AFP USA

The US Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced another pause in rate cuts and warned of higher risks to its inflation and unemployment goals in a likely reference to President Donald Trump’s tariff rollout.Policymakers voted unanimously to hold the US central bank’s key lending rate at between 4.25 percent and 4.50 percent, the Fed said in a statement.Speaking to reporters in Washington after the decision was published, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said there was “a great deal of uncertainty about, for example, where tariff policies are going to settle out.”The bank has a dual mandate to act independently to tackle inflation and unemployment, primarily by hiking, holding, or easing its benchmark lending rate. Many analysts have warned that the administration’s actions will likely push up inflation and unemployment, while slowing growth — at least in the short run.The Fed said that “swings in net exports” did not appear to have affected the solid economic activity — a nod to the pre-tariff surge in imports in the first quarter ahead of the introduction of Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs.The US president introduced steep levies last month on China, and lower “baseline” levies of 10 percent on goods from most other countries, sparking weeks of turbulence in the financial markets. The White House also slapped higher tariffs on dozens of other trading partners, and then abruptly paused them until July to give the United States time to renegotiate existing trade arrangements.Data published in recent weeks point to an economic contraction in the first quarter of the year, while the unemployment rate has hovered close to historic lows, and the inflation rate has trended towards the Fed’s long-term target of two percent.- Rate cuts delayed – Powell also faced questions on the recent public criticism leveled at him and the Fed by senior government officials — including the president, who has called for him to cut rates to boost economic growth.An upbeat Powell said the criticism from Trump “doesn’t affect doing our job at all.””We are always going to consider only the economic data, the outlook, the balance of risks, and that’s it,” he added. Following the April tariff rollout, many analysts pared back or delayed their expectation of rate cuts for this year, predicting that tariffs will push up prices and slow growth — at least in the short run. “It seems highly unlikely that the Fed will receive a clear enough signal to act by the June meeting, since the 90-day pause on ‘reciprocal’ tariffs lasts through 8 July,” economists at UniCredit wrote in a recent note to clients, adding they did not expect a rate cut before September. “The best course of action for the FOMC may simply be to wait for more clarity about trade policy and its implications for the U.S. economy,” Wells Fargo chief economist Jay Bryson wrote in an investor note after the decision was published by the Fed’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee.

As President Donald Trump’s administration purges public records since storming back to power, experts and volunteers are preserving thousands of web pages and government sites devoted to climate change, health or LGBTQ rights and other issues.Resources on AIDS prevention and care, weather records, references to ethnic or gender minorities: numerous databases were destroyed or modified after Trump signed an executive order in January declaring diversity, equality and inclusion programs and policies within the federal governmentto be illegal.More than 3,000 pages from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention site were taken down and more than 1,000 from the Justice Department’s website, Paul Schroeder, president of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, told AFP.- 404 error -Some websites have disappeared altogether, such as that of the US development agency USAID, which has been effectively shuttered as Trump slashes US aid to poor countries. And the National Children’s Health Survey page displays a “404 error” message.Federal agencies must now avoid hundreds of words such as “woman,” “disability,” “racism”, “climate crisis” and “pollution” in their communications, the New York Times reported.”The focus has been on removing language related to environmental (or) climate justice on websites, as well as removing data and tools related to environmental (or) climate justice,” Eric Nost, a geographer at Canada’s University of Guelph and member of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) told AFP. “This Trump administration moved more quickly and with a greater scope than the previous Trump administration,” he said.EDGI, a consortium of academics and volunteers, began safeguarding public climate and environmental data after Trump’s first election in 2016.Among the tools used are the WayBack Machine from the non-profit Internet Archive, or Perma.cc, developed by the Library Innovation Lab at Harvard Law School.These systems, which long predate Trump’s election, help “courts and law journals preserve the web pages they cite to,” said Jack Cushman, director of the Library Innovation Lab.Long used by journalists, researchers and NGOs, web archiving enables a page to be preserved, even if it were to disappear from the internet or be modified later.This data is then stored on servers in a large digital library, allowing anyone to consult it freely.- Volunteer work -Archiving initiatives have multiplied, expanded and coordinated since Trump’s return to the White House.The Data Rescue Project (DRP) brought together several organizations to save as much data as possible.”We were concerned about data being deleted. We wanted to try to see what we could do to rescue them,” Lynda Kellam, a university librarian and DRP organizer, told AFP.She first launched the project as an online Google doc in February — a simple word-processing tool listing downloaded PDF files, original dataset titles and archived links.It is now maintained by volunteers “who are working after work” to keep it running, said Kellam.”We are all volunteers, even myself. We have other jobs so that has been challenging,” Kellam added.The data collection work, largely carried out by associations and university libraries, is threatened by a lack of resources.”Funding is the key issue… as the library and archives community rushes to take on a larger preservation challenges than ever before,” Cushman said.”We need to fund coordinators for the ongoing effort, new tools, and new homes for the data.”Harvard is also battling the ire of the Trump administration, which has cut federal grants to the prestigious university and threatened its tax-exempt status after it refused to comply with the president’s demands to accept government oversight.”Data is the modern lighthouse, helping us plan our lives: it shows where we are so we can plan where we’re going,” Cushman said.”Businesses, individuals, and governments will suffer greatly from any failure to collect and share reliable data on weather and climate, health, justice, housing, employment, and so on.”

