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Brazil and the United States escalated their row Wednesday over President Donald Trump’s support for coup-accused ex-leader Jair Bolsonaro, with the American president slapping a 50 percent tariff on one of its main steel suppliers.Leftist Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva threatened to reciprocate.Trump has strongly criticized the prosecution of right-wing ally Bolsonaro, who is on trial for allegedly plotting to cling on to power after losing 2022 elections to Lula.Brasilia on Wednesday summoned Washington’s top envoy to the country to explain an embassy statement describing Bolsonaro as a victim of “political persecution” — echoing Trump’s claims of a “witch hunt” against the 70-year-old Brazilian firebrand.Trump then announced he would slap a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian imports starting August 1, citing “Brazil’s insidious attacks on Free Elections” and warning of escalation if the country retaliates.In a letter addressed to Lula, Trump criticized the treatment of Bolsonaro as an “international disgrace” and said the trial “should not be taking place.”He added Washington would launch an investigation into Brazil’s trade practices.While Trump has been issuing letters to trading partners — focusing on those his country runs a deficit with — Brazil had until now not been among those threatened with higher duties come August 1.The South American powerhouse is the second-largest exporter of steel to the United States after Canada, shipping four million tons of the metal in 2024.The new 50 percent tariff was independent of sector-specific levies, with the US recently doubling duties on steel and aluminum imports to 50 percent.Lula wrote on X that “any unilateral tariff increases will be addressed in light of the Brazilian Law of Economic Reciprocity.”Trade between the two countries reached $41.7 billion between January and June, with $20 billion for exports from Brazil and $21.7 billion for US products, according to Brazilian government data.- ‘LEAVE BOLSONARO ALONE’ -On Monday, Trump angered Lula by urging Brazilian authorities to “LEAVE BOLSONARO ALONE,” in a post on social media.”They have done nothing but come after him, day after day, night after night, month after month, year after year!” the US president wrote.Lula, who narrowly beat Bolsonaro in a divisive election in 2022, hit back at Trump’s “interference,” insisting that “no one is above the law.” Bolsonaro denies he was involved in an attempt to wrest power back from Lula as part of an alleged coup plot that prosecutors say failed only for a lack of military backing.After the plot fizzled, rioting supporters known as “Bolsonaristas” raided government buildings in 2023 as they urged the military to oust Lula. Bolsonaro was abroad at the time.The case against Bolsonaro carries echoes of Trump’s prosecution over the January 6, 2021 attacks by his supporters on the US Capitol to try and reverse his election loss.Trump pleaded not guilty, and the case was abandoned when he was reelected president.The cases have drawn the Trump and Bolsonaro families together, with the Brazilian ex-leader’s sons lobbying for US sanctions against one of the Supreme Court judges sitting on the ex-president’s trial.In his post Monday, Trump suggested Bolsonaro was the favorite in presidential elections next year, despite him being banned from running for spreading disinformation about Brazil’s voting system. Bolsonaro thanked Trump for his defense of “peace, justice and liberty” in a social media post.On Wednesday, the US embassy in Brasilia issued a statement to “reinforce” Trump’s support for the embattled former army captain, who risks a 40-year prison sentence.”Jair Bolsonaro and his family have been strong partners of the United States,” read the note.”The political persecution against him, his family, and his followers is shameful and disrespects Brazil’s democratic traditions.”Members of the BRICS grouping, meeting in Brazil under host Lula this week, criticized Trump’s imposition of import tariffs and his bombing of Iran.This drew the US president’s ire and a threat of 10 percent additional tariffs on each BRICS-aligned country.Lula insisted BRICS members were sovereign and did not want an “emperor.”burs-mlr/ksb/acb/jgc

The US Justice Department filed a lawsuit against California on Wednesday for allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls sports.Female student athletes in California are being subjected to “unfair competition and reckless endangerment by male participation on female high-school sports teams,” the department said.The lawsuit accuses California of violating Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funding.The Justice Department suit is the latest salvo in a showdown between the administration of Republican President Donald Trump and the Democratic-ruled state.Trump sent thousands of National Guard troops to Los Angeles last month to quell protests against roundups of undocumented migrants by federal agents.California Governor Gavin Newsom has said the troops were not necessary to address the mostly peaceful protests, but his legal efforts to have them removed have failed so far.Trump threatened last month to impose “large scale” fines against California after a transgender high school athlete’s victory at the state track and field championships.The Justice Department suit accuses the California Department of Education and California Interscholastic Federation of engaging in “illegal sex discrimination against female student athletes by allowing males to compete against them.””The Governor of California has previously admitted that it is ‘deeply unfair’ to force women and girls to compete with men and boys in competitive sports,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said. “But not only is it ‘deeply unfair,’ it is also illegal under federal law.”The Justice Department sued Maine in April for allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls sports, and the Trump administration has moved to cut the northeastern state’s federal funding for public schools.The Supreme Court agreed earlier this month to hear cases next term challenging state laws in Idaho and West Virginia banning transgender athletes from female competitions.More than two dozen US states have passed laws in recent years barring athletes who were assigned male at birth from taking part in girls or women’s sports.

