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The US trade deficit reached a new record in March, according to fresh government data published Tuesday, as imports surged ahead of President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariff rollout.The overall trade gap of the world’s largest economy jumped 14.0 percent to $140.5 billion for the month, the Commerce Department said in a statement. This was the widest deficit for a month on record, dating back to 1992, and marked a $17.3 billion increase from a revised gap of $123.2 billion in February.”Businesses pulled forward needed industrial supplies and retailers stocked their shelves with consumer goods in March ahead of tariffs,” economists at Wells Fargo wrote in a note to clients. The data covers the month before Trump introduced steep levies on China, and lower “baseline” levies of 10 percent on goods from most other countries.The White House also introduced higher tariffs on dozens of other trading partners, and then paused them until July to give the United States time to renegotiate existing trade arrangements.The March trade deficit came in above the median estimate of $137.6 billion from surveys of economists conducted by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.The trade gap was the result of a 4.4 percent rise in imports to $419.0 billion, as people rushed to buy goods ahead of the introduction of the widely trailed tariffs. By far the largest increase was seen in the import of consumer goods, which increased by $22.5 billion in March.Exports rose by a modest 0.2 percent to $278.5 billion. “April may bring a last ditch effort of firms front running tariffs, but after that net exports are set to reverse dramatically,” the economists at Wells Fargo said. 

The US Federal Reserve began a two-day discussion over interest rates Tuesday, with policymakers widely expected to pause again and wait for clarity on the economic impact of Donald Trump’s tariff rollout.The US president’s on-again, off-again rollout has unnerved investors, and caused analysts to pare back their forecasts for growth this year and to hike their inflation outlook. This is a challenging situation for the Fed’s rate-setting committee, which began its two-day meeting in Washington at 8:30 am local time (1230 GMT).The US central bank has a dual mandate to tackle both inflation and unemployment, primarily by hiking and lowering its benchmark lending rate, which acts like a throttle or brake for demand.Both the inflation and unemployment rates are close to where the Fed wants them, making another rate cut pause this week overwhelmingly likely. That would leave the bank’s key lending rate at between 4.25 percent and 4.50 percent, where it has sat since last December. Financial markets see a roughly 97 percent chance that the Fed will vote to pause this week, according to data from CME Group. 

Four Palestinian photographers from Agence France-Presse (AFP) were finalists for their Gaza coverage in the “Breaking News Photography” category of the Pulitzer Prize, the most prestigious awards in US journalism.The jury for the award, presented on Monday by Columbia University in New York, praised the “powerful images” from Gaza by Mahmud Hams, Omar Al-Qattaa, Said Khatib and Bashar Taleb.The AFP photographers’ work encapsulated “the enduring humanity of the people of Gaza amid widespread destruction and loss,” they said.The Pulitzer nomination crowns an exceptional year for Hams, who also won the News award at the Visa pour l’Image festival in Perpignan and the Bayeux Calvados Prize for war correspondents — two of the most prestigious international awards in photojournalism.AFP has provided uninterrupted coverage of the war in Gaza since 2023, when Hamas launched its attack against Israel on October 7, with teams on both sides of the border to guarantee rigorous and impartial information.AFP’s local journalists are working in perilous conditions in Gaza to document the consequences of the war on civilians.Since the start of the war, virtually no journalist has been able to cross into Gaza, which borders Israel and Egypt.”This recognition is a tribute not only to the talent and bravery of these photographers, but also to AFP’s steadfast commitment to documenting events with accuracy and integrity, wherever they unfold,” Phil Chetwynd, AFP’s global news director, said in a statement.”We are deeply grateful to Mahmud, Omar, Said, and Bashar, whose work gives voice to those caught in the heart of the conflict,” he added.

