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Chang Ung, a former North Korean member of the International Olympic Committee who once led sports exchanges with rival South Korea including joint marches of their athletes at the Olympics, has died at 87

Lewis’s son Avi Lewis was elected leader of progressive New Democratic party a day before his father’s deathStephen Lewis, the Canadian diplomat, politician and human rights advocate, who spent decades tirelessly working to focus global attention on the HIV/Aids epidemic, has died of cancer.Lewis, who served as the Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, as well as the head of Ontario’s New Democratic party (NDP), was 88. Continue reading...

President Donald Trump has signaled he is likely to retreat from the ongoing Iran war, a former White House insider said on Tuesday. Bill Kristol, conservative analyst and editor-at-large for The Bulwark, shared what he thinks Trump and his administration will do next as the war now reaches the fifth week. "Where he’s heading is toward the exits," Kristol wrote. Kristol also suggested that Trump could be backing off on his demand to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, citing White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's vague comment with reporters on Monday that the administration was "working toward" establishing operations again in the crucial waterway. He also referenced a Wall Street Journal report early Tuesday that indicated the end could be near. "President Trump told aides he’s willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed. . . . He decided that the U.S. should achieve its main goals of hobbling Iran’s navy and its missile stocks and wind down current hostilities while pressuring Tehran diplomatically to resume the free flow of trade," The Journal reported. "If that fails, Washington would press allies in Europe and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening the strait, the officials said."It's unclear what Trump will do next, but the signs have pointed to withdrawing, Kristol wrote."And if that wasn’t enough of a tell, Trump seemed to all but confirm the reporting this morning when he posted that other countries were going to have to figure out how to get oil through the strait themselves. '[T]he U.S.A won’t be there to help you anymore,' he added," Kristol explained. "All in all, it seems more likely than not that Trump plans on walking away rather than escalating," Kristol added. "I think this would be a less bad outcome of this reckless and feckless 'excursion' than introducing ground troops. But it will still be a bad outcome for the United States and the world. And I’m afraid it won’t be the last bad outcome we’ll experience from having an unbelievably irresponsible individual as our president."

Critics say exemption for fossil fuels exploits White House’s ‘self-made gas crisis’, and could doom the rare Rice’s whaleSign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inboxA US government panel on Tuesday exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a move which critics say could doom a rare whale species and harm other marine life.The Endangered Species Committee – which had not convened in more than three decades – voted to approve the request for the ESA exemption at the request of the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. Continue reading...

Economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon over their lack of direction and obsession with violence amid the Iran war. In his Substack post, Krugman tore into Hegseth's beliefs of applying further damage to Iran as the war now enters its 30th day and talks swirl of a ground war, which President Donald Trump has not yet ruled out. Krugman was doubtful that 10,000 troops could secure the Persian Gulf or prompt oil tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz again. "A month into the war, and now they’re talking about pointless ground action and/or war crimes," Krugman wrote. He pointed to Hegseth's troubling focus on lethality. "In this case, our Secretary of Defense, which is his legal title, although he calls himself the Secretary of War, continually argues that if only we get even more violent, if only we do even more damage, that this will somehow translate into success in Iran," Krugman wrote. "He clearly relishes the thought of violence himself. He’s now holding prayer breakfasts, and in his prayer breakfast, he called upon the Lord to support us in 'overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.'""I think this is deeply un-American, but anyway, aside from the evilness — I don’t think there’s any other way to put it — of the world view, how is this supposed to work?" Krugman asked. "If you look at the plans or ideas that are being bruited for using ground forces now, and that’s clearly very much sort the next step here, for using ground forces against Iran, well, yeah, you can seize Kharg Island, although hanging onto it could be very expensive, but then what?"It's unclear at this point whether negotiations were actually underway — and what the administration's objectives were. "Other presidents have been accused of negotiating with themselves," Krugman wrote. "Trump is negotiating with his imaginary friends. There’s no reason at all to believe that these talks are actually happening. But he then pivots midway through the post, to saying, and if we don’t get this, then we’re going to start bombing civilian power plants and water supplies."Trump's thought process could lead to further harm, the economist argued. "So give us what we want or we’ll commit a massive, massive war crime, which I hope is not going to happen," Krugman wrote. "But even if it did, why would you think this would open up the Strait of Hormuz? So it’s this lust for violence with no actual coherent story about how that violence is going to produce results. It’s horrifying.""I really don’t know how this ends, except that it does feel as if this is a quagmire largely in the minds of top Trump officials, Trump himself and Hegseth, who having this utterly unshakable belief that hurting people will produce great results, respond to each failure of violence to produce results by getting even more destructive with no end game in sight," Krugman added. Pete Hegseth Believes in the Lethality Fairy by Paul Krugman"Overwhelming violence of action" as the solution to all problemsRead on Substack