Nvidia became the first company to touch $4 trillion in market value on Wednesday, a new milestone in Wall Street’s bet that artificial intelligence will transform the economy.Shortly after the stock market opened, Nvidia vaulted as high as $164.42, giving it a valuation above $4 trillion. The stock subsequently edged lower, ending just under the record threshold.”The market has an incredible certainty that AI is the future,” said Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers. “Nvidia is certainly the company most positioned to benefit from that gold rush.”Nvidia, led by electrical engineer Jensen Huang, now has a market value greater than the GDP of France, Britain or India, a testament to investor confidence that AI will spur a new era of robotics and automation.The California chip company’s latest surge is helping drive a recovery in the broader stock market, as Nvidia itself outperforms major indices. Part of this is due to relief that President Donald Trump has walked back his most draconian tariffs, which pummeled global markets in early April.Even as Trump announced new tariff actions in recent days, US stocks have stayed at lofty levels, with the tech-centered Nasdaq ending at a fresh record on Wednesday.”You’ve seen the markets walk us back from a worst-case scenario in terms of tariffs,” said Angelo Zino, technology analyst at CFRA Research.While Nvidia still faces US export controls to China as well as broader tariff uncertainty, the company’s deal to build AI infrastructure in Saudi Arabia during a Trump state visit in May showed a potential upside in the US president’s trade policy.”We’ve seen the administration using Nvidia chips as a bargaining chip,” Zino said. – New advances -Nvidia’s surge to $4 trillion marks a new benchmark in a fairly consistent rise over the last two years as AI enthusiasm has built. In 2025 so far, the company’s shares have risen more than 21 percent, whereas the Nasdaq has gained 6.7 percent.Taiwan-born Huang has wowed investors with a series of advances, including its core product: graphics processing units (GPUs), key to many of the generative AI programs behind  autonomous driving, robotics and other cutting-edge domains.The company has also unveiled its Blackwell next-generation technology allowing more super processing capacity. One of its advances is “real-time digital twins,” significantly speeding production development time in manufacturing, aerospace and myriad other sectors.However, Nvidia’s winning streak was challenged early in 2025 when China-based DeepSeek shook up the world of generative AI with a low-cost, high-performance model that challenged the hegemony of OpenAI and other big-spending behemoths.Nvidia’s lost some $600 billion in market valuation in a single session during this period.Huang has welcomed DeepSeek’s presence, while arguing against US export constraints.- AI race -In the most recent quarter, Nvidia reported earnings of nearly $19 billion despite a $4.5 billion hit from US export controls limiting sales of cutting-edge technology to China.The first-quarter earnings period also revealed that momentum for AI remained strong. Many of the biggest tech companies — Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta — are jostling to come out on top in the multi-billion-dollar AI race.A recent UBS survey of technology executives showed Nvidia widening its lead over rivals.Zino said Nvidia’s latest surge reflected a fuller understanding of DeepSeek, which has ultimately stimulated investment in complex reasoning models but not threatened Nvidia’s business. Nvidia is at the forefront of “AI agents,” the current focus in generative AI in which machines are able to reason and infer more than in the past, he said.”Overall the demand landscape has improved for 2026 for these more complex reasoning models,” Zino said.But the speedy growth of AI will also be a source of disruption. Executives at Ford, JPMorgan Chase and Amazon are among those who have begun to say the “quiet part out loud,” according to a Wall Street Journal report recounting recent public acknowledgment of white-collar job loss due to AI.Shares of Nvidia closed the day at $162.88, up 1.8 percent, finishing at just under $4 trillion in market value.