Shares in Google parent Alphabet plunged more than eight percent on Wednesday after Apple executive Eddy Cue testified in federal court that Google’s search traffic on Apple devices declined last month for the first time in over two decades.Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, told the Washington antitrust trial that Google was losing ground to AI alternatives like ChatGPT and Perplexity.His revelation that this decline “has never happened in 22 years” sent shockwaves through Wall Street, wiping more than $170 billion from Google’s market capitalization in a single trading session.The testimony came during a pivotal trial where District Judge Amit Mehta will determine remedies for Google’s previously ruled illegal search monopoly. The case, ongoing since 2020, has exposed Google’s practice of paying Apple tens of billions dollars annually to remain the default search engine on Safari browsers and Apple smartphones.Investors were further unsettled when Cue suggested Apple might soon offer AI alternatives as default search options on its devices, heightening concerns that Google’s advertising revenue could face serious threats from AI competitors.With the three-week trial set to conclude Friday, government attorneys are pushing Judge Mehta to order Google to divest its Chrome browser.They argue that AI technologies will only strengthen Google’s dominance by leveraging its vast data resources across products like Maps, YouTube, and Chrome to stifle competition.However, Cue’s testimony bolstered Google’s defense that AI is already disrupting its search dominance, with chatbots now posing legitimate threats to its business model.- ‘Losing sleep’ -When Judge Mehta issues his ruling in August, he could end Google’s default search agreements with Apple and others — a prospect that Cue told the court he was “losing sleep” over, with potential revenue losses impacting Apple’s product development and operating system investment.Alternatively, Mehta might order Google to share its search data with competitors, which CEO Sundar Pichai warned would effectively amount to a “de facto divestiture of search.”As a counter offer, Google proposes a more limited remedy that would allow it to continue paying for default placement of its search engine, but with an annual renegotiations and greater freedom for smartphone manufacturers to choose which Google apps to install on their devices.The Google case represents just one of five major tech antitrust actions currently pursued by the US government, with Meta facing similar scrutiny in the same courthouse.Google recently lost a separate case regarding its ad technology business and may face additional divestitures, while Apple and Amazon are also expected to confront antitrust challenges in US courts.

