From the unproven medical claims to the self-proclaimed expertise, anyone watching Donald Trump’s autism announcements Monday could have been forgiven for having flashbacks.There were strong echoes of the US president’s pandemic performance during his first term, when he once famously mused about injecting disinfectant to counter Covid.Five years later, the Republican’s claims were almost as eye-popping.And with the health of millions at stake as he urged pregnant women not to take the painkiller Tylenol — before expounding his theories on vaccines — the stakes were just as high.”There’s a rumor — and I don’t know if it’s so or not — that Cuba, they don’t have Tylenol because they don’t have the money for Tylenol. And they have virtually no autism,” Trump said at the White House.It was perhaps the most outrageous of the claims Trump made during a more than hour-long press conference attended by an AFP reporter — but it was far from the last.”The Amish, as an example. They have essentially no autism,” Trump said of the traditionalist people, known for their horse-drawn carts and rejection of modern technology.Turning to his vaccine-skeptic Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, as he asked whether that was actually true, Trump added: “Bobby wants to be very careful with what he says. I’m not so careful with what I say.”Time and again the 79-year-old Trump admitted that his personal theories were just that — theories — even as he cast himself in the role of America’s physician-in-chief.”This is based on what I feel,” said Trump as he repeated long debunked concerns over the MMR shot combining vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella.Trump also urged further spacing for childhood vaccines that have been the cornerstone of public health programs around the world for decades — before adding: “I’m not a doctor but I’m giving my opinion.”- ‘Tough it out’ -The billionaire former reality TV star has long made his name challenging the conventional wisdom on politics and diplomacy, and it has won him two elections.But it is on health where his views have often veered furthest from the mainstream. During the Covid pandemic Trump repeatedly resisted lockdowns and masking measures, while throwing his weight behind unproven drugs like hydroxychloroquine.He was widely mocked when, during one of his many freewheeling White House briefings on Covid in 2020, he gave some increasingly bizarre suggestions about how to treat the disease.Trump mused about bringing “light inside the body” — and disinfectant.”I see the disinfectant, it knocks it out in a minute… is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside,” he asked a bemused expert.During his second term, Trump’s pick of Kennedy as his health secretary has brought once fringe medical ideas into the heart of the government.Trump himself says he has long been preoccupied with autism, and showed supreme confidence in his views on Monday — even as he struggled to pronounce “acetaminophen,” or paracetamol, the active ingredient in Tylenol.”Don’t take it,” Trump said repeatedly.He urged pregnant women in pain to avoid the drug and “tough it out,” but had few answers for what they should do for fevers that could harm them or their babies.Veering off on the subject of vaccines, Trump also had his own theories.He insisted that children should not be vaccinated against Hepatitis B until the age of 12, versus soon after birth, saying: “Hepatitis B is sexually transmitted. There’s no reason to give a baby that’s almost just born hepatitis B.”Trump added that children were being loaded up with “too much liquid” while being innoculated against potentially fatal diseases — repeating a frequent anti-vaccine talking point.”They pump so much stuff into those beautiful little babies, it’s a disgrace,” he said. “It looks like they’re pumping into a horse.”