More than 90 percent of X’s Community Notes — a crowd-sourced verification system popularized by Elon Musk’s platform — are never published, a study said Wednesday, highlighting major limits in its effectiveness as a debunking tool.The study by the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas (DDIA), which analyzed the entire public dataset of 1.76 million notes published by X between January 2021 and March 2025, comes as the platform’s CEO Linda Yaccarino resigned after two years at the helm.The community-driven moderation model — now embraced by major tech platforms including Facebook-owner Meta and TikTok — allows volunteers to contribute notes that add context or corrections to posts.Other users then rate the proposed notes as “helpful” or “not helpful.” If the notes get “helpful” ratings from enough users with diverse perspectives, they are published on X, appearing right below the challenged posts.”The vast majority of submitted notes — more than 90 percent — never reach the public,” DDIA’s study said.”For a program marketed as fast, scalable, and transparent, these figures should raise serious concerns.”Among English notes, the publication rate dropped from 9.5 percent in 2023 to just 4.9 percent in early 2025, the study said.Spanish-language notes, however, showed some growth, with the publication rate rising from 3.6 percent to 7.1 percent over the same period, it added.A vast number of notes remain unpublished due to lack of consensus among users during rating.Thousands of notes also go unrated, possibly never seen and never assessed, according to the report.”As the volume of notes submitted grows, the system’s internal visibility bottleneck becomes more apparent –- especially in English,” the study said.”Despite a rising number of contributors submitting notes, many notes remain stuck in limbo, unseen and unevaluated by fellow contributors, a crucial step for notes to be published.”- ‘Viral misinformation’ -In a separate finding, DDIA’s researchers identified not a human but a bot-like account — dedicated to flagging crypto scams –- as the most prolific contributor to the program in English, submitting more than 43,000 notes between 2021 and March 2025. However, only 3.1 percent of those notes went live, suggesting most went unseen or failed to gain consensus, the report said.The study also noted that the time it takes for a note to go live had improved over the years, dropping from an average of more than 100 days in 2022 to 14 days in 2025.”Even this faster timeline is far too slow for the reality of viral misinformation, timely toxic content, or simply errors about real-time events, which spread within hours, not weeks,” DDIA’s report said.The findings are significant as tech platforms increasingly view the community-driven model as an alternative to professional fact-checking, which conservative advocates in countries such as the United States have long accused of a liberal bias.Studies have shown Community Notes can work to dispel some falsehoods such as vaccine misinformation, but researchers have long cautioned that it works best for topics where there is broad consensus.Some researchers have also cautioned that Community Notes users can be motivated by partisan motives and tend to target their political opponents.X introduced Community Notes during the tenure of Yaccarino, who said on Wednesday that she had decided to step down after leading the company through a major transformation.No reason was given for her exit, but the resignation came as Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok triggered an online firestorm over its anti-Semitic comments that praised Adolf Hitler and insulted Islam in separate posts on X.

