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A US peace plan backed by President Donald Trump that is being negotiated with Russia and Ukraine is “good” for both sides, the White House said Thursday, rejecting concerns that it echoes many of Moscow’s demands.Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been “quietly” working on the plan for a month, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “It’s ongoing and it’s in flux, but the president supports this plan. It’s a good plan for both Russia and Ukraine, and we believe that it should be acceptable to both sides,” Leavitt told a briefing.”We’re working very hard to get it done,” she said, adding that Washington was “having good conversations” with Ukraine and Russia “to understand what these countries would commit to.”It was the first official confirmation from the White House of the draft plan that Ukrainian officials earlier said Washington had presented to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.Details provided to AFP by a source familiar with the matter showed that it contained many of Moscow’s maximalist demands for ending the war, including Ukraine surrendering territory and cutting its armed forces.Leavitt declined to give details of the proposal but denied that it would be unfavorable to Ukraine.Rubio and Witkoff had met Ukrainian representatives in the last week, she said.Trump had become “increasingly frustrated” with both sides but was committed to ending the war, she said. The Republican promised to end the conflict within 24 hours of taking office in January.”I know there’s a lot of criticism out there and a lot of doubters, but I would just remind you of the historic success that this president and his team accomplished in the Middle East,” she said, referring to the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.”We believe that is possible with Russia and Ukraine and we’re hoping and working very hard to achieve that,” she said.

US retail giant Walmart reported higher quarterly revenue Thursday and raised its financial outlook, in better-than-expected results as it won over households hit by rising costs of living.The earnings report of Walmart, which caters to buyers across income groups,is seen as a key gauge of consumer behavior as Americans become more price-sensitive.The company’s revenues rose 5.8 percent to $179.5 billion for the three months ending October 31, exceeding analyst expectations.Its earnings per share also came in above estimates at 62 cents.Walmart lifted its outlook for the fiscal year too, saying it expected net sales to grow between 4.8 percent and 5.1 percent, up from a previously anticipated 3.75 percent to 4.75 percent increase.”We saw strength across income cohorts, and especially with higher-income households,” said Walmart chief executive Doug McMillon in an earnings call.In the United States, he added, consumers are “still spending, with upper- and middle-income households driving our growth,” while lower-income families face more pressure.Investors have been watching for signs that consumers feel the squeeze from higher costs as President Donald Trump’s tariffs flow through the world’s biggest economy.There has not been a sharp inflation surge since he imposed wave after wave of duties on different sectors and trading partners but policymakers note that the full effect of steeper duties has yet to be seen.Meanwhile, prices have continued rising, more noticeably in some sectors than others.McMillon noted that the firm was working to resist “upward pressure on our cost of goods.”Prices at Walmart’s US stores rose 1.3 percent, the company said, lower than overall consumer inflation and a sign that it has been able to ease the effects of Trump’s tariffs.Walmart added that it has seen a smaller impact from duties than it had expected early in the year, and that staff have worked to manage costs by juggling inventory, price gaps and product offerings.McMillon said in a statement that e-commerce was a “bright spot” this quarter, growing 27 percent globally.Walmart shares rose 5.9 percent around 1845 GMT.Thursday’s report came shortly after fellow retailer Target posted a fall in quarterly sales, while home improvement chain Home Depot reported lower-than-expected demand in results earlier this week.This underscored concerns about US consumption, a key driver of the economy in recent years. Consumer spending, propped up by a resilient jobs market, had buoyed the economy in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.But the jobs market has been cooling, while businesses find themselves hit by higher import costs. Consumers in turn have become more price-sensitive.Walmart said Thursday that it saw gains across categories in its US market, ranging from groceries to general merchandise.The big-box retailer added that “customer value proposition with everyday low prices and increased convenience is resonating.”It said its revenue uptick came with strength across all segments.Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, noted that Walmart has acquired new shoppers from higher income brackets, expanding from its core footprint of groceries and essentials.”While the gains currently being made here are not quite as sharp as they were a couple of years back, the numbers are still rising as more people turn to Walmart for great value and to save money,” he added.Walmart’s earnings are closely monitored this quarter also as policymakers and investors saw a pause in official economic data releases during a record-long government shutdown between October and mid-November.On Thursday, Walmart said it will transfer the listing of its common stock to the Nasdaq, and start trading there on December 9.Come February 2026, CEO McMillon will be succeeded by John Furner, who has served as president of Walmart US.