Regulators said Wednesday they have been slowing arrivals and departures at one of the United States’ busiest airports following a 90-second traffic control system outage last week that has industry experts sounding alarm bells.Delays and flight cancelations have followed the April 28 incident at Newark Liberty International Airport in the state of New Jersey, one of the three major airports serving the New York metropolitan area.For about a minute and a half, air traffic controllers stationed in nearby Philadelphia were unable to communicate with Newark planes as the radios and radar went out, according to accounts in US media.Employees involved in the incident have described a terrifying scene, with four air traffic workers taking short-term, trauma-related leave following the outage, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.The episode has heaped additional attention on the US Air Traffic Control system, which has been chronically understaffed and long been beset with older equipment due to shortfalls in congressional funding. In a statement Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it was slowing arrivals and departures while taking “immediate steps” to improve reliability at Newark.This includes “accelerating technological and logistical improvements and increasing air traffic controller staffing” at Philadelphia, where Newark’s air space is managed.The agency said it was adding new telecommunications capacity, replacing copper connections with updated materials and deploying backup equipment.It also cited runway construction as cause for the slowdown.”All the flights in and out of Newark are absolutely safe,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in a statement, adding that pilots are trained to “re-establish communication if controllers lose radio contact to navigate the airplane safely to its destination.” But Kirby said the FAA has permitted too many flights for the available capacity.”Only the FAA can actually fix Newark” by limiting the number of flights, modernizing the system and fully staffing the Air Traffic operation, Kirby said.US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is set to announce upgrades to the country’s air traffic control system at a Thursday news conference. The effort is part of what President Donald Trump’s administration says will be a “golden age of transportation,” according to a Department of Transportation advisory.The troubles at Newark follow a January 29 mid-air collision near Washington’s Reagan National Airport involving a passenger jet and a military helicopter, the first major US commercial crash since 2009.The FAA has experienced staff cuts due to the government reorganization led by Tesla boss Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. The job cuts do not affect safety employees and no air traffic control staff have been reduced due to Musk’s initiatives, according to the FAA.Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer has called for a full investigation into the problems.”Why have the staffing shortages at Newark and other critical airports been allowed to continue?” Schumer asked in a statement. “What role have DOGE cuts played in aggravating the chaos?”

Honduran authorities stepped up security Wednesday around a school, the presidential palace and other sites in the capital Tegucigalpa following a warning from the US embassy of a mass shooting threat.The US Embassy in Honduras often alerts American citizens about the risks from criminal violence in the country, part of Central America’s gang-plagued “triangle of death” along with neighbors El Salvador and Guatemala.But the latest alert left many in Honduras perplexed.While the country is no stranger to tit-for-tat killings between rival gangs and drug traffickers it has no recent history of mass shootings or bomb attacks.The embassy said on X it had “received information about a potential mass shooting threat today, May 6, and again on May 16 in Tegucigalpa.”It cited a little-known private school in southern Tegucigalpa, the area housing government buildings, and an “unidentified mall” as possible targets and said it “strongly urged” US citizens to avoid the areas.Around 20 military police officers armed with rifles on Wednesday patrolled the perimeter of Elliot Dover Christian School, situated in a middle-class neighborhood surrounded by a concrete wall.The school’s principal Maria de los Angeles Mendez told AFP that classes were “proceeding as normal” and said the school had received no direct threat.Security was also tightened around the Civic Center, the area housing the presidential palace and several ministries, as well as the city’s American School, which has large numbers of US students.Honduran Police Director Juan Manuel Godoy said Tuesday that the US warning was based on information from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).A spokesman for the Honduran armed forces, Mario Rivero, told AFP that the security forces were intensifying their investigations into possible threats.But some members of leftwing President Xiomara Castro’s government were skeptical and suggested the United States would be better off minding its own citizens.Writing on X, Planning Minister Ricardo Salgado remarked that “despite all its technology and intelligence, the US never anticipated a mass shooting on its territory.”

Shares in Google parent Alphabet plunged more than seven percent on Wednesday after an Apple executive told a federal court that the search engine’s traffic fell on Apple products last month.Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, testified at an antitrust trial in Washington that Google search volume was losing traffic to AI alternatives such as ChatGPT or Perplexity, according to US media reports.”That has never happened in 20 years,” legal news outlet MLex quoted him as saying.Cue was giving testimony in a trial in which US Judge Amit Mehta will determine how Google must address his landmark ruling last year that it operates an illegal monopoly in online search.The Apple executive’s remarks saw Google’s market capitalization wiped of $140 billion since the close of trading on Wall Street on Tuesday.The marathon court case has revealed that Google pays Apple tens of billions of dollars every year in a revenue sharing agreement in which Google’s search engine is set as the default on Apple’s Safari browser.Markets were also rattled by Cue’s comment that “over the coming year we will add other (AI) choices to the search engine choice in the browser, because I think those products are getting better and better,” he said, according to MLex.The testimony backed Google’s argument that the emergence of AI has begun a new era in how people get information online, with its search engine now facing new rivalry from AI chatbots.US government attorneys have urged Judge Mehta to force Google to sell off its Chrome browser, arguing that artificial intelligence will actually only ramp up the tech giant’s online search dominance.Another option is that the judge, in a decision expected in August, will order an end to the payouts from Google to Apple and others for the default position on devices.Cue told the court this would have a significant impact on Apple’s ability to invest in new products and services.