The Texas flash floods death toll rose to 119 on Wednesday, as worries grew that the figure could more than double with over 160 people still reported missing.Workers in central Texas continued to comb through piles of muddy debris from the July 4 floods as Governor Greg Abbott ordered flags to be lowered to half-staff over the tragedy.Officials in Kerr County, the epicenter of the flooding, on Wednesday confirmed 161 people were known to be missing in the county.Part of a Hill Country region in central Texas known as “Flash Flood Alley,” Kerr County suffered the most damage, with at least 95 fatalities including 36 children, Sheriff Larry Leitha told reporters.Among them, counselors and 27 girls at a summer camp who went missing early Friday when the Guadalupe River burst its banks.Five campers and one counselor from Camp Mystic were still missing as of Wednesday, along with another child not associated with the camp, Leitha said.Two dozen other people have been confirmed dead elsewhere in the state, according to an AFP tally of official reports.More than 2,000 rescue personnel, police and experts have descended on the flood zone in what Leitha described as an “all hands on deck” operation.Ben Baker, with the Texas Game Wardens, said search and rescue efforts involving helicopters, drones and dogs were difficult because of the water, mud and debris.”When we’re trying to make these recoveries, these large piles can be very obstructive, and to get in deep into these piles, it’s very hazardous,” Baker said. Meanwhile, questions intensified over whether US President Donald Trump’s government funding cuts had weakened warning systems, and over the handling of the rescue operation.During sometimes tense news conferences Tuesday and Wednesday, officials skirted questions on the speed of the emergency response.”There’s going to be an after-action” review of what happened, Sheriff Leitha said, adding “those questions need to be answered.”But officials stressed that the immediate focus was on locating the missing and reuniting families.- ‘Door to door’ -Kerrville police officer Jonathan Lamb spoke of heroic rescues by authorities and volunteers who evacuated hundreds of people from their homes or vehicles.Officers went “door to door, waking people up” in Kerr County early Friday and in some cases “pulling them out of windows” of flooding homes and trailers, Lamb told reporters.The tragedy, “as horrific as it is, could have been so much worse,” he added.The National Weather Service (NWS) has forecast scattered storms on Wednesday in the Hill Country, including isolated pockets of heavy rain.In the neighboring state of New Mexico, flash flooding left three people dead Tuesday in Ruidoso, the village website said in a statement, adding the Ruidoso River rose to a record-breaking 20 feet (six meters).- Bodies in the mud -In the Texas town of Hunt, an AFP team saw recovery workers combing through piles of debris with helicopters flying overhead.Javier Torres, 24, was digging through mud as he searched for his grandmother, after having located the body of his grandfather. He also discovered the bodies of two children, apparently washed up by the river.Trump is due to visit Texas on Friday with First Lady Melania Trump.”We brought in a lot of helicopters from all over… They were real pros, and they were responsible for pulling out a lot of people,” Trump said of the response.Shel Winkley, a weather expert at the Climate Central research group, blamed the extent of the disaster on geography and exceptional drought, when dry soil absorbs less rainfall.”This part of Texas, at least in the Kerr County flood specifically, was in an extreme to exceptional drought…. We know that since May, temperatures have been above average,” Winkley told reporters.

US President Donald Trump announced a 50 percent tariff Wednesday targeting Brazil as he blasted the trial of the country’s ex-leader, while widening a push to secure more bilateral trade deals with other partners.In a letter addressed to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Trump criticized the treatment of Jair Bolsonaro as an “international disgrace,” adding that the trial “should not be taking place.”He also said Washington would launch an investigation into Brazil’s trade practices.The latest tariff threat came after Brazil said it had summoned the US charge d’affaires in a diplomatic row over Trump’s earlier criticism of the coup trial of Bolsonaro.Bolsonaro denies he was involved in an attempt to wrest power back from Lula in an alleged coup plot prosecutors say failed only for a lack of military backing.The 50 percent US tariff on Brazilian goods will take effect August 1, Trump said in his letter, mirroring a deadline that dozens of other economies face.While Trump has started to issue letters to trading partners this week as he ramps up pressure towards more deals, he has focused on partners with which his country runs significant deficits.Brazil had not been among those threatened with these higher duties previously. The United States runs a goods trade surplus instead with Brazil.- Escalation threats -Trump’s message to Lula was the latest in more than 20 such letters the US president has released since Monday, setting out tariff rates as Washington tries to bring about more trade pacts.On Wednesday, Trump had addressed letters to leaders of the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Brunei, Algeria, Libya, Iraq and Moldova, spelling out duties ranging from 20 percent to 30 percent that would also take effect on August 1.Similar to a first batch of documents published Monday, the levels were not too far from those originally threatened in April, although some partners received notably lower rates this time.While Trump in April imposed a 10 percent levy on almost all trading partners, he unveiled — and then withheld — higher rates for dozens of economies.The deadline for those steeper levels to take effect was meant to be Wednesday, before Trump postponed it further to August 1.Countries that faced the threats of elevated duties began receiving letters spelling out US tariff rates on their products.In the messages, Trump justified his tariffs as a response to trade ties that he says are “far from Reciprocal.”The letters urged countries to manufacture products in the United States to avoid duties, while threatening further escalation if leaders retaliated.Other countries that have received Trump’s letters include key US allies Japan and South Korea, as well as Indonesia, Bangladesh and Thailand.