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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.

The EU is preparing to hit US goods worth nearly 100 billion euros ($113 billion) with tariffs in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s sweeping levies if talks fail, European diplomats told AFP Wednesday.Trump has slapped a series of higher tariffs on Europe since March and in his biggest move, he imposed a 20-percent tariff on a majority of EU goods last month — before announcing a 90-day pause that is due to expire in July.There is currently a “baseline” levy of 10 percent on goods from the 27-country EU and other nations around the world.The European Union hopes to reach a deal with the United States to avoid an all-out trade war, but wants to be prepared to strike back if Trump’s tariffs kick in again.The European Commission, which is in charge of EU trade policy, told member states last week that it would target nearly 100 billion euros worth of US goods in response to the 20-percent tariff if negotiations fail to yield an agreement, two EU diplomats said.The preliminary list of products is expected to be made public on Thursday.EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic told the European Parliament this week that 70 percent of the bloc’s total exports face levies at rates between 10 and 25 percent.He warned that with US trade probes underway into a raft of sectors, from pharmaceuticals to lumber, “around 549 billion euros of EU exports to the US, i.e. 97 percent of the total” could eventually face tariffs.The EU diplomats did not say which US products would be targeted, but the Financial Times newspaper on Wednesday reported Boeing aircraft would be in the firing line.Only a day earlier, France’s Airbus chief executive Guillaume Faury told AFP that Europe should impose tariffs on imports of the US company’s aircraft should talks fail.If negotiations “do not result in a positive outcome, I imagine that there will be — and that’s what we wish — reciprocal tariffs on airplanes to force a higher level of negotiation”, Faury said.The commission and Boeing refused to comment on the FT report.

A US warplane plummeted into the Red Sea when trying to land on the Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, a defense official said Wednesday, the second jet lost from the ship in just over a week.The F/A-18F Super Hornet — which cost about $67 million — went overboard Tuesday due to a failure in the procedure for aircraft to catch a wire with a hook to help them stop after landing.”The arrestment failed, causing the aircraft to go overboard,” the defense official said.”Both aviators safely ejected and were rescued,” the official said, adding that they had minor injuries.It is the second F/A-18 operating off the Truman to be lost in recent days.On April 28, a similar F/A-18E fell off the carrier when the crew that was towing it in the hanger lost control of the plane.One sailor sustained a minor injury in that incident, which also saw a tow tractor lost overboard.Late last year, another F/A-18 operating off the Truman was lost after it was mistakenly shot down by the USS Gettysburg guided missile cruiser. Both pilots survived that incident.And in February, the Truman itself suffered damage when it collided with a merchant vessel in the Mediterranean Sea near Egypt’s Port Said.- Yemen ceasefire -In addition to the lost warplanes and damage, a US official said last week that seven MQ-9 Reaper drones — which cost around $30 million apiece — had been lost in the Yemen area since March 15.The Truman is one of two US aircraft carriers operating in the Middle East, where US forces have been hammering Yemen’s Huthi rebels with strikes since mid-March.The Iran-backed Huthis began attacking merchant vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in late 2023, claiming solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, which has been devastated by the Israeli military following a shock Hamas attack in October of that year.The United States started targeting the Huthis in 2024 under Joe Biden, and President Donald Trump’s administration on March 15 launched a new wave of near-daily strikes.On Tuesday, Trump said that the Huthis had agreed to stop their attacks and that Washington would in turn halt strikes on the rebels, which have left 300 people dead, according to an AFP tally of Huthi figures.”They say they will not be blowing up ships anymore,” the US president said, before mediator Oman said the two sides had agreed a ceasefire.