Mexico will fight to keep its free trade agreement with the United States and Canada in the face of President Donald Trump’s trade war, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday.”We will defend the USMCA because it has been beneficial for the three countries. If President Trump takes a different approach, we will be prepared for any circumstance, but clearly we want the USMCA to remain,” she said at her morning news conference.The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) replaced the previous NAFTA accord in July 2020, after Trump successfully pushed for a renegotiation during his first term in office.It is due to be reviewed by July next year.Mexico replaced China in 2023 as the largest trading partner with the United States, which buys more than 80 percent of its exports.Sheinbaum has called the USMCA the “only way we can compete with Asian countries, particularly China,” and “one of the best trade agreements in history” — echoing Trump’s previous high praise of the deal.Trump has announced various tariffs targeting Mexico, as well as several policy reversals, as part of his global trade war.While he left Mexico off the list of nations facing his steep “reciprocal tariffs,” its carmakers as well as steel and aluminum exporters still face duties.The preferential treatment given to Mexico and Canada showed the importance of the USMCA, of which Trump “speaks highly,” Sheinbaum said.”The USMCA has been maintained in many areas, with the exception of some issues in the automotive, steel and aluminum sectors, which we are working on,” she added.

Regulators said Wednesday they have been slowing arrivals and departures at one of the United States’ busiest airports following a 90-second traffic control system outage last week that has industry experts sounding alarm bells.Delays and flight cancelations have followed the April 28 incident at Newark Liberty International Airport in the state of New Jersey — one of the three major airports serving the New York metropolitan area.For about a minute and a half, US air traffic controllers stationed in nearby Philadelphia were unable to communicate with Newark planes as the radios and radar went out, according to accounts in US media.Employees involved in the incident have described a terrifying scene, with four air traffic workers taking short-term, trauma-related leave following the incident, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.The episode has heaped additional attention on the US Air Traffic Control system, which has been chronically understaffed and long been beset with older equipment due to shortfalls in congressional funding. In a statement Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was slowing arrivals and departures while taking “immediate steps” to improve reliability at Newark.This includes “accelerating technological and logistical improvements and increasing air traffic controller staffing” at Philadelphia, where Newark’s air space is managed.The agency said it was adding new telecommunications capacity, replacing copper connections with updated materials and deploying backup equipment.It also cited runway construction as cause for the slowdown.US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is set to announce upgrades to the US air traffic control system at a news conference on Thursday. The effort is part of what the Trump administration says will be a “golden age of transportation,” according to a DOT advisory.The troubles at Newark follow a January 29 crash at Reagan National Airport involving a civilian plane and a military helicopter, the first major US commercial crash since 2009. The FAA has experienced staff cuts due to the government reorganization led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. The FAA has said the job cuts do not affect safety employees and that no air traffic control staff has been reduced due to Musk’s initiatives.Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday he called for a full investigation into the problems.”Why have the staffing shortages at Newark and other critical airports been allowed to continue?” Schumer asked. “What role have DOGE cuts played in aggravating the chaos?”