President Donald Trump's ideal authoritarian blueprint has appeared to lose traction while he and other autocrats have started losing their grip on power, former Republican strategist Rick Wilson warned on Monday. In Wilson's Substack, he described how Trump has long admired autocrats Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose political future has come into question just ahead of the upcoming election in the eastern European country. Orbán, a longtime antagonist to the European Union, was viewed as a model by Trump and his political operatives. But now, he has started facing opposition in his country in a push by young voters in Hungary, according to The Associated Press. This signals what could be ahead for Trump and his MAGA coalition, Wilson explained. "I am not, as you are all quite aware by now, a ray of sunshine, but I take this morning’s essay to remind you that three of the world’s worst, most abusive, most poisonously anti-democratic leaders are dead or dying, both physically and politically," Wilson wrote. Steve Bannon, Trump's former White House chief strategist, has long viewed Orbán as a key inspiration for Trump's ascension to power and the MAGA movement. "For years, the Bannonite 'national-conservative' set looked at Viktor Orbán’s Hungary as the North Star," Wilson wrote. "It was their laboratory for illiberal democracy, a place where you could maintain the aesthetic of a republic while gutting its soul. They flocked to Budapest to sip Tokaji and marvel at how easy it was to capture a state by simply rewriting the rules of the game until only one player could ever win.""America’s techno-authoritarians, political authoritarians, and white nationalist authoritarians (yes, the Venn diagram overlaps meaningfully) loved Orban with the heat usually reserved for melting Grindr servers at CPAC," Wilson wrote. "Well, the laboratory is exploding."Global autocracy has shown signs of death, Wilson detailed. "Instead, it’s a cautionary tale: you can’t feed a nation on a diet of pure grievance and absolutely lurid George Soros conspiracy fantasies forever," Wilson wrote. "Eventually, the people realize they can’t eat 'sovereignty,' and the Dear Leader becomes older, fatter, and more obviously greedy, just another corrupt bureaucrat in a good suit."And it's just a matter of time. "The Bannonite dream is hitting a wall of Hungarian reality, and the crash is going to be spectacular, but don’t underestimate how many lessons MAGA’s elite leadership class took from Orban," Wilson added.

Reports, based on X post from unofficial account, follow JD Vance’s accusations and threats of finding ‘legal remedies’Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inboxSeveral news outlets have falsely reported that Somaliland’s government called for the extradition of Ilhan Omar, basing their stories on a post from an X account that does not represent the state despite its claims to the contrary.Fox News, the New York Post, Sinclair Broadcast Group’s the National News Desk and the Independent ran stories on the US representative. The reports centred on a post by @RepOfSomaliland in reaction to claims by JD Vance that Omar had committed immigration fraud, which echoed prior allegations against the Somali-born Minnesota Democrat that she has vehemently denied. Continue reading...

Football federation president on the run with wife and sonConviction in absentia of wide-ranging corruption chargesAuthorities in Congo-Brazzaville have applied to Interpol for an international arrest warrant against Jean-Guy Blaise Mayolas, the president of the country’s football federation, Fecofoot, after he was convicted of embezzling $1.1m in Fifa funds.Mayolas is on the run with his wife and son after they were all sentenced to life imprisonment this month for embezzling funds provided by world football’s governing body as part of its Covid-19 relief plan in February 2021. As the Guardian revealed last year, that included almost $500,000 earmarked for the Congo women’s team. Continue reading...