US President Donald Trump has said he will send letters to select trade partners facing tariff hikes as early as Monday, piling pressure on countries to strike a deal with Washington before a new August 1 deadline.The White House announced sharp levies on dozens of economies in April, citing a lack of “reciprocity” in trade relations, which were set to kick in on Wednesday, July 9.Trump announced on Friday the levies’ imposition would be pushed to August 1 to allow time for talks to wrap up, but said he signed 12 letters to inform some countries of rate hikes, which will likely be sent on Monday.With Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying the administration was “close to several deals,” where do things stand for economies from Taiwan to the European Union?- EU: ‘Ready’ for deal -The European Union said it is “ready for a deal” with Washington, with the bloc’s trade chief meeting his US counterparts Thursday.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU was targeting an “agreement in principle” when it came to the initial July 9 cutoff.Bessent said the European Union is “making very good progress” after a slow start.With no deal, the US tariff on EU goods doubles from the “baseline” of 10 percent to 20 percent — with Trump previously threatening a 50 percent level.- Vietnam: A pact with uncertainties -Washington and Hanoi unveiled a trade pact Wednesday with much fanfare and few details, but it allowed Vietnam to avoid Trump’s initial 46 percent tariff.Under the agreement, Vietnamese goods face a minimum 20 percent tariff while products made elsewhere face a 40 percent levy — a clause to restrict “transshipping” by Chinese groups.But there remain questions on how the higher levy would apply to products using foreign parts.There is also a risk that Beijing will adopt retaliatory measures, analysts warned.- Japan: Rice, autos at stake -Despite being a close US ally and major source of foreign investment, Japan might not escape Trump’s tariff hike.Tokyo’s trade envoy Ryosei Akazawa has made numerous trips to Washington through the end of June.But Trump recently criticized what he described as Japan’s reluctance to open up further to US rice and auto exports.”I’m not sure we’re going to make a deal,” Trump said, adding that the country could pay a tariff of “30 percent, 35 percent, or whatever the number is that we determine.”- India: A good position -Indian manufacturers and exporters want to believe they can avoid a 26 percent tariff.Negotiations between both countries have been going well for weeks, and Trump himself suggested at the end of June that a “very big” agreement was imminent.Ajay Sahai, director general of the Federation of Indian Export Organizations, said the feedback he received “suggests positive developments.” But he maintained that the situation was fluid. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has stressed that agriculture and dairy products remain “very big red lines.”- South Korea: Muted optimism -Seoul, which is already reeling from US tariffs on steel and autos, wants to avert a sweeping 25 percent levy on its other exports.Cooperation in shipbuilding could be a bargaining chip, but “at this stage, both sides still haven’t clearly defined what exactly they want,” said new President Lee Jae Myung on Thursday.”I can’t say with confidence that we’ll be able to wrap everything up by July 8,” he added.- Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan in the wings -Other Asian economies including Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia, which faces a 49 percent tariff, wait with bated breath.Indonesia has indicated willingness to boost energy, agriculture and merchandise imports from the United States. Bangladesh is proposing to buy Boeing planes and step up imports of US agriculture products.Taiwan, for whom Washington is a vital security partner, faces a 32 percent duty without a pact.Although both sides have faced bumps along the way, Taiwanese Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim said “negotiators from both sides are working diligently” to find a path forward.- Switzerland: Hope for delay -Switzerland’s government said Washington has acknowledged it was acting in good faith, and assumes its tariff level will remain at 10 percent on July 9 while negotiations continue.But without a decision by the president as of the end of June, Switzerland did not rule out that levies could still rise to a promised 31 percent.burs-jug-bys/jgc/aks/aha