Hollywood reacted with skepticism on Monday to US President Donald Trump’s announcement of 100 percent tariffs on foreign films, with movie insiders calling it a policy made up on the fly by a president who fails to understand how the industry works.”It makes no sense,” entertainment lawyer Jonathan Handel said of Trump’s idea.Handel told AFP that many US productions, from James Bond flicks to the “Mission Impossible” franchise, are filmed abroad for obvious creative reasons.”If the stunt is Tom Cruise climbing up the Eiffel Tower, what are we supposed to do, shoot at the replica Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas?” Handel said. “I mean, it’s just nonsensical.”Writing on his platform Truth Social platform on Sunday, Trump said: “I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.””WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!” he wrote.His words plunged the movie industry into uncertainty as entertainment companies saw their stock prices fall, unions struggled to understand if the bombshell also applies to TV series and everyone wondered if the policy could even be enforced.Handel said movies involve intellectual property.”You can buy a movie ticket, but you don’t buy a movie the way you buy a piece of clothing or an automobile,” which can be taxed as they cross a border into the United States, he said.Even if a system could be devised to impose tariffs on movies filmed outside the United States, such levies would do more harm than good to the US industry, Handel said.”The result of that would be to reduce production, to increase the cost of movies, to reduce the number of movies available for movie theaters and streamers to show, which would damage the distribution side of the business,” he said.California Governor Gavin Newsom called on Monday for a partnership with the Trump administration to “Make America Film Again”.”We’ve proven what strong state incentives can do. Now it’s time for a real federal partnership to Make America Film Again,” he wrote on social media platform X.- ‘Confusion’ -Unions for actors and other media and entertainment workers said they awaited more details of Trump’s plan but supported the goal of increasing production of movies, TV and streaming in the United States. “We will continue to advocate for policies that strengthen our competitive position, accelerate economic growth and create good middle-class jobs for American workers,” said one such guild, SAG-AFTRA.Many movie studios and other industry organizations had yet to officially react by Monday but Trump’s announcement triggered crisis meetings, Hollywood news outlets reported, publishing skeptical comments from insiders speaking on condition of anonymity.”I can’t see his target here other than confusion and distraction,” the showbiz news outlet Deadline quoted a top distribution executive as saying.”Let’s hope this only encourages desperately needed increases in US state tax incentives being implemented ASAP,” the person said.Such incentives offered by other countries — such as Britain, Canada and Ireland, among others — are a lure for US movie studios to film outside the country.Australia, which for years used generous tax breaks and other cash incentives to lure foreign filmmakers, said it still wants to make “great films” with the United States.With Trump’s tariffs threatening the home of Hollywood hits including “The Matrix”, “Elvis” and “Crocodile Dundee”, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Tuesday that “collaboration is a good thing.”While Trump’s idea is divisive, there is widespread agreement that the US movie industry is in dire straits.Hollywood has struggled to get back on its feet since the historic strikes by actors and writers that shut it down in 2023.The number of filming days in Los Angeles hit a record low in 2024, excluding the total shutdown in 2020 because of the Covid pandemic.This is in part because many movies are now filmed in a growing number of countries that offer incentives such as tax rebates.Deadline quoted a Hollywood movie financier as saying he agreed with Trump’s goal of having more movies filmed in the United States.”But obviously the need is for rebates, not tariffs. Tariffs will just choke the remaining life out of the business,” they were quoted as saying.As Hollywood fretted over Trump’s announcement, the White House said no decision on foreign film tariffs has been made. “The Administration is exploring all options to deliver on President Trump’s directive to safeguard our country’s national and economic security while Making Hollywood Great Again,” the White House said in a statement.Trump told reporters Monday: “I’m not looking to hurt the industry. I want to help the industry. But they’re given financing by other countries.”That seemingly conciliatory remark stopped short of walking back the film tariff announcement, as Trump criticized Newsom, who is pushing for his state to double the tax credits it grants to the movie industry.”Our film industry has been decimated by other countries taking them out, and also by incompetence,” Trump said of Newsom.”He’s just allowed it to be taken away from, you know, Hollywood.