The US jobless rate crept up in September although hiring exceeded analyst expectations, according to a delayed employment report published Thursday after a record-long government shutdown.The figures, marking the last official jobs report before the Federal Reserve’s next policy meeting, paint a mixed picture of a softening — but not rapidly crumbling — labor market.This could deepen a divide in the central bank on whether a third straight interest rate cut is warranted in December, with some officials already pushing for lower rates to boost the economy and others likely arguing that policymakers can wait a little longer.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt lauded the latest figures, saying they “showed the American economy remains strong.”The world’s biggest economy added 119,000 jobs in September — a robust uptick from August — but the unemployment rate edged up from 4.3 percent to 4.4 percent, said the Labor Department.Meanwhile, revised data for August showed that the employment situation was gloomier than originally estimated, with the economy shedding 4,000 jobs, rather than adding 22,000 as had been reported.Analysts note that even though unemployment ticked higher, this appears to be because more people entered the labor force seeking jobs.Thursday’s publication marks the first official snapshot of the overall labor market’s health in over two months, due to a 43-day government shutdown that ended just last week.But this also means that the data is backward-looking, at a time when the jobs market has been weakening amid mass firing of federal workers and the turmoil from President Donald Trump’s multiple tariffs on imports.A sharply weakening jobs market could nudge the Fed towards further rate cuts to support the economy, but the central bank is also trying to keep inflation in check.Traders now see a 60 percent chance the Fed will keep rates unchanged in December, according to CME Group’s FedWatch tool.- Temporary reassurance -The sharp hiring rebound “soothes concerns that the labor market was on the precipice of a large downturn and removes urgency for another rate cut,” said Nationwide chief economist Kathy Bostjancic.She added that the unemployment increase was “for good reasons as more people came into the labor force looking for a job, driving up the labor force participation rate 0.1 percentage point to 62.4 percent.”Overall, the latest report showed “a somewhat softer labor market, but not one that is rapidly declining in strength,” said Mortgage Bankers Association chief economist Mike Fratantoni.Yet, even if the jobs market was not “crumbling before the government shutdown,” federal employment likely fell more steeply in October, warned Oxford Economics lead economist Nancy Vanden Houten.This is because “workers who signed up for the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program will drop off payrolls,” she said.The Labor Department is not publishing unemployment figures for October, saying that the shutdown had impacted some survey data collection.Instead of releasing a full jobs report for that month, available figures will be put out alongside November’s numbers on December 16.According to Thursday’s report, job losses occurred in transportation and warehousing, as well as in the federal government in September — even as there were gains in areas like health care.Federal government employment dropped by 3,000 and is down by 97,000 since reaching a peak in January, the report added.Average hourly earnings rose by 0.2 percent to $36.67 in September.The overall hiring figure was higher than analysts expected, with surveys of economists by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal expecting job gains of 50,000 instead.