- EU deal in ‘coming days’? -Analysts have noted that Asian countries have been a key target so far.But all eyes are on the state of negotiations with major partners who have yet to receive such letters, including the European Union.The Trump administration is under pressure to unveil more trade pacts. So far, Washington has only reached agreements with Britain and Vietnam, alongside a deal to temporarily lower tit-for-tat levies with China.Trump on Tuesday said that his government was “probably two days off” from sending the EU a letter with an updated tariff rate for the bloc.An EU spokesman said Wednesday that the bloc wants to strike a deal with the United States “in the coming days,” and has shown readiness to reach an agreement in principle.Apart from tariffs targeting goods from different countries, Trump has rolled out sector-specific duties on steel, aluminum and autos since returning to the White House in January.On Tuesday, Trump said levies were incoming on copper and pharmaceuticals. The planned rate for copper is 50 percent, he added, while pharmaceutical products face a levy as high as 200 percent — but manufacturers would be given time to relocate operations to the United States.

US President Donald Trump hailed West Africa’s rich natural resources as he hosted five of its leaders Wednesday for a White House summit aimed at fostering trade to counter the growing influence of Russia and China.Trump’s administration is seeking to strengthen economic ties with the mineral-rich region as it simultaneously curbs foreign aid to Africa and hits nations with 10 percent import tariffs.Talks with the presidents of Senegal, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Gabon were expected to focus on commercial opportunities and security.”We’re working tirelessly to forge new economic opportunities involving both the United States and many African nations,” Trump told the assembled leaders and reporters ahead of the meeting.”There’s great economic potential in Africa, like few other places, in many ways.”He gushed about the continent’s “vibrant places, very valuable lands, great minerals, great oil deposits” — and was rewarded with personal praise in return as each leader offered their approval when asked by an African media outlet if Trump should win a Nobel Peace Prize.The talks — held over a lunch in the State Dining Room — came with Washington seeking to ensure a stable supply of critical minerals.All five of the countries invited enjoy rich natural resources, including manganese — a key mineral in the production of stainless steel and batteries — iron ore, gold, diamonds, lithium and cobalt.But overshadowing the talks will be radical steps by Trump and his officials to recalibrate US relations with African nations.Earlier this month, the administration shuttered the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and said it was moving away from a “charity based-model” to focus instead on trade-based partnerships.West Africa is expected to be among the regions hardest hit by the aid cuts, which are likely to lead to more than 14 million additional deaths globally by 2030, according to a study published in the Lancet medical journal. – Drug trafficking and immigration -US financial help played a crucial role in rebuilding Liberia after its civil wars, and it was still receiving an annual $160 million — about three percent of its GDP — as recently as last year.”Liberia is a long time friend of the United States, and we believe in your policy of making America great again,” President Joseph Boakai told Trump.”And we also go a long way with you and your in your diplomacy that has to do with economic development and commercial friendship.”US arch-rival China has made substantial investments in several of the nations attending, with Gabon providing 22 percent of the manganese it uses in batteries.Russia has meanwhile supported the nascent Alliance of Sahel States, which shares borders with several of the countries at Wednesday’s lunch.Security is expected to loom large at the meeting, with international drug trafficking and immigration top concerns for Washington.West Africa’s Sahel countries have been dogged by attacks from terrorist groups, while a series of coups have deepened political instability. Entries from the region make up a significant portion of the Black immigrant population in the United States, which rose by almost a quarter between 2012 and 2022, reaching 4.3 million individuals.Guinea-Bissau — a transit zone for cocaine shipments from Latin America to Europe and beyond — has struggled to contain drug trafficking.A potential US travel ban impacting Gabon, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal was reported in June, as part of a larger list of 36 countries facing scrutiny by the Trump administration.But all four were effusive in their praise for Trump, with several noting his role in a peace deal negotiated in Washington between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, and in the end of hostilities between Iran and Israel.”As you’ve seen, you can only do business when there is peace and security and you build peace everywhere in the world,” Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye said.