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney meets Donald Trump on Tuesday for the first time since he won reelection on a pledge to stand up to the US president’s tariffs and threats to annex the United States’ northern neighbor.The 60-year-old Liberal Party leader has said that things cannot be the same with the United States under Trump, and warned not to expect any immediate agreements from the meeting at the White House.Trump has sparked a major trade war with Canada, which counts the United States as its main ally and trading partner, while repeatedly making extraordinary calls for Canada to become the 51st US state.Republican Trump called Carney a “very nice gentleman” after they spoke last week but said on Monday that he was “not sure” what Carney wanted to talk about.”He’s coming to see me. I’m not sure what he wants to see me about, but I guess he wants to make a deal. Everybody does,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.Trump is set to welcome Carney at 11:30 am (1530 GMT), followed by lunch and then a meeting in the Oval Office.Trump slapped general tariffs of 25 percent on Canada and Mexico and sector-specific levies on autos, some of which have been suspended pending negotiations. He has also imposed similar duties on steel and aluminum.Carney has vowed to remake Canada’s ties with the United States in perhaps its biggest political and economic shift since World War II.”Our old relationship based on steadily increasing integration is over. The questions now are how our nations will cooperate in the future,” Carney said on Friday.The Canadian leader said he would also “fight to get the best deal” on the tariffs.But Trump’s ultra-loyal Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said it would be “really complex” to reach a deal.”They have their socialist regime and it’s basically feeding off of America,” he told Fox Business on Monday. “I just don’t see how it works out perfectly.”- ‘Important moment’ -The US president inserted himself into Canada’s election early on with a social media post saying Canada would face “ZERO TARIFFS” if it “becomes the cherished 51st state.”Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party had been on track to win the vote but Trump’s attacks, combined with the departure of unpopular former premier Justin Trudeau, transformed the race.Carney, who replaced Trudeau as prime minister in March, convinced voters that his experience managing economic crises made him the ideal candidate to defy Trump.The political newcomer previously served as governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, and in the latter post he played a key role reassuring markets after the 2016 Brexit vote.Carney is known for weighing his words carefully but he will face a challenge dealing with the confrontational Trump on the US president’s home turf.”This is a very important moment for him, since he insisted during the campaign that he could take on Mr Trump,” Genevieve Tellier, a political scientist at the University of Ottawa, told AFP.The Canadian premier would also have to avoid the fate of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who walked into a brutal tongue-lashing from Trump and Vice President JD Vance in February.”Everyone obviously remembers the altercation with Zelensky,” said Tellier.One point in Carney’s favor is that he is not Trudeau, the slick former prime minister whom Trump famously loathed and belittled as “governor” of Canada, she added.The world will also be watching, with Carney’s victory one of two by left-leaning leaders in the past week in elections that Trump’s stance may have swayed.Carney’s victory came just days before Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also won reelection in a vote that was overshadowed by Trump’s tariff threats.On arrival in the US capital, the Canadian PM struck a confident tone.”Canada and the United States are strongest when we work together — and that work starts now,” he said on social media.

Renee Guette, 98, laughed as she looked at her computer screen in Texas. On the other end of the video call was 97-year-old Andree Dupont, living in France.The women, who supported the French resistance against Nazi occupation, had a moving reunion in April — it was the first time they had seen each other since being freed from a German concentration camp 80 years ago.”Dedee, it’s funny to see you after all these years. We’ve become old girls!” Guette said, using Dupont’s nickname.”Seeing you again fills me with emotion,” said Dupont, her voice trembling. “I give you a big kiss, my darling,” she added, blowing a kiss to the screen during the call, which was witnessed by AFP.”Are the memories coming back for you too?” Dupont asked. “Oh yes!” Guette said. “But they are not coming out of my head. There are too many things we can’t explain.”As the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, marking the end of World War II on the continent, approaches, the women shared their emotional story of wartime sacrifice and suffering.Dupont and Guette were both born in 1927 and grew up in French villages around 350 kilometers (220 miles) apart.After World War II broke out and Nazi Germany invaded France, both women — aged just 16 — joined the resistance networks in their villages in 1943.Dupont became a “liaison officer” transmitting messages — and sometimes weapons — across the western Sarthe region using only her bicycle. One day, she recalled, “I had a towel with a dismantled revolved inside, and I smiled as I passed the Germans.”Guette was a postal worker who smuggled ration coupons and messages to resistance fighters. – Deported -In April 1944, disaster struck as Dupont was arrested along with other members of her village’s resistance network — 16 people in all, including her father and aunt. “I was folding the laundry at around 10 at night. I heard knocking on the doors and knew what was happening right away,” she said.Guette was caught four days later by a French agent of the Gestapo, the secret police of Nazi Germany.  “He told me, ‘So, a young girl from a good family who took a turn for the worst,'” Guette remembered. “And I told him that he hadn’t turned out any better. And he slapped me!”The two teenagers met at a prison in Romainville close to Paris. They learned about D-Day — the Allied invasion of France in June 1944 — but the glimmer of hope the news offered was soon crushed. “We thought we were saved! But the Germans needed us to work in the war factories,” explained Guette.On June 25, 1944, Guette — prisoner 43,133 — was transferred to the HASAG Leipzig sub-camp linked to Buchenwald. It held 5,000 women forced to manufacture weapons. Dupont was prisoner 41,129. The pair recalled working at night with newspaper shoved under their clothes to protect against the cold, their hair being infested with lice, and beatings from German guards.They also described the naked bodies of those who did not survive, piled up and waiting to be moved to the crematorium. “They did a lot of nasty things to us,” said Guette.- Freedom -By mid-April 1945, weeks before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender, the Nazis evacuated the Leipzig camp, and inmates began the so-called “death marches,” designed to keep large number of concentration camp prisoners out of Allied hands.Guette told of walking all day and night with bloody feet, surviving only off rapeseed and potatoes.She recalled washing for the first time in months in the Elbe, one of central Europe’s largest rivers, and also a bullet whizzing past her left ear during fighting between the “Boche” — a derogatory term for Germans — and American soldiers.Victory in Europe was formally declared on May 8, 1945, and the pair found themselves back in France. In Paris, Dupont found her mother, and her father did return from the camps. But her aunt was killed in the gas chambers. Guette headed home on the train. “You know what, Dedee. When I got there, I was not even sure I was home. Did that happen to you?” Guette asked.Dupont replied: “I knew I was home when I saw the village clock tower.”Guette, who has lived in the United States since the 1970s, no longer travels to her home country but said she would like to see Dupont again, even if it means getting there “on all fours.””Lots of love, Dedee, perhaps we’ll find each other again up there,” Guette said before the women ended their call.

Ford reported a 65 percent drop in first-quarter profits Monday, citing a near-term drag on auto sales from new vehicle launches, as it withdrew its forecast amid tariff uncertainty.The carmaker estimated a full-year net hit of about $1.5 billion in adjusted operating earnings following President Donald Trump’s myriad tariff actions since returning to the White House in January.The company has implemented some supply chain changes to mitigate any blowback from Trump’s tariffs, shaving $1 billion from the overall tariff drag, which Ford estimated at $2.5 billion after levies on imported finished vehicles, steel and aluminum and imported parts.”Our teams have done a lot to minimize the impact of tariffs on our business,” Chief Financial Officer Sherry House said on a conference call with reporters.Profits came in at $471 million, beating analyst expectations but just over a third of the level in the 2024 period, with revenues falling five percent to $40.7 billion.In the first quarter, Ford wholesale units fell seven percent from the year-ago level, a drop the automaker had previously telegraphed due to slowed output at plants in Kentucky and Michigan where new vehicles are being launched.In March, Ford began shipping the new Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator to customers.Profits fell in Ford’s “Pro” division, which is geared toward fleet and sales to businesses, and in its “Blue” division, which consists of conventional internal combustion engine cars. But losses declined in Ford’s electric vehicle division.Ford described its underlying business as “strong,” saying it had been on track with the prior projection of between $7 and $8.5 billion in adjusted operating earnings, excluding tariff-related impacts.Ford’s measures to limit tariffs thus far include adjusting vehicle shipments from Mexico to Canada to avoid triggering US tariffs, said House. The company was also avoiding levies on parts that “merely pass through the US.”Last week, Trump announced steps to mitigate tariffs on auto parts, permitting companies to offset a fraction of imported part costs for two years to allow automakers time to relocate supply chains.While the White House has not done anything to lessen the drag of 25 percent tariffs on finished autos, House said Ford expects an offset from US-made parts assembled in foreign plants.- Supply chain uncertainty -Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley said Ford intended to stay “very aggressive” in chasing customers. The company last week announced it was extending a promotion that offers employee pricing on many retail models, lifting car sales significantly in April.But Ford executives expect pricing to rise later in 2025 as the tariffs reverberate through, likely denting sales in the second half of the year.House expects “some potential compression” in sales in the second half of 2025 when prices could tick higher amid tariffs, resulting in a net for all of 2025 of flat or up about one percent.Ford is “suspending” its guidance due to myriad uncertainties. Besides tariffs and potential retaliatory tariffs, Ford cited other “material near-term” risks as including potential supply chain disruption and uncertainty over emissions policy changes in Washington.The company is monitoring the impact of China’s restrictions on rare earth elements, which play an important part in manufacturing and could potentially cause disruptions in auto supply chain, said Ford Chief Operating Officer Kumar Galhotra.That could result in lower production of vehicles at Ford or at a competitor, further altering the competitive pricing dynamics, Galhotra said.Ford fell 2.3 percent in after-hours trading.

