Top World News
‘Your basis to live is checked at each and every step’: India’s ID system divides opinion
Keir Starmer is considering Aadhaar as model for UK, but detractors warn of ‘digital coercion’ and security breachesIt is often difficult for people in India to remember life before Aadhaar. The digital biometric ID, allegedly available for every Indian citizen, was only introduced 15 years ago but its presence in daily life is ubiquitous.Indians now need an Aadhaar number to buy a house, get a job, open a bank account, pay their tax, receive benefits, buy a car, get a sim card, book priority train tickets and admit children into school. Babies can be given Aadhaar numbers almost immediately after they are born. While it is not mandatory, not having Aadhaar de facto means the state does not recognise you exist, digital rights activists say. Continue reading...
Steve Bannon demands 'Christian state' in Middle East as part of Trump's peace deal
MAGA influencer Steve Bannon insisted that there would have to be a "Christian state" in the Middle East as a part of a peace deal negotiated by U.S. President Donald Trump.During the Monday War Room program, MAGA influencer Jack Posobiec told Bannon that the deal should include protection for Christians."But in this peace deal, whether we get the transitional, technocratic government, whatever we see coming forward, I want to make sure that there are protections for the Christians who are on the ground here, that there are protections for the holy sites, rebuilding of the holy sites, rebuilding of the churches," he said.Bannon argued that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had lost his bid to prevent a two-state solution with the Palestinians."The only solution here, if you're going to have a two-state solution, you have to have a three-state solution," he insisted. "You have to have a Christian state. We can no longer just say, take it through the Muslims and the Jews. It just can't work.""If you want to really protect the Holy Land, the Christians are going to have to get their own stake in this," he continued. "That is as obvious, as sure as the turning of the earth. And I think this is going to be a huge condition of the Christians in the United States, evangelical and Catholics, to say, well, hang on for a second.""Now that because of facts on the ground and how Netanyahu overplayed his hand with the Greater Israel Project, and President Trump finally said, no, we're America first. We're not Israel first."
Trump briefly silenced as Israeli politicians yell 'terrorist' during parliament address
President Donald Trump was briefly silenced Monday as Israeli politicians yelled 'terrorist!" at him as he spoke to the nation's parliament.The U.S. president has just received a standing ovation from members of the Knesset as he took his place behind the podium, but two left-wing politicians began shouting at him in protest as he praised his special envoy Steve Witkoff in a speech marking the end of Israel’s war on Gaza.The interruption left Trump briefly silenced as he was seen clearly confused by what was going on.Hadash Party head Ayman Odeh and Knesset member Ofer Cassif were ejected from the chamber after shouting "terrorist" at Trump. They held up signs that read "genocide" and "recognize Palestine.""That was very efficient," Trump said, as Cassif and Odeh were marched out of the hall by Knesset security."Back to Steve," Trump said, after the commotion settled down. “I call him Henry Kissinger, who doesn’t leak.” — (@)
'Don't worry about China': Trump claims 'President Xi just had a bad moment'
Donald Trump on Sunday posted a comment about China, telling citizens not to "worry" about the country or his "highly respected" Chinese counterpart.The president took to his own social media site, Truth Social, over the weekend, where he insisted there was nothing to worry about with China, a nation which Trump recently threatened with even more tariffs in an escalating trade dispute."Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine!" Trump wrote Sunday. "Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment. He doesn’t want Depression for his country, and neither do I. The U.S.A. wants to help China, not hurt it!!! President DJT."See the post here.
'Hurting farmers': Trump admin just made an 'unusual acknowledgement' about its policies
Donald Trump's administration just made an "unusual acknowledgement" about its immigration policies, according to a new report Saturday.In a weekend article called "Trump administration says immigration enforcement threatens higher food prices," the Washington Post reported, "In an unusual acknowledgement, the Labor Department said that tougher immigration enforcement is hurting farmers and the food supply.""The Trump administration said that its immigration crackdown is hurting farmers and risking higher food prices for Americans by cutting off agriculture’s labor supply," according to the Post. "The Labor Department warned in an obscure document filed with the Federal Register last week that 'the near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens' is threatening 'the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers.'"“Unless the Department acts immediately to provide a source of stable and lawful labor, this threat will grow,” the official document reportedly states. “The Department concludes that qualified and eligible U.S. workers will not make themselves available in sufficient numbers."According to the report, "The American Prospect first reported on the Labor Department’s comments that immigration policies are endangering the food supply and that American workers are unwilling to take agricultural jobs.""The Labor Department’s comments appear to be the first time that the Trump administration has publicly acknowledged that its hallmark immigration policy — sealing the border and deporting undocumented immigrants — threatens labor shortages and higher food prices," according to the outlet's reporting. "However, economists have been sounding the alarm since Trump campaigned on the issue during last year’s presidential election."Read the full piece here.