Dick Cheney, celebrated as a master Republican strategist but defined by the darkest chapters of America’s “War on Terror,” was honored Thursday in a funeral attended by Washington’s elite that pointedly left out President Donald Trump.Cheney’s career reads like a catalogue of American statecraft, even as his long shadow over foreign policy — as defense secretary during the Gulf War and the 46th vice president under George W. Bush — still divides the country.Bush and fellow former president Joe Biden were among more than 1,000 guests at Washington National Cathedral. But Trump, who hasn’t commented on Cheney’s death, and Vice President JD Vance were not invited.The Neo-Gothic Episcopal church, veiled in muted autumn gloom and fortified by tight security, set a tone of quiet gravity as a Who’s Who of luminaries gathered beneath its vaulted stone arches.”Colleagues from every chapter of his career will tell you that he lifted the standards of those around him, just by being who he was: so focused and so capable,” Bush told the congregation.”In our years in office together — on the quiet days and on the hardest ones — he was everything a president should expect in his second-in-command.”Every living former vice president — Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Al Gore and Dan Quayle — were in attendance, along with generals, foreign dignitaries and Supreme Court justices.Praised for his intellect and described by historians as the most powerful vice president in modern US history, Cheney was admired as a strategist of unusual clarity, and a steady hand through America’s darkest hours.His career spanned the Cold War, the Gulf conflict and the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.As vice president, he helped drive national security policy and drove an unprecedented expansion of presidential authority.He was said to embody the paradoxes of power: a meticulous operator often thrust into the spotlight, a staunch conservative who backed civil rights for his lesbian daughter and a statesman regarded as both indispensable and dangerous.Cheney’s daughter Liz — famously ousted from the congressional Republican Party over her opposition to Trump — spoke movingly about connecting with her father in his final years, watching sports and old movies, and hitting the road together.”We drove for hours. We talked about life and family history and America,” she said.- Darker legacy -Flags across states were lowered to half-staff after his death on November 3.But looming over every tribute was the darker side of his legacy: the expansion of executive power, the “War on Terror,” the invasion of Iraq and the debate over America’s use of torture.For critics, he was the architect of some of the nation’s most calamitous decisions, a politician whose belief in executive power left deep scars at home and abroad.Cheney was a key advocate for the 2003 invasion of Iraq — famously stating that “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction” — a conviction that haunted him after the intelligence behind the claim unraveled.He championed sweeping surveillance powers under the Patriot Act and defended controversial “enhanced interrogation” techniques.Later in life he emerged as a critic of his own party’s populist drift. A vocal detractor of Trump, whom he called a “threat to our republic,” he even endorsed Harris, the president’s Democratic election rival in 2024.Trump’s absence reflected the ideological rifts that divided Washington during Cheney’s final years, and the demise of the bipartisanship valued by the oldest generation of power-brokers.The president has been silent on Cheney’s death, though his press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was “aware” of his passing.Responding to past criticism, Trump once described Cheney as an “irrelevant RINO” and a “king of endless, nonsensical wars, wasting lives and trillions of dollars.”

The US health agency has updated its official website to reflect the vaccine skepticism of a senior Trump official, backpedaling on its own years of efforts to combat misinformation on the topic.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late Wednesday revised its site with language that muddies its previous scientifically grounded position that immunizations do not cause the developmental disability autism.Years of research demonstrate that there is no causal link between vaccinations and autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders.But Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, has long voiced anti-vaccine rhetoric and inaccurate claims connecting the two — and now has inserted his own views into official US advice.The CDC webpage on vaccines and autism had previously stated that studies show “no link between receiving vaccines and developing autism spectrum disorder,” citing a body of high-quality research including a 2013 study from the agency itself.That text reflects medical and scientific consensus.But the changes rebuke it. The website now repeats unfounded information that “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”The revised language accuses health authorities of having “ignored” research supporting a link and said the US health department “has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism.”The false theory linking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism stems from a flawed study published in 1998, which was retracted for including falsified data. Its results have not been replicated and are refuted by subsequent research.