The US Federal Reserve faces a tough choice Wednesday as it contends with President Donald Trump’s tariff rollout: Prioritize tackling inflation by holding interest rates high, do nothing, or stimulate growth and employment by cutting rates?Analysts and investors overwhelmingly think the Fed will choose to sit tight, preferring to wait and see how the new levies affect the US economy before moving on rates. The rate-setting committee’s second day of deliberations began at 9:00 am local time in Washington (1300 GMT) as scheduled, the Fed said in a statement. Their decision will be published later Wednesday, followed by a press conference held by Fed Chair Jerome Powell. “It’s an unfavorable mix for the Federal Reserve,” Nationwide chief economist Kathy Bostjancic told AFP. “They’re going to see upward price pressures at the same time when economic growth is slowing,” she said. “And then they’ll have to put a weight on what do they believe?”The US central bank has a dual mandate from Congress to act independently to achieve stable prices and maximum sustainable employment, which it does mainly by raising and lowering the level of its key short-term lending rate. Futures traders see a probability of more than 95 percent that the Fed will make no cuts this week, according to data from financial services company CME Group. – ‘Decisive evidence’ – Last month, Trump introduced steep levies 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 introduced 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, as consumers and businesses stocked up on imports ahead of the introduction of the new measures.At the same time, the unemployment rate has hovered close to historic lows, and the inflation rate has trended towards — but remained just above — the Fed’s long-term target of two percent. “We continue to think that Fed officials will be willing to ‘look through’ tariff related goods inflation and cut policy rates to support the labor market,” economists at Citi bank wrote in a recent investor note. “But that will not occur until they see decisive evidence in hard data that labor markets are loosening,” they added. Other analysts, including those at Deutsche Bank, expect the Fed will pause for longer to see how the economic picture unfolds. If, as is widely expected, the Fed sits tight this week, its baseline rate will remain at between 4.25 percent and 4.50 percent, where it has sat since December 2024. – ‘Neither good nor bad enough’ -“Incoming data are neither good nor bad enough to force the FOMC to reveal its intentions,” Steve Englander, Standard Chartered bank’s head of North America macro strategy, wrote in a note to clients, referring to the bank’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee. Fed Chair Jerome Powell will likely try to make “very little news” during his regular press conference after the rate decision is published, said Bostjancic from Nationwide. Powell will likely face additional questions about the Trump administration’s support for his leadership of the independent central bank, given public criticism leveled at him and the Fed by senior government officials — including the president. “He should lower them,” Trump said of Powell and the interest rates in an interview published over the weekend, repeating his past criticism of the Fed chair while insisting he had no plans to try to fire him before his term ends next year.”By commenting publicly on what the Fed should do, they potentially undermine…the public’s perception of the institution’s commitment to price stability,” former Fed economist Rodney Ramcharan wrote in a note shared with AFP. “If the Fed were to cut rates, markets could perceive that decision as ‘political’ rather than a reaction to actual economic conditions,” he added. 

Sara, a Dubai-based journalist, joined the US-funded Alhurra TV news channel hoping for job security. But after it abruptly stopped broadcasting and fired most staff, she’s wondering how to make ends meet.Alhurra, the only Arabic-language US station in a region where anti-American feeling is common, went off-air last month, hit by widespread cuts under President Donald Trump.The station, which has struggled to compete in a crowded market that includes Qatar’s Al Jazeera, had already sacked 25 percent of its workforce after budget cuts last September.It is also out of kilter with Trump, a frequent critic of traditional media who will visit the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf monarchies this month.But Alhurra’s sudden closure came as a shock. On April 12, all 99 employees in Dubai, its Middle East headquarters, received an email titled “Thank you for your service”, informing them of their immediate dismissal.Sara, who asked to use a pseudonym to speak freely about the situation, said they are now fighting for the end-of-service payments mandated by law in the UAE.”We’re living a horror movie,” she told AFP. “My income was suddenly cut off, and I have family commitments and a bank loan. What will happen if I can’t pay the instalments?”The defunding of Alhurra, along with other outlets under the federal US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) such as Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, is being challenged in US courts.But the Dubai staff hold out little hope of being reinstated. Meanwhile, the stress has “driven us into psychological ruin”, said Sara, who is in her thirties.- ‘Dialogue between leaders’ -Dubai’s authorities are closely monitoring the case and providing assistance, including by relaxing the usual practice of quickly cancelling residence permits for those without a job, Alhurra journalists told AFP.According to Mutlaq al-Mutairi, a media specialist at Saudi Arabia’s King Saud University, the cuts were in line with shifts in messaging under Trump.The United States no longer uses media as “they used to do in the past to communicate their political vision, especially on the question of terrorism”, Mutairi said.Instead, Trump now directly “relies on dialogue between leaders and governments” to get his message across, he told AFP.Washington established Alhurra in 2004, the year after the invasion of Iraq, as a soft power tool to counterbalance the influence of Al Jazeera, which had been broadcasting since 1996.The US news channel claims a weekly audience of more than 30 million people in 22 Arab countries.It is the flagship of Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), part of USAGM — an independent federal agency that funds media outlets.However, the Trump administration — which placed USAGM under the leadership of Kari Lake, an ultra-conservative former TV news anchor — condemned it as a “corrupt giant and a burden on American taxpayers”.USAGM had 3,384 employees in fiscal year 2023 and had requested $950 million in funding for the current fiscal year. – ‘Kill strategy’ -Jeffrey Gedmin, MBN’s president and CEO for just over a year, said the company had gone from around 500 employees to “about 40″.”The Trump administration, in my view, is not particularly fond of this kind of independent media,” he told AFP, describing the cuts as a “kill strategy”.”I think what the Trump administration is doing is simply unwise. I think it’s going to harm, reputationally, the United States of America.”Given the recent job losses, many of Alhurra’s staff were not surprised it closed. But they were taken aback by the speed of events.”The decision (to close) was expected, but we didn’t imagine it would happen so quickly,” said an employee at MBN’s Virginia headquarters.”They threw us out into the street,” the employee added.Michael Robbins, director of the Arab Barometer research network, pointed to Alhurra’s limited success competing with Al Jazeera, as well as the BBC, which “already provided news in Arabic from a Western perspective and had a much longer reputation”. “Few in the region turn to Alhurra as their primary source of information,” he added.Another Alhurra journalist in Dubai, who also did not want to be named, said he was facing an “uncertain professional future” after eight years at the channel. “We are shunned (by media) in most Arab countries because we worked for the Americans,” said the 56-year-old. Gedmin said he was “in complete solidarity” with the laid-off employees. “We’re fighting to see if we can help them at least somewhat,” he said.