The Walt Disney Company announced plans Wednesday for a new theme park in the United Arab Emirates, highlighting the country’s growing prominence as a global financial and entertainment hub.The waterfront resort will be located on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island and developed in partnership with local firm Miral. Disney stated that it aims to attract tourists from “the Middle East and Africa, India, Asia, Europe, and beyond.”The announcement comes ahead of US President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates next week.”Disneyland Abu Dhabi will be authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati,” said Disney CEO Robert Iger in a statement, promising “an oasis of extraordinary Disney entertainment at this crossroads of the world.”The company stated that the new resort will blend Disney’s “iconic stories, characters and attractions with Abu Dhabi’s vibrant culture, stunning shorelines, and breathtaking architecture.”Disneyland Abu Dhabi will be the seventh Disney resort since the original Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California in 1955. Other Disney destinations are located in Florida, Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong and Shanghai.Iger told analysts that the location was chosen to bring the Disney experience closer to hundreds of millions of customers for whom visiting its other six locations “was pretty lengthy in nature and expensive.”He also noted the success of existing attractions in Abu Dhabi, including the Louvre museum and the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim, which is currently under construction.Miral group operates numerous hotels, resorts, and amusement parks in Abu Dhabi including Warner Brothers World, Ferrari World and Sea World.In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Disney Experiences chairman Josh D’Amaro described the new park and resort as the company’s most “modern” and “tech-forward” destination. He added that in an unusual arrangement for Disney, the park would be funded, built, and ultimately operated by the Miral group “with oversight of course from us.””But we’re very confident in this part of the world, with this partner, that this is the appropriate business arrangement,” he added.The new park announcement coincided with Disney reporting a robust increase in quarterly revenues, which sent its shares skyrocketing.The company said overall sales increased seven percent to $23.6 billion in the January to March period. Crucially, subscribers to its Disney+ streaming service grew to 126 million, adding 1.4 million new subscriptions, contrary to analysts’ expectations of a decline. The Experiences segment, which includes theme parks, saw revenue increase to $8.9 billion.

Yemen’s Huthi rebels will continue targeting Israeli ships in the Red Sea, an official told AFP on Wednesday, despite a ceasefire that ended weeks of intense US strikes on the Iran-backed group.A day after the Huthis agreed to stop firing on ships plying the key trade route off their shores, a senior official told AFP that Israel was excluded from the deal.”The waterways are safe for all international ships except Israeli ones,” Abdulmalik Alejri, a member of the Huthi political bureau, told AFP.”Israel is not part of the agreement, it only includes American and other ships,” he said.The Huthis, who have controlled large swathes of Yemen for more than a decade, began firing on Israel-linked shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in November 2023, weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war.They broadened their campaign to target ships tied to the United States and Britain after military strikes by the two countries began in January 2024.Alejri said the Huthis would now “only” attack Israeli ships. In the past, vessels visiting Israel, or those with tenuous Israeli links, were in the rebels’ sights.Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei “welcomed the cessation of US aggression against the country” in a statement on Wednesday, praising Yemenis for their “legendary resistance”.The US-Huthi deal was announced after deadly Israeli strikes on Tuesday put Sanaa airport out of action in revenge for a Huthi missile strike on Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport.Sanaa airport director Khaled alShaief told the rebels’ Al-Masirah television Wednesday the Israeli attack had destroyed terminal buildings and caused $500 million in damage.Oman said it had facilitated an agreement between Washington and the rebels that “neither side will target the other… ensuring freedom of navigation”.US President Donald Trump, who will visit Gulf countries next week, trumpeted the deal, saying the Huthis had “capitulated”.”They say they will not be blowing up ships anymore, and that’s… the purpose of what we were doing,” he said during a White House press appearance.- Indirect contacts -The ceasefire followed weeks of stepped-up US strikes aimed at deterring Huthi attacks on shipping. The US attacks left 300 people dead, according to an AFP tally of Huthi figures.The Pentagon said last week that US strikes had hit more than 1,000 targets in Yemen since mid-March in an operation that has been dubbed “Rough Rider”.Alejri said recent US-Iran talks in Muscat “provided an opportunity” for indirect contacts between Sanaa and Washington, leading to the ceasefire.”America was the one who started the aggression against us, and at its beginning, we did not resume our operations on Israel,” he added.”We did not target any American ships or warships until they targeted us.”Scores of Huthi missile and drone attacks have drastically reduced cargo volumes on the Red Sea route, which normally carries about 12 percent of global maritime trade.The Huthis say their campaign — as well as a steady stream of attacks on Israeli territory — is in solidarity with the Palestinians.