- ‘Do not trust this agency’ -The CDC website edits were met with anger, fear and concern by career scientists and other public health figures who have spent years combatting such false information.”The weaponization of the voice of CDC is getting worse,” said Demetre Daskalakis, the former director of the agency’s arm focused on immunization and respiratory diseases, who resigned earlier this year in protest.”This is a public health emergency,” he said on X, saying the site was “updated to cause chaos without scientific basis.” “DO NOT TRUST THIS AGENCY.”Susan Kressly, president of American Academy of Pediatrics, said “we call on the CDC to stop wasting government resources to amplify false claims that sow doubt in one of the best tools we have to keep children healthy and thriving: routine immunizations.”Pointing to “40 high-quality studies,” she said that “the conclusion is clear and unambiguous: There’s no link between vaccines and autism.”The anti-vaccine advocacy group Children’s Health Defense meanwhile praised the revisions. The organization’s CEO Mary Holland said “thank you, Bobby” on X.Kennedy is the founder and former chairman of the nonprofit.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday evoked the death penalty for Democratic lawmakers who urged the military to refuse illegal orders, calling them traitors and accusing them of sedition.The group of Democratic senators and representatives, who all have military or intelligence service backgrounds, made the comments in a video posted Tuesday on X.They did not specify which orders they were referring to, but Trump’s administration has come under fire for its employment of US forces both at home and abroad.”This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???,” Trump said on Truth Social. He then added in a later post: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”Trump also reposted a message from a user urging him to “hang them” and saying that the first US president, George Washington, would have done the same.The lawmakers behind the message included Senator Mark Kelly, a former member of the Navy and NASA astronaut, and Senator Elissa Slotkin, who served with the CIA in Iraq.The six accused the Trump administration of “pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.””Right now, the threats to our constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home,” they said, adding: “You can refuse illegal orders.”- ‘Not partisan’ -Inside the United States, Trump has ordered the National Guard into multiple US cities, in many cases against the wishes of local officials, in a bid to bring allegedly rampant unrest under control.Abroad, Trump has ordered strikes on a series of alleged drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean that have left more than 80 people dead since early September.Experts say the strikes are illegal and amount to extrajudicial killings even if they target known traffickers.A group of more than 300 former national security officials calling themselves the “Steady State” said in an open letter on Thursday that they strongly supported the six Democrats.They said the principle of military personnel refusing unlawful orders was “not controversial. It is not partisan. It is not new. And it is the bedrock of lawful civilian control of the military.”The White House and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth on Wednesday both slammed the message from the Democratic lawmakers.Hegseth described it as “Stage 4 TDS,” or “Trump Derangement Syndrome” — a term used by the right to mock the president’s opponents.Trump previously evoked the death penalty in 2023 in relation to his former top US military officer Mark Milley, who became an outspoken critic of the president.After Milley told journalist Bob Woodward that he had secretly called his Chinese counterpart amid tensions after Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in January 2021, Trump said “in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”

New York’s incoming leftist mayor Zohran Mamdani said he was “ready for whatever happens” when he meets US President Donald Trump in Washington Friday, stressing their shared desire to tackle the cost of living. Trump has previously threatened to deport Uganda-born Mamdani and falsely calls him a communist, but New York’s mayor-elect said Thursday he would “work with anyone to make life more affordable” for residents of the country’s largest city.The mayor-elect noted that tens of thousands of New Yorkers had voted for both Trump and Mamdani over the issue of cost of living, with rents and the cost of essentials higher there than in much of the United States. Democratic socialist Mamdani, elected earlier this month, has positioned himself as part of the resistance against a US president who has pushed the limits of his power, particularly targeting Democrat-run cities.”It’s more critical than ever, given the national crisis of affordability, one that New Yorkers know very well… and the specific challenge many cities are facing in balancing public safety and steps taken by this administration,” Mamdani said.He noted that it was customary for a newly elected New York mayor to meet the US president, and that his staff had reached out to the White House to set up the meeting.Mamdani said that he and Trump had “many disagreements” but that he would “pursue all avenues and meetings that can make our city affordable.”As the first mayoral candidate to surpass the one-million-vote mark in New York since 1969, Mamdani campaigned on pledges of affordable housing and childcare, as well as free rides on city buses and city-run grocery stores. Experts have questioned the financial feasibility of some of Mamdani’s pledges.Anti-immigrant Trump has derided Mamdani’s South Asian name, and threatened to cut federal funding for New York when the Muslim politician takes the reins of New York, which was Trump’s home for decades.Mamdani has not backed down from Trump, calling out the 79-year-old Republican during his victory rally earlier this month.White House meetings have been perilous affairs for leaders who have displeased Trump, with the US president notably attacking the presidents of Ukraine and South Africa during visits to the Oval Office.