Hollywood has always been “an international industry,” that would suffer creatively if cross-border work was curbed, the head of North America’s largest film festival told AFP.Cameron Bailey, chief executive of the Toronto International Film Festival, joined other entertainment industry leaders in criticizing President Donald Trump’s proposed 100 percent tariffs on foreign films, a surprise weekend announcement that plunged the movie industry into uncertainty. “Hollywood itself has always been, since the very early days, an international industry,” Bailey said in an interview at TIFF’s flagship Toronto venue, a complex that includes cinemas, bars and other social spaces. He recalled the US film industry’s “classic era” in the 1940s and 1950s, created by filmmakers who had come from Europe.Bailey said the history of movie-making has proven the value of letting “story-telling brilliance to really flow across borders.””Like any global industry, when you draw on the very best talent from around the world, you’re always going to do better,” Bailey said. Writing on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, Trump said he had authorized his administration to begin “instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.””WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!” he wrote.A survey of studio executives revealed that their top five preferred production locations for 2025 and 2026 were all outside of the United States, due to competitive tax incentive schemes on offer. Toronto was first on the list and Vancouver, in western Canada, ranked third. Trump has imposed tariffs on a range of Canadian goods including autos, steel and aluminum but his plans for the film industry remain unclear. Bailey said if Trump moved forward, any actions to limit film production in Canada would likely lead to less talent feeding into Hollywood. “Our actors become their movie stars sometimes,” Bailey said.”Our producers and screenwriters and directors and crews are all working to support Hollywood’s movies, shows, series, and that’s been going on for a long time.”- ‘No sticky floors’ -As cinemas face fresh challenges to attract customers amid the growth of streaming services, Bailey said future success for theaters will rely on their ability to offer an elevated social experience. TIFF’s downtown Toronto venue, The Lightbox, includes a cocktail lounge and various other areas for social interactions to complement watching a film. “Nothing wrong with watching something at home on the couch, that’s always nice as well, but we believe in the theatrical experience,” Bailey said. “You’ll see more and more movie theaters offer those kind of premium experiences, serving meals, serving wine, offering people places to hang out after the movie to talk,” he added.The “technical experience,” including picture quality and sound, also need to be elite, Bailey said. “No sticky floors, obviously, it has to feel like it’s something special when you go out.”- Talent poaching? -Canadian universities, hospitals and other institutions are making targeted efforts to attract top US talent, trying to recruit disgruntled researchers who are facing political and financial pressure under Trump, including with threats of massive federal funding cuts.Bailey told AFP he does not see the need for Canada’s film industry to be “actively recruiting” US artists, but affirmed Canada should remain “a haven” for those uncomfortable with political circumstances in other countries, including the United States.  “Canada has a not-too-distant history of welcoming people who didn’t want to take part in the Vietnam War as Americans, and they came to Canada, and they were a significant part of building the culture in the 60s and 70s in this country,” he said.The 50th edition of TIFF opens in September. 