President Donald Trump’s education secretary said Monday that Harvard will no longer receive federal grants, escalating an ongoing battle with the prestigious university as it challenges the funding cuts in court.The Trump administration has for weeks locked horns with Harvard and other higher education institutions over claims they tolerate anti-Semitism on their campuses — threatening their budgets, tax-exempt status and enrollment of foreign students.Education Secretary Linda McMahon, in a letter sent to Harvard’s president and posted online, said that the university “should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government, since none will be provided.”She alleged that Harvard has “failed to abide by its legal obligations, its ethical and fiduciary duties, its transparency responsibilities, and any semblance of academic rigor.”Harvard — routinely ranked among the world’s top universities — has drawn Trump’s ire by refusing to comply with his demands that it accept government oversight of its admissions, hiring practices and political slant.That prompted the Trump administration to in mid-April freeze $2.2 billion in federal funding, with a total of $9 billion under review. McMahon, a former wrestling executive, said that her letter “marks the end of new grants for the University.”Harvard is the wealthiest US university with an endowment valued at $53.2 billion in 2024.The latest move comes as Trump and his White House crack down on US universities on several fronts, justified as a reaction to what they say is uncontrolled anti-Semitism and a need to reverse diversity programs aimed at addressing historical oppression of minorities.The administration has threatened funding freezes and other punishments, prompting concerns over declining academic freedom.It has also moved to revoke visas and deport foreign students involved in the protests, accusing them of supporting Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel provoked the war.Trump’s claims about diversity tap into long-standing conservative complaints that US university campuses are too liberal, shutting out right-wing voices and favoring minorities.

US President Donald Trump on Monday ordered new limitations on a form of biological research his administration says caused the Covid-19 pandemic through a lab leak in China.The United States will halt funding in certain countries for so-called “gain-of-function” experiments — aimed at enhancing the properties of pathogens —- according to an executive order Trump signed Monday at the White House.”There’s no laboratory that’s immune from leaks — and this is going to prevent inadvertent leaks from happening in the future and endangering humanity,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on X.”Any nation that engages in this research endangers their own population, as well as the world, as we saw during the COVID pandemic,” added Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health.Trump has long championed the theory that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a result of gain-of-function research — an alternative to the theory that the virus spilled over naturally from wild animals to humans at a seafood market in the same city.The US government website Covid.gov, which previously focused on promoting vaccine and testing information, is now devoted to highlighting arguments that favor the lab leak.Several US agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Energy, and, most recently, the Central Intelligence Agency  — which shifted its stance under Trump’s second term — now lean toward a lab origin. Several other intelligence agencies favor natural spillover.During the 2010s, the National Institutes of Health funded bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute via the US-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance — a grant axed by Trump in 2020 during his first term, but later partially restored under president Joe Biden.Complicating matters, former top infectious disease official Anthony Fauci has maintained that the work in Wuhan did not meet the federal definition of gain-of-function, though some virologists and US officials have disputed that claim.Trump’s order names China as an example of a “country of concern” where such research should not be supported.The order also seeks to end funding for other types of life sciences research in countries deemed to lack sufficient oversight, significantly broadening the types of foreign research that could be targeted.It further calls for the development of a strategy to “govern, limit, and track dangerous gain-of-function research across the United States that occurs without federal funding” — though the extent of the government’s control over non-federal research is unclear, and the order also calls for new legislation to fill any gaps.Trump’s executive order comes amid broader efforts by his administration to reshape American science and health policy, including mass firings to government scientists and steep slashes to research budgets.