Brazil said Wednesday it had summoned the US charge d’affaires in a diplomatic row following President Donald Trump’s criticism of the coup trial of his right-wing ally, ex-leader Jair Bolsonaro.The foreign ministry in Brasilia told AFP that envoy Gabriel Escobar will be called to explain an embassy statement describing Bolsonaro as a victim of “political persecution” — echoing Trump’s claims of a “witch hunt” against the 70-year-old Brazilian firebrand.Trump on Monday urged Brazilian authorities to “LEAVE BOLSONARO ALONE,” in a post on social media.”They have done nothing but come after him, day after day, night after night, month after month, year after year!” the US president wrote.Leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who narrowly beat Bolsonaro in a divisive election in 2022, has hit back at Trump’s “interference,” insisting that “no one is above the law.” Bolsonaro denies he was involved in an attempt to wrest power back from Lula in an alleged coup plot prosecutors say failed only for a lack of military backing.After the plot fizzled, rioting supporters known as “Bolsonaristas” raided government buildings in 2023 as they urged the military to oust Lula. Bolsonaro was abroad at the time.- No ’emperor’ -The case against Bolsonaro carries echoes of Trump’s prosecution over the January 6, 2021 attacks by his supporters, who overran the US Congress to try and reverse his election loss.Trump pleaded not guilty, and the case was abandoned when he was reelected president.The cases have drawn the Trump and Bolsonaro families together, with the Brazilian ex-leader’s sons lobbying for US sanctions against a Supreme Court judge sitting on the ex-president’s trial.In his post Monday, Trump suggested Bolsonaro was the favorite in presidential elections next year, despite being banned from running for spreading disinformation about Brazil’s voting system. Bolsonaro senior thanked Trump for his defense of “peace, justice and liberty” in a social media post.On Wednesday, the US embassy in Brasilia issued a statement to “reinforce” Trump’s support for Bolsonaro.”Jair Bolsonaro and his family have been strong partners of the United States,” read the note.”The political persecution against him, his family, and his followers is shameful and disrespects Brazil’s democratic traditions.”The showdown between the two countries extended to the economic sphere this week, when members of the BRICS grouping, meeting in Brazil under host Lula, criticized Trump’s imposition of import tariffs and his bombing of Iran.This drew the US president’s ire and a threat of 10 percent additional tariffs on each BRICS-aligned country.Lula insisted BRICS members were sovereign and did not want an “emperor.”

Russia pummelled Ukraine Wednesday with its largest missile and drone attack in more than three years of war, hours after US President Donald Trump launched an expletive-filled attack on Russian leader Vladimir Putin.AFP journalists in Kyiv heard explosions ringing out and drones buzzing over the capital during the barrage after air raid sirens sounded.The air force said Russia fired 728 drones and 13 missiles, specifying that its air defence systems intercepted 711 drones and destroyed seven missiles.The strike, which officials said killed one civilian in the Khmelnytsky region, beat a previous Russian record of 550 drones and missiles fired at Ukraine on one day last week.”This is a telling attack — and it comes precisely at a time when so many efforts have been made to achieve peace, to establish a ceasefire, and yet only Russia continues to rebuff them all,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.Zelensky, who met Pope Leo XIV and US special envoy Keith Kellogg on a visit to Rome, called for Ukraine’s allies to step up sanctions on Russia, particularly on its key energy sector.Following his meeting with Kellogg, the Ukrainian leader urged US lawmakers to pass a bill targeting Russia with tougher sanctions.- Russia advances-Kyiv has repeatedly accused China of supplying parts and technologies central to the Russian drone and missile programme, and urged the West to step up secondary penalties.Kyiv’s security services announced they had detained two Chinese nationals accused of attempting to smuggle missile technology out of the country.The air force and regional authorities said Wednesday’s attack had primarily targeted Lutsk, a town in western Ukraine.The Russian defence ministry said its “long-range” and “precision” strike had targeted military airfield infrastructure, claiming that “all designated targets were destroyed”. There was no response to that claim in Kyiv.Russia’s latest record barrage points to a trend of escalating attacks, that have piled pressure