Motown legend Smokey Robinson was facing a multimillion dollar lawsuit on Tuesday from four former housekeepers who allege the soul singer repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted them.A lawsuit filed in a Los Angeles court claims the 85-year-old forced himself on the women multiple times over a number of years, often when his wife was not at home.One of the plaintiffs alleges the “Tracks of My Tears” singer would summon her to his bedroom in his Los Angeles area home, and greet her wearing only his underwear.He would then sexually assault her, despite her protestations, with the suit claiming there were seven such attacks between March 2023 and when she felt compelled to resign in February 2024.Another former housekeeper alleges Robinson assaulted her more than 20 times over a four-year period, while a third says in the suit that she was “sexually harassed, sexually assaulted and raped” throughout her 12-year employment to 2024.The fourth woman says the singer began assaulting her in 2007 when she traveled with him to his Las Vegas home.None of the women is named in the suit, which is common in cases involving claims of sexual assault.The suit, which is seeking at least $50 million in damages, says none of the women reported the assaults at the time because they were intimidated by Robinson’s celebrity, and feared attacks on their character.Robinson’s wife, Frances, who is also named in the lawsuit for allegedly creating a hostile work environment and ignoring her husband’s behavior, told AFP the suit had come as a surprise.”I’m as shocked as you are,” she said when reached by telephone, but declined to go into details.Robinson was one of the founding members of The Miracles, a Detroit-based outfit that came together in the 1950s.The group had dozens of chart hits, including the smash “The Tears of a Clown” in 1967.

The Associated Press news agency will continue to credit one of its most distinctive photos, “Napalm Girl” taken during the Vietnam War, to photographer Nick Ut despite questions about who took it, the wire said Tuesday.The black and white photo of a severely burned Vietnamese girl, running naked down a road after a 1972 napalm attack in southern Vietnam helped alter perceptions of the war and remains a potent reminder of its devastation. Vietnamese American AP photographer Huynh Cong Ut, better known as Nick Ut, won a Pulitzer Prize and a World Press Photo award for the image. Ut claims the photo as his own.The photo’s subject, Kim Phuc Phan Thi, who became Canadian, has continued to bear witness to her ordeal as an adult. But in January, “The Stringer” documentary screened at the Sundance Film Festival credited the image to Vietnamese freelance journalist Nguyen Thanh Nghe. After a nearly year-long investigation, the news agency published a 97-page report Tuesday concluding “it is possible Nick Ut took the photo.””However, that cannot be proven definitively due to the passage of time, the death of many of the key players involved and the limitations of technology. New findings uncovered during this investigation do raise unanswered questions and AP remains open to the possibility that Ut did not take this photo,” it said.”The AP has concluded that there is not the definitive evidence required by AP’s standards to change the credit of the 53-year-old photograph.”The agency concluded it is “likely” the photo was taken with a Pentax camera, while Ut stated in interviews he carried two Leica and two Nikon cameras that day.In “The Stringer,” Carl Robinson the AP’s former photo editor in Saigon claimed he lied and altered the caption of the image under orders from Saigon photo chief Horst Faas.”Nick Ut came with me on the assignment. But he didn’t take that photo… That photo was mine,” said Nguyen Thanh Nghe, who stated in the film that he was certain he took the photo.AP insisted in its report “no proof has been found that Nguyen took the picture.”Ut remained with the AP for 45 years, leaving Saigon to later work for the wire in Los Angeles, until his retirement in 2017.