A flying piece of cosmic rock or an alien threat? Comet 3I/ATLAS is hurtling through our solar system and captivating scientists and internet users alike, even prompting Kim Kardashian to ask NASA for answers.Questions on whether the comet could actually be an alien spacecraft are coming from sources as varied as the reality TV star, a member of US Congress and a Harvard researcher, as well as from prominent conspiracy theorists.But that theory has been shot down by NASA, which released new images of the comet on Wednesday after the speculation gained traction online.”It’s amazing to see how people are really engaged in the discussion,” said Thomas Puzia, an astrophysicist who led the team at the Chilean observatory that made the discovery.But, “it’s very dangerous and to a certain degree misleading to put speculations ahead of scientific process,” he told AFP in a thinly veiled criticism of another researcher who has been insisting for weeks that the extraterrestrial spacecraft hypothesis cannot be ruled out.”The facts, all of them without exception, point to a normal object that is coming from the interstellar space to us,” he said.He added the comet was “very exceptional in its nature, but it’s nothing that we cannot explain with physics.”- Seeking signs of life –Since its detection in July, the comet has generated intense speculation — unsurprisingly so, given it is only the third interstellar object foreign to our solar system ever discovered to be passing through.The first was the Oumuamua comet, which sparked similar ripples of excitement and debate in 2017.Even then, Harvard Professor Avi Loeb supported the theory that Oumuamua could be a spacecraft, a controversial position he later defended in a book. He has now accused his scientific peers of lacking open-mindedness when it comes to Comet 3I/ATLAS.”Obviously, it could be natural,” he told AFP. “But I said: we have to consider the possibility that it’s technological because if it is then the implications for humanity will be huge.”NASA, however, did not agree.”We want very much to find signs of life in the universe… but 3I/ATLAS is a comet,” said Amit Kshatriya, a senior NASA official, at a press conference on Wednesday.The debate risked overshadowing the very real wonder that 3I/ATLAS represents, according to Puzia who said it offered “an unprecedented insight into an extrasolar system, potentially billions of years older than our own solar system.”- ‘Goosebumps’ -If there is one thing everyone agrees on, it is that 3I/ATLAS is anything but ordinary.The comet holds many mysteries, particularly regarding its origin and exact composition, which scientists hope to unravel through close observation in the coming weeks as it gets closer to Earth.This small, solid body composed of rock and ice from the far reaches of space could help us better understand how “planets might form” or even “how life might form around other stars in the Milky Way Galaxy in different times of the evolutionary history of the galaxy,” according to Puzia.NASA scientist Tom Statler described having “goosebumps” when thinking about the comet’s origins.”We can’t say this for sure, but the likelihood is it came from a solar system older than our own solar system itself,” he said. “It’s a window into the deep past, and so deep in the past that it predates even the formation of our Earth and our Sun.”Unlike the two interstellar objects detected previously and only briefly studied, astronomers have had months to observe 3I/ATLAS.And they hope this is just the beginning, thanks to improving technology for observation and detection.”We should be finding many, many more of them every year,” Darryl Seligman of Michigan State University told AFP.