on Ukraine’s thinly stretched air defence capabilities and exhausted civilian population.”We are adapting to this rhythm of life. Of course, it’s difficult, but what can you do?” Sergiy Skrypka, a student, told AFP in Kyiv.”It’s not easy, but I think it’s hard for everyone now. We’re dealing with it,” the 22-year-old added.A Ukraine air force representative said that new Ukrainian drones had played an important role in thwarting the Russian attack. Another official said that most of the Russian drones launched were decoys.Two rounds of direct talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations since Trump returned to the White House have resulted in an increase in prisoner exchanges but no progress on securing a ceasefire, proposed by the United States and Ukraine.- Civilians burnt alive -The Kremlin has since said that it sees no diplomatic path out of the conflict, launched by Moscow in February 2022, and vowed to pursue its war aims — effectively seeking to conquer Ukraine and remove its political leadership.The Kremlin said on Wednesday that it was unfazed by Trump’s sweary comments about President Vladimir Putin. Trump said Tuesday that the Russian leader was spouting “bullshit”. He has also announced that the United States will send more weapons to Ukraine.”Let’s just say that Trump in general has quite a harsh rhetorical style in terms of the phrases he uses,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.Ukraine has also sought to increase its attacks, with Russia’s defence ministry saying on Wednesday that its air defence had downed 86 unmanned aerial vehicles, mainly over western regions.The exchanges came with Russian forces steadily gaining ground at key sectors of the front line in eastern Ukraine.Russia announced the capture of another village, Tolstoy, on Wednesday in the eastern Donetsk region, which the Kremlin has claimed as part of Russia since 2022, despite not fully controlling it.Ukrainian prosecutors in the region said Russian drone and bombing attacks in two towns in Donetsk killed eight civilians on Wednesday.Officials published images showing the remains of two people burnt to death in their car, which officials said was hit by a Russian drone.A one-year-old boy was killed in another Russian attack on the village of Pravdyne in the southern Kherson region, local officials announced.burs/sbk/tw

President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused former FBI director James Comey and ex-CIA chief John Brennan, two prominent critics under criminal investigation, of being “crooked” and said they may have to “pay a price.”Asked on Wednesday about the FBI’s opening of a probe into Comey and Brennan, Trump said he knows “nothing about it other than what I read today.””But I will tell you I think they’re very dishonest people,” the president told reporters at the White House. “I think they’re crooked as hell and maybe they have to pay a price for that.”Fox News Digital first reported the probe into Comey and Brennan, saying it involved “potential wrongdoing” related to the investigation into claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election won by Trump, and alleged false statements made to Congress.CIA director John Ratcliffe, a Trump appointee, had referred “evidence of wrongdoing by Brennan” to FBI director Kash Patel, another Trump appointee, for potential prosecution, Fox News Digital said, citing Justice Department sources.A Justice Department spokeswoman said the agency does “not comment on ongoing investigations.”Comey and Brennan were named to their respective positions as head of the FBI and CIA by Democratic president Barack Obama, and they have a contentious history with Trump dating back to his first term in the White House.Trump fired Comey in 2017 as the FBI chief was leading a probe into whether any members of the Trump campaign had colluded with Moscow to sway the 2016 presidential vote between Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.That investigation, which Trump has denounced for years as the “Russia hoax,” was taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, who found there had been interference by Russia in the 2016 election in favor of Trump.But Mueller said the probe “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”Trump revoked Brennan’s security clearance in 2018, accusing the former CIA chief of making “unfounded and outrageous allegations” about his administration.Since taking office in January, Trump has taken a number of punitive measures against his perceived enemies, stripping former officials of their security clearances and protective details, targeting law firms involved in past cases against him and pulling federal funding from universities.