Donald Trump’s plan to reopen Alcatraz was mocked online Monday by people who suggested the US president got the idea from watching TV.The order to resurrect the once-notorious island prison in San Francisco Bay came out of the blue over the weekend with a post on Trump’s social media platform.”Today, I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders,” he said.The island fortress entered American cultural lore after a 1962 escape by three inmates, which became an inspiration for the film “Escape from Alcatraz” starring Clint Eastwood.Social media users were quick to spot that the film had been shown on television in south Florida on Saturday night including in West Palm Beach, where Trump spent the evening at his Mar-a-Lago resort.”Is it possible Trump watched the movie and got caught up in it? Which led to the so-called brilliant idea of rebuilding Alcatraz?” wrote @HansonRitta on X.”Are we getting American policy from TV shows?””This is really funny,” wrote @MatthewSpira.”We’re going to spend a half billion dollars fixing up Alcatraz to never serve as a supermax in the San Francisco Bay all because an old man was bored and flipping through channels on a Saturday night.”- No sharks -Asked Monday how he had come up with the idea, Trump appeared to acknowledge the cinematic influence.”I guess I was supposed to be a movie maker,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.”It represents something very strong, very powerful, in terms of law and order,” he said.”Nobody ever escaped. One person almost got there, but they… found his clothing rather badly ripped up, and it was a lot of shark bites.” he said.The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) notes on its website that 36 people tried to escape from Alcatraz and while most were caught or died in their attempts, the fate of five is unknown and they are listed as “missing and presumed drowned.”But they definitely didn’t get eaten by sharks — a popular myth that has surrounded Alcatraz.”There are no ‘man-eating’ sharks in San Francisco Bay, only small bottom-feeding sharks,” the BOP says.However the president got the idea, his new prisons director William Marshall told US media he was working on the plan.”The Bureau of Prisons will vigorously pursue all avenues to support and implement the President’s agenda,” he said.”I have ordered an immediate assessment to determine our needs and the next steps. “We will be actively working with our law enforcement and other federal partners to reinstate this very important mission.”- High costs -Alcatraz — originally a military garrison — closed in 1963 due to high operating costs after being used as a prison for just 29 years.Because of the physical isolation of the island, operation costs were three times those of other institutions in the US, with food, supplies, fuel and even drinking water having to be brought to the island every week.Maintenance and restoration work required at the time of its closure would have cost up to $5 million, and officials decided it was cheaper to build new prisons elsewhere instead.The island was occupied for 19 months from November 1969 by Native American protestors, who said they were reclaiming abandoned federal land.In 1973 it became a tourist site, and now attracts more than one million visitors each year.Visitors can take a tour of the dilapidated cell blocks, where broken toilets remain in the spartan cells.On an audio tour narrated by former inmates and prison guards, they are taken around the refectory, where guides explain how discipline was maintained — and how it occasionally broke down.The tour showcases the brutal, pitch-dark isolation cells in which prisoners were kept if they ran afoul of the feared warden.Exhibitions detail the size of the prison population in the United States, and highlight how the system contains a disproportionate number of Black people and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.A gift shop sells everything from t-shirts and posters to fridge magnets with institutional rules.