In the heart of Data Center Alley — a patch of suburban Washington where much of the world’s internet traffic flows — Visa operates its global fraud command center.The numbers that the payments giant grapples with are enormous. Every year, $15 trillion flows through Visa’s networks, representing roughly 15 percent of the world’s economy. And bad actors constantly try to syphon off some of that money.Modern fraudsters vary dramatically in sophistication.To stay ahead, Visa has invested $12 billion over the past five years building AI-powered cyber fraud detection capabilities, knowing that criminals are also spending big.”You have everybody from a single individual threat actor looking to make a quick buck all the way to really corporatized criminal organizations that generate tens or hundreds of millions of dollars annually from fraud and scam activities,” Michael Jabbara, Visa’s global head of fraud solutions, told AFP during a tour of the company’s security campus.”These organizations are very structured in how they operate.”The best-resourced criminal syndicates now focus on scams that directly target consumers, enticing them into purchases or transactions by manipulating their emotions.”Consumers are continuously vulnerable. They can be exploited, and that’s where we’ve seen a much higher incidence of attacks recently,” Jabbara said.- Scam centers -The warning signs are clear: anything that seems too good to be true online is suspicious, and romance opportunities with strangers from distant countries are especially dangerous.”What you don’t realize is that the person you’re chatting with is more likely than not in a place like Myanmar,” Jabbara warned.He said human-trafficking victims are forced to work in multi-billion-dollar cyber scam centers built by Asian crime networks in Myanmar’s lawless border regions. The most up-to-date fraud techniques are systematic and quietly devastating. Once criminals obtain your card information, they automatically distribute it across numerous merchant websites that generate small recurring charges — amounts low enough that victims may not notice for months.Some of these operations increasingly resemble legitimate tech companies, offering services and digital products to fraudsters much like Google or Microsoft cater to businesses.On the dark web, criminals can purchase comprehensive fraud toolkits. “You can buy the software. You can buy a tutorial on how to use the software. You can get access to a mule network on the ground or you can get access to a bot network” to carry out denial-of-service attacks that overwhelm servers with traffic, effectively shutting them down.Just as cloud computing lowered barriers for startups by eliminating the need to build servers, “the same type of trend has happened in the cyber crime and fraud space,” Jabbara explained.These off-the-shelf services can also enable bad actors to launch brute force attacks on an industrial scale — using repeated payment attempts to crack a card’s number, expiry date, and security code.The sophistication extends to corporate-style management, Jabbara said.Some criminal organizations now employ chief risk officers who determine operational risk appetite. They might decide that targeting government infrastructure and hospitals generates an excessive amount of attention from law enforcement and is too risky to pursue. – ‘Millions of attacks’ -To combat these unprecedented threats, Jabbara leads a payment scam disruption team focused on understanding criminal methodologies.From a small room called the Risk Operations Center in Virginia, employees analyze data streams on multiple screens, searching for patterns that distinguish fraudulent activity from legitimate credit card use.In the larger Cyber Fusion Center, staff monitor potential cyberattacks targeting Visa’s own infrastructure around the clock.”We deal with millions of attacks across different parts of our network,” Jabbara noted, emphasizing that most are handled automatically without human intervention.Visa maintains identical facilities in London and Singapore, ensuring 24-hour global vigilance.