A US jury on Tuesday handed WhatsApp a major victory in its cyberespionage suit against NSO Group, ordering the Israel-based firm to pay some $168 million in damages.Meta-owned WhatsApp sued NSO in late 2019 in federal court in Northern California, accusing it of planting Pegasus spy software on the smartphones of targets using the messaging app.”This trial put spyware executives on the stand and exposed exactly how their surveillance-for-hire system –- shrouded in so much secrecy –- operates,” Meta said in a blog post.”Put simply, NSO’s Pegasus works to covertly compromise people’s phones with spyware capable of hoovering up information from any app installed on the device.”Pegasus software also enables smartphone cameras or microphones to be remotely turned on without letting users know, according to Meta.WhatsApp accused NSO of cyberespionage targeting journalists, lawyers, human rights activists and others on the Facebook-owned messaging service.A jury on Tuesday found that NSO should pay WhatsApp $444,719 in compensatory damages and another $167,254,000 in punitive damages intended to discourage repeating the behavior that landed it in court.”We will carefully examine the verdict’s details and pursue appropriate legal remedies, including further proceedings and an appeal,” NSO vice president for global communication Gil Lainer said in response to an AFP inquiry.”We firmly believe that our technology plays a critical role in preventing serious crime and terrorism and is deployed responsibly by authorized government agencies.”Evidence presented at the trial said NSO had spyware installation methods to exploit the technology of companies other than Meta, spending tens of millions of dollars annually on ways to install malicious code through messaging, browsers and operating systems, according to Meta.In 2016, Apple rushed out a security update after researchers said prominent Emirati rights activist Ahmed Mansoor was targeted by UAE authorities using Pegasus spyware.The software has been pinpointed by independent experts as likely being used in a number of countries with poor human rights records.”Given how much information people access on their devices, including through private end–to-end encrypted apps like WhatsApp, Signal and others, we will continue going after spyware vendors indiscriminately targeting people around the world,” Meta said in the blog post.”These malicious technologies are a threat to the entire ecosystem and it’ll take all of us to defend against it.”The legal complaint said the attackers “reverse-engineered the WhatsApp app and developed a program to enable them to emulate legitimate WhatsApp network traffic in order to transmit malicious code” to take over the devices.Infecting smartphones or other gadgets being used for WhatsApp messages meant the content of messages encrypted during transmission could be accessed after they were unscrambled for recipients.Founded in 2010 by Israelis Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie, NSO Group is based in the Israeli seaside hi-tech hub of Herzliya, near Tel Aviv.

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that all fans from across the globe would be welcome at the 2026 World Cup despite concerns over his border crackdown impacting the tournament.Trump, who has appointed himself chairman of the White House task force for the tournament, said visitors to the United States could expect a “seamless” experience.The United States is co-hosting the 2026 World Cup with neighboring Canada and Mexico.”We can’t wait to welcome soccer fans from all over the globe,” Trump said at a White House briefing alongside FIFA president Gianni Infantino.”Every part of the US government will be working to ensure that these events are safe and successful, and those traveling to America to watch the competition have a seamless experience during every part of their visit.”Foreign traveler arrivals in the United States are expected to decline by 5.1 percent in 2025, according to one recent study by Tourism Economics.  The World Tourism Forum Institute has said a mix of stringent US immigration policies and global political tensions could “significantly affect” international arrivals.Vice President JD Vance, the vice-chair of the World Cup task force, said while foreign visitors would be welcome they would have to leave at the end of the tournament.”I know we’ll have visitors, probably from close to 100 countries. We want them to come. We want them to celebrate. We want them to watch the game,” Vance told Tuesday’s briefing. “But when the time is up, they’ll have to go home.”Infantino, the president of football’s world governing body, said his organization had “full and entire” confidence in the Trump administration to help deliver a successful tournament.”The entire world will focus on the United States of America, and America welcomes the world,” Infantino told the meeting. “Everyone who wants to come here to enjoy, to have fun, to celebrate the game will be able to do that.Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said US officials were using next month’s FIFA Club World Cup as a testing ground for the World Cup, stating that the US expected two million overseas visitors.”We’re processing those travel documents and visa applications already … that is obviously going to be a precursor to what we can do next year for the World Cup as well,” Noem said. “It is all being facilitated.”Trump meanwhile said he was confident of working closely with Canada and Mexico despite his broiling trade disputes with the two World Cup co-hosts.”I don’t see any tension either,” Trump said, shortly after meeting Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney. “We get along very well with both.”