No country can be allowed to bully another, President Cyril Ramaphosa said Thursday in a jab at the United States which is boycotting the G20 summit of leading economies in South Africa this weekend.Washington has also demanded that South Africa does not issue the traditional joint leaders’ statement after the meeting, where around 40 countries will be present.”It cannot be that a country’s geographical location or income or army determines who has a voice and who is spoken down to,” Ramaphosa told delegates at a curtain-raiser event in a clear reference to Washington.”It basically means there should be no bullying of one nation by another,” he said in an address to a gathering of civil society groups ahead of the November 22-23 summit in Johannesburg.Relations between South Africa and the United States have plummeted this year over a number of foreign and domestic differences.The US embassy confirmed it would not attend the summit in a note to South Africa, saying Pretoria’s G20 priorities “run counter to the US policy views and we cannot support consensus on any documents negotiated under your presidency.”South Africa replied that the United States’ absence from the event negated its role.Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola said Pretoria would press ahead with a leaders’ declaration. “We will not be told by anyone who is absent that we cannot adopt a declaration or make any decisions at the summit,” he said in an address after Ramaphosa had spoken.”If we do not end up with a declaration, it will not be on the basis that someone who is absent told us,” he said.South Africa chose “Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability” as the theme of its presidency of the G20, which comprises 19 countries and two regional bodies, the European Union and the African Union. Its members account for 85 percent of global GDP and around two-thirds of the world’s population.Its agenda focuses on strengthening disaster resilience, improving debt sustainability for low-income countries, financing a “just energy transition”, and harnessing “critical minerals for inclusive growth and sustainable development”.This is the first G20 summit to be held in Africa.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva put his “roadmap” from fossil fuels back at the top of UN climate talks in Belem on Wednesday, despite the failure of a bold bid to seal an early deal.Lula flew into the Amazonian city to bring the weight of the presidency to the summit, in a rare late-stage visit by a head of state or government at the annual gathering.COP30 host Brazil released a draft pact on Tuesday and pushed negotiators to work through the night, hoping to get nations to agree on the most disputed points as soon as Wednesday — two days before the conference is scheduled to end.Lula, who has invested political capital into making what he dubbed the “COP of truth” a success, shuttled between rooms to meet with ministers of various negotiating groups.He burst jovially into the evening’s press conference two hours late, singing the praises of Belem and the state of Para, boasting: “From the beginning, I had no doubt that we were going to organize the best COP of all those held so far.”He then returned to his “roadmap” away from oil, coal and gas that he first floated earlier this month, lighting the fuse for the summit’s ambitious tone.”We need to show society that we want this without imposing anything on anyone, without setting deadlines for each country to decide what it can do within its own time, within its own possibilities,” he said. “But we are serious — we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We need to start thinking about how to live without fossil fuels.”- No more money -Lula “said clearly the roadmap is what he wants to see coming out of the conference,” Marcio Astrini of Brazil’s Climate Observatory told AFP.”We need to see all this optimism reflected in the final text,” added Greenpeace Brazil.Still, much work remains to reach consensus, not only on the roadmap away from fossil fuels — supported by a coalition of more than 80 countries but opposed by the oil-producing bloc — but also on trade measures and other divisive topics.Negotiators are notably at odds over pressure from the developing world for developed countries to provide more financing to help vulnerable nations adapt to climate change and deploy renewable energy.The COP29 summit in Baku last year concluded with developed nations agreeing to provide $300 billion a year in climate finance, a figure criticized by developing countries as woefully insufficient.The EU, where many countries are facing economic headwinds and soaring debt, has led the opposition to demands for more money.”We’re not looking at any increases in adaptation finance,” Irish climate minister Darragh O’Brien said.The EU is also fighting attempts led by China and major developing economies to have language against its tax on imports of carbon-intensive goods such as steel, aluminum, cement and fertilizers.- Grants, not loans -“There should be at least a mention (of trade measures), because they become a disabler instead of an enabler. So, I think they will be mentioned in some way,” Mexican environment minister Alicia Barcena told AFP.Aisha Humera Moriani, Pakistan’s head of delegation, told AFP that “it’s extremely important that we find something on the operationalization of that $300 billion.” She added that most of the funding should boost climate-vulnerable countries’ resilience to extreme weather and a larger share needs to come as grants, rather than loans that further burden poor nations with debt.A new text is expected to be published on Wednesday.COP30 is due to end on Friday, but climate summits regularly run into overtime.In a sign that Brazil wants to stay on schedule, delegates sleeping on two cruise ships serving as floating hotels have been told to vacate their cabins on Saturday morning.