "I think everyone would like this war to end," she added. "But we've seen a roller coaster here. And in when dealing with the Iranians, I've been told over and over by intelligence experts, they're really good at talking. And they will talk and talk until the cows come home. But getting to substantive negotiations is a whole other matter. So let's see where this goes. I do think it's interesting that Vice President Vance is not going. I think it says something about where we think this is at the moment."Members of Vance's team were reportedly already in Pakistan for the talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Iranians have not yet confirmed if they will meet with the American delegation.

As Donald Trump’s Iran war drags into its eighth week with no end in sight, there is concern both inside the White House and outside among outside presidential advisers that Trump’s haphazard and scattershot pronouncements are only making things more difficult.And that is leaving White House officials “fatigued” and wondering what each day will bring.According to reporting from MS NOW's Jake Traylor, Jackie Alemany, and Laura Barrón-López, Trump's messaging on the war has shifted consistently — at times, hour by hour. Within 48 hours last weekend, he went from saying Iran had "agreed to everything" toward a potential deal to warning that if Iran did not sign on the dotted line, the "whole country is getting blown up."The whiplash continues relentlessly. He has extended the war's timeline by weeks, offered Iran a handful of deal extensions after saying he likely would not, and most recently indicated there was "no time frame" for the war to conclude, swiftly followed by a threat that Iran has "a matter of days" to reach a deal.White House aides are essentially lying to the public, MS NOW is reporting. A former White House official exposed the dysfunction starkly: "Ninety percent of White House top aides that are speaking publicly right now don't necessarily believe what they're saying, but they know it's satisfying what the president wants them to say. Ultimately, that's their goal. They're not communicators for the public; they are communicators for the president."The result is an administration with no credibility, with that same ex-insider admitting, "From the outside looking in, it is very clear that the goalposts are moving all over the place. That doesn't scream confidence, it doesn't scream that we are anywhere close to a resolution."The volume of Trump's media appearances is also overwhelming staff. Two additional White House officials told MS NOW they are frustrated by the volume of calls the president takes from reporters — in some weeks totaling dozens — and noted the difficulty of keeping up with and defending each of his minute-by-minute pronouncements.The administration lacks even a coherent rationale for the war, the analysts say. "[The White House] hasn't done a successful job of nailing down one reason why we're there. They've sort of thrown every reason out there. If they could narrow it down to one message — clear 'feel the threat, feel the urgency' — I think they'd have better success," a source hopefully suggested."The president is going to dictate when the war ends," one White House official said. "In the meantime, we planned to ramp up the messaging on everything else, but obviously now those are all tied to the war as well."

Following Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s press conference, which was once again notable for his combative performance with the press, MS NOW’s Jonathan Lemire suggested the former Fox News personality appeared to want to avoid addressing Donald Trump’s war of words with Pope Leo XIV about the Iran conflict.Hegseth, who can be counted on to bristle at any suggestion that the Middle East war was unfounded or is being conducted poorly, was asked about the Pope’s word criticizing the war in Iran, which led the president to complain bitterly, with Catholic Vice President JD Vance chiming in to tell the pontiff to stick to matters to “morality.” "We know what our mission is,” Hegseth demurred before adding, “We know what authority we have. We're very clear about that."That brief exchange drew the attention of “Morning Joe’s” Lemire.“Not a lot of news there per se,” he said immediately following the end of the press availability. ”I will say. Secretary Hegseth did acknowledge, though he insisted, that some traffic is making its way through the Strait of Hormuz despite Iran having closed it. He did acknowledge a lot less than they'd like and that it is dangerous, you know, travel there.”“He sort of pulled his punches with the Pope when he was asked a question about the Pope's condemnation of this war. So perhaps the administration has realized you shouldn't escalate their conflict with a representative of the higher power,” he quipped to MS NOW’s David Rohde. - YouTube youtu.be