US President Donald Trump on Sunday slammed former ally Elon Musk’s launching of a new political party as “ridiculous,” deepening the Republican’s feud with the man who was once his biggest backer.Trump also branded the SpaceX and Tesla tycoon a “TRAIN WRECK” who had gone “off the rails” after Musk said he wanted to challenge the current US political system.The world’s richest man was almost inseparable from Trump as he headed the cost-cutting “Department of Government Efficiency,” but they fell out hard over the president’s “big beautiful” tax and spending mega-bill.”I think it’s ridiculous to start a third party,” Trump told reporters before he boarded Air Force One on his way back to Washington from his New Jersey golf club.”It’s always been a two-party system, and I think starting a third party just adds to confusion. Third parties have never worked. So he can have fun with it, but I think it’s ridiculous,” he said.South African-born Musk announced on Saturday that he would create the so-called “America Party” to challenge what he called the United States’ “one-party system.”Musk says the president’s massive domestic spending plan would explode the US debt, and has vowed to do everything in his power to defeat lawmakers who voted for it. The former DOGE boss, who led a huge drive to slash federal spending and cut jobs, equated Trump’s Republicans with rival Democrats when it came to domestic spending. “When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Musk posted on X, the social media platform that he owns.Musk gave few details of his plan and it was not clear whether he had registered the party with US electoral authorities, but it could cause Republicans headaches in the 2026 midterm elections — and beyond.- ‘Saddened’ -In a sign of how sensitive the issue could be for Trump, he took to his Truth Social network while still on Air Force One to double down on his assault on Musk.”I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,” Trump posted.”The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS, and we have enough of that with the Radical Left Democrats.”In a lengthy diatribe, Trump repeated his earlier assertion that Musk’s ownership of electric vehicle company Tesla had made him turn on the president due to the spending bill cutting subsidies for such automobiles.Musk has insisted that his opposition is primarily due to the bill increasing the US fiscal deficit and sovereign debt.Earlier on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also threw shade at Musk’s attempts to enter the political fray, telling him to stick to running his companies.When asked by CNN if Musk’s plan bothered the Trump administration, Bessent offered thinly veiled criticism.”I believe that the boards of directors at his various companies wanted him to come back and run those companies, which he is better at than anyone,” Bessent said.”So I imagine that those board of directors did not like this announcement yesterday and will be encouraging him to focus on his business activities, not his political activities.”Musk left DOGE in May to focus full-time on his corporate responsibilities, with Tesla’s sales and image especially suffering from his brief venture into Trump’s inner circle.Trump gave him a grand send-off in the Oval Office, during a bizarre ceremony during which Musk appeared with a black eye and received a golden key to the White House from the president.But just days later the two were exchanging bitter insults on social media after Musk criticized Trump’s flagship spending bill.Trump would not comment on Sunday when asked if he would be asking Musk to return the golden key.

As the raging Guadalupe River burst its banks and wreaked havoc in central Texas, a young woman named Joyce Bandon sent a text message that may have been her last.Triggering one of many frantic search efforts, Bandon pleaded for help from a house along the river, according to Louis Deppe, leader of a group of volunteers trying to help the Bandon family find their daughter.Torrential rains starting the night before the Independence Day holiday caused the river to rise the height of a two-story building in less than hour, flooding parts of Kerr County, including several children’s camps, tearing down trees and tossing cars as if they were toys. The death toll as of Sunday afternoon was at least 78, with more casualties expected.Bandon and three friends had gone to a country house to spend the July 4 holiday together. It rained all Thursday night into Friday morning, when disaster struck.”Their house collapsed at about 4 in the morning and they were being washed away. On her cellphone, the last message (her family) got was ‘we’re being washed away’ and the phone went dead,” Deppe told AFP.He said the team works in groups of two or three people as they look through the debris and detritus left behind by the deluge.”One of the bodies was 8 to 10 feet in a tree, surrounded up by so much debris. Not one person could see it, so the more eyes, the better,” he added.The river is returning to normal now but there is utter destruction everywhere on its banks, like a dead cow hanging from a tree, its head caught between two branches.Nearby a pickup truck lies upside down and around it dozens of dead fish swept out of the water are beginning to rot and stink.Helicopters fly overhead looking for survivors or bodies while rescue teams in boats ride up and down the river and emergency officials comb its banks.Little by little, debris like uprooted trees and ruined cars is being taken away.- Finding bodies -Tina Hambly, 55, the mother of Joyce Bandon’s best friend and roommate, walks around with a kayak oar poking at branches and other debris, hoping to find something or someone. “We’re doing a seven-mile stretch, and there’s seven teams and we’re doing a mile apiece, so just kind of dividing and conquering, trying to find any four of them or anyone,” Hambly told AFP.”But, you know, we are friends and families and frankly, some strangers have shown up,” she added.In the town of Hunt, one of the worst hit areas, a summer gathering for children called Camp Mystic initially reported dozens of those kids missing in the flooding. The figure now stands at 11 plus a counselor.Toys, clothing, towels and other belongings lie strewn around camp cabins full of mud.The volunteers looking for Bandon have found some bodies — two early on Saturday morning and then another stuck in debris up in a tree. “And they did let me know that she was one of the Camp Mystic girls that went missing,” said Justin Morales, 36, part of the search team.”We’re happy to give a family closure,” he said. “That’s why we’re out here.”