US President Donald Trump will denounce “globalist institutions” in his first United Nations address since returning to the White House and also meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky against a backdrop of mounting tension with Russia.Trump will speak from the UN General Assembly rostrum for the first time since his political comeback as he tears down decades of US participation in international organizations.Opening the annual summit, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that aid cuts led by the United States were “wreaking havoc” in the world.”What kind of world will we choose? A world of raw power — or a world of laws?” Guterres said.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump would be touting “renewal of American strength around the world” and will describe “how globalist institutions have significantly decayed the world order.”Trump’s second term has opened with a blaze of nationalist policies curbing cooperation with the rest of the world.He has moved to pull the United States out of the World Health Organization and the UN climate body, severely curtailed US development assistance and wielded sanctions against foreign judges over rulings he sees as violating sovereignty.- New talks with Zelensky -Trump will meet Zelensky for the second time since he sat down in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 15 — a summit that broke Moscow’s isolation in the West but yielded no breakthrough on Ukraine.Despite Trump’s insistence that he can broker a quick end to the war, Russia has not only kept up its barrage of attacks on Ukraine in the past month but rattled nerves with drone or air incursions in NATO members Poland, Estonia and Romania.Trump said last week that Putin had “really let me down.”Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a television interview Tuesday, said that Trump was still considering imposing sanctions on Russia but also wanted Europe to take action by buying less oil.”We’re the only ones that can talk to Ukraine and Russia, and everyone’s encouraged us to play that role,” Rubio told NBC News.”At some point that role might end. As you can see, the President’s already repeatedly expressed his deep disappointment at the direction that Putin is taking this, even after Alaska,” he said.A UN report released Tuesday found that Russian authorities have tortured civilian detainees in Ukrainian areas Moscow occupies, including sexual violence, in a “widespread and systematic manner.”Zelensky will again need to tread carefully with Trump, who — along with Vice President JD Vance — berated the wartime leader in an explosive February 28 meeting at the White House, calling him ungrateful for billions of dollars in US military assistance.- New York telecoms plot -The annual UN gathering goes on all week, but Trump, who first made his name in New York real estate, is spending barely a day in the city. One of Trump’s few other one-on-one meetings will be with Argentina’s right-wing President Javier Milei, an ideological ally to whose government the United States is considering offering an economic lifeline.Ahead of his visit to the UN district, now swarming with heavily armed police and agents and crisscrossed with barricades and road closures, the US Secret Service said they had disrupted a “telecommunications-related” plot.The Secret Service said it “dismantled a network of electronic devices located throughout the New York tristate area that were used to conduct multiple telecommunications-related threats directed towards senior US government officials, which represented an imminent threat to the agency’s protective operations.”The statement said that “nation-state threat actors” were involved.Trump’s appearance comes a day after French President Emmanuel Macron led a group of Western allies of the United States in recognizing a Palestinian state, a historic but largely symbolic step strongly opposed by Israel.The United States and Israel both shunned the special session.

High-skilled migrants are vital for the US economy, the OECD’s chief economist told AFP, after the United States imposed a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas widely used by the tech industry.Alvaro Pereira, who is leaving his post after being named governor of Portugal’s central bank, spoke to AFP as the Paris-based organisation released an updated outlook for the world economy.The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a 38-member grouping of wealthy nations, upgraded the forecast to 3.2 percent growth in 2025, up from 2.9 percent in its last report in June.The OECD said the economy “proved more resilient than anticipated” in the first half of the year as companies rushed to import goods before US President Donald Trump’s tariffs took effect.It also raised the US growth outlook from 1.6 percent to 1.8 percent but warned it was expected to slow as higher tariffs start to bite.The OECD said cuts in the US federal workforce and Trump’s crackdown on immigration would also soften growth.”There’s obviously less labour growth and less labour growth means that obviously this will impact total GDP,” Pereira told AFP.He noted that the report was written before the new H-1B visa fee rule came into force over the weekend.”We do think that continuing to attract high-skilled individuals from the United States or from around the world is a key strength of the US economy,” Pereira said.”This will only become exacerbated with the AI boom, because basically there’s significant labour shortages in the ICT (information and communication technology) sector.”H-1B visas allow companies to sponsor foreign workers with specialised skills — such as scientists, engineers and computer programmers — to work in the US, initially for three years but extendable to six.Such visas are widely used by the tech industry. Indian nationals account for nearly three-quarters of the permits allotted via lottery system each year.The US and Germany are the two OECD countries with the highest labour shortage in the ICT sector, Pereira said.- Tariff impact taking ‘longer’ -The OECD report said the impact of Trump’s tariffs had been mitigated by companies “front-loading” — importing goods before the levies came into force.”The impact of tariffs is taking longer to reach the economy,” Pereira said.”A lot of firms decided to act and export a stockpile (to) the United States … to avoid the tariffs.” But he warned that the OECD was already seeing “less growth and more inflation” than expected.”Usually when the world economy is doing really well, it’s growing around four percent, so were far away from that,” he said.