Rescuers in Texas raced against time Sunday to find dozens of missing people, including children, swept away by flash floods that killed at least 78 people, with forecasters warning of new deluges.US President Donald Trump said he would “probably” visit the southern state on Friday.The president brushed off concerns his administration’s wide-ranging cuts to weather forecasting and related federal agencies had left local warning systems worse-off.Instead, Trump described the flash floods as a “100-year catastrophe” that “nobody expected.”At least 40 adults and 28 children were killed in the worst-hit Kerr County in central Texas, Sheriff Larry Leitha said, while at least ten more people were killed by flooding in nearby areas.”You will see the death toll rise today,” warned Texas public safety chief Freeman Martin at a press conference.”Across the state, in all the areas affected by flooding, there are 41 known missing,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said.As questions grew about why warnings did not come sooner or people were not evacuated earlier in the area popular with campers, Trump said the situation was a “Biden setup.” “That was not our setup,” Trump told reporters on Sunday, adding that he would “not” hire back meteorologists when probed about staff and budget cuts at the National Weather Service (NWS).Asked about whether he would change his plans to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he responded: “FEMA is something we can talk about later.”Trump, who previously said disaster relief should be handled at the state-level, also signed a major disaster declaration that freed up resources for Texas.- Missing girls -In central Texas, some 17 helicopters joined the search for missing people, including ten girls and a counselor from a riverside Christian summer camp where about 750 people had been staying when disaster struck.In a terrifying display of nature’s power, the rain-swollen waters of the Guadalupe River reached treetops and the roofs of cabins in Camp Mystic as girls slept overnight Friday, washing away some of them and leaving a scene of devastation.Blankets, teddy bears and other belongings at the camp were caked in mud. Windows in the cabins were shattered, apparently by the force of the water.The National Weather Service (NWS) warned Sunday that slow-moving thunderstorms threatened more flash floods over the saturated ground of central Texas.Governor Abbott warned that heavy rainfall could “lead to potential flash flooding” in Kerrville and surrounding areas, as officials warned people against going near the swollen river and its creeks.The flooding began at the start of the Fourth of July holiday weekend as months’ worth of rain fell in a matter of hours, much of it coming overnight as people slept.The Guadalupe surged around 26 feet (eight meters) — more than a two-story building — in just 45 minutes.- ‘Washed away’ -Flash floods, which occur when the ground is unable to absorb torrential rainfall, are not unusual in this region of south and central Texas, known colloquially as “Flash Flood Alley.”Scientists say that in recent years human-driven climate change has made extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and heat waves more frequent and more intense.Officials said while rescue operations were ongoing, they were also starting the process of debris removal.”There’s debris all over the place that makes roads impassable, that makes reconstruction projects unachievable,” Abbott said.People from elsewhere in Texas converged on Kerr County to help look for the missing. Texans also started flying personal drones to help look but local officials urged them to stop, citing a danger for rescue aircraft.One of the searches focused on four young women who were staying in a house that was washed away by the river. Adam Durda and his wife Amber, both 45, drove three hours to help.”There was a group of 20-year-olds that were in a house that had gotten washed away,” Durda told AFP. “That’s who the family requested help for, but of course, we’re looking for anybody.”Justin Morales, 36, was part of a search team that found three bodies, including that of a Camp Mystic girl caught up in a tree.”We’re happy to give a family closure and hopefully we can keep looking and find some of the… you know, whoever,” he told AFP.”Help give some of those families closure. That’s why we’re out here.”