'Make himself richer': Jared Kushner said to have 'played' Trump to grease his own pockets
Donald Trump's son-in-law just "played the president," according to a controversial writer.Michael Wolff, a journalist who has written four books about Trump, claimed on a recent episode of the podcast "Inside Trump's Head" that Jared Kushner may have recently "played" the president in connection with their efforts to secure a Middle Eastern peace deal.In a piece called "How Jared Played Trump to Grease Own Pocket: Wolff," The Daily Beast quotes the writer in asserting "Kushner’s business connections and Trump manipulation may have cleared the way for a Gaza peace deal."The outlet further notes, "Donald Trump’s (so-far) successful plan to end the conflict in Gaza was orchestrated by Jared Kushner in a bid to make himself richer, according to Trump biographer Michael Wolff. Speaking on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast, Wolff outlined how Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, played Qatar and the president in order to further his own business interests."The article quotes Wolff as saying Kushner "craves influence in the Middle East. He craves business opportunities in the Middle East. He craves further, deeper relationships with the powerful people in the Middle East, all of which is helped by peace. So peace becomes a byproduct of business."The Beast continues:"Wolff believes Kushner, along with real estate developer and US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, pressed their business connections with Middle Eastern royal families to broker the Israel and Hamas deal. On Friday, The New York Times reported on the extent of the pair’s involvement, which earned bipartisan praise."“The Qataris basically say... we will come down hard on Hamas,” added Wolff. “And remember, Israel attacked the Hamas negotiators, essentially the top Hamas leadership in Qatar. So they were completely freaked out about this. And I think they realized, this is not in our interest."Wolff himself has also been the source of some controversy. High-profile people like Tony Blair and Sean Hannity have denied quotes published by Wolff in his books.Read the full article here (subscription required).
'It's a talent tax': AI CEOs fear demise as they accuse Trump of launching 'labor war'
Flanked by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump hosted a White House dinner with some of the richest and most powerful leaders of the world’s tech giants.To Fraser Patterson, CEO and founder of Skillit, an AI-powered construction hiring platform, it was no coincidence that after the meeting last month of more than 30 Silicon Valley power players and Trump advisers, the administration unveiled a plan to charge $100,000 one-time application fees for H-1B visas, which tech companies typically use to employ highly skilled foreign workers.“It can appear as though, rather than it being an improvement to immigration policy, it feels a little more like a labor war strategy,” Patterson said.“Isn't one of the great tenets of the American way of life and Constitution the separation of church and state? Wouldn't that extend to business, too, between business and state?”Patterson’s New York-based company employs eight — an infinitesimal fraction of the workforce at giants like Amazon, with more than a million employees and nearly 15,000 H-1B visa holders.“The largest technology companies are going to be able to hoard the best global talent, and I think it's easy to be able to draw a straight line between that and shutting out the smaller startups and the smaller firms that can’t enforce that price tag,” Patterson said. “I think it scales back the competitiveness of the technology industry, broadly speaking.”‘Global war on talent’The Trump administration says the current H-1B visa program allows employers “to hire foreign workers at a significant discount to American workers,” and the program has been “abused.”Last week Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) reintroduced bipartisan legislation, The H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act, to close loopholes in programs they say tech giants have used while laying off Americans.But, Patterson said, limiting H-1B visas will effectively end up “closing the door on skilled workers” and “gift Europe the best possible opportunity to label itself as the tech talent hub. “The general consensus is this is going to narrow the pool,” Patterson said. “There's going to be just fewer nationalities represented, fewer ideas. The U.S. becomes less of a magnet.”Rich Pleeth, CEO and founder of Finmile, an AI-powered logistics and delivery software, agreed that the fee might tilt the scales of tech dominance away from the U.S., where places like San Francisco and New York have long been considered global hubs for innovation.“The global war on talent is real,” Pleeth said. “Europe has a golden opportunity … Canada, Singapore, Berlin, they're all going to benefit.” Rich Pleeth (provided photo)Finmile employs 15 people in the U.K., seven in Romania and two in the U.S.“It's very challenging for smaller companies like us,” Pleeth said. “Talent is everything, and if the U.S. makes it harder to bring in the world's best talent, where do you set up headquarters?”While the Trump administration says the new H1-B fee will help American workers, particularly recent college graduates seeking IT jobs, Patterson said it would have the opposite effect, likely leading to “greater offshoring.”Thanks to Trump’s array of trade tariffs, which he says will bring jobs back to the U.S., many American small businesses are already struggling to survive as they face increased costs.“In reality, it's probably going to lead to labor shortages,” Patterson said. “You can't just turn on a faucet overnight to really highly skilled local workers.”Nicole Whitaker, an immigration attorney in Towson, Md., said the proposed $100,000 fee sends the message to foreign workers seeking job opportunities in the U.S. that "our doors are closed ... find another country.""This is a part of a bigger and broader push by this administration — even if things don't go into effect— to make it look like we are shutting down our borders. We are not open, and we're not welcoming toward immigrants," Whitaker said.‘The next Googles’ Pleeth, a former marketing manager at Google, pointed to tech leaders including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who were born in India but came to the U.S. for college and to work.“If you suddenly make it hard for talented people to come in, the next Googles are not going to be built in the U.S.,” Pleeth said. “Talent is the oxygen for the tech industry. For decades the U.S. had an open pipeline … we don't expect the $100K toll to hit the tech companies who are the ones who can afford it the most.”Skillit currently does not have any employees sponsored through the H-1B visa program but Patterson said he had used it when the fees were more reasonable, around $2,500.Patterson, who was born in Scotland, came to the U.S. on an O-1 visa for foreign workers of “extraordinary talent.” He is now close to becoming a U.S. citizen. Fraser Patterson (provided photo)“Very onerous, nerve-racking, even to get here … but I would say it wasn't disproportional to the value of coming here,” he said.Pleeth wants to move from the U.K. to the U.S. with his wife, two daughters and dog, a process he expects some challenges with but is hopeful will “eventually move forward.”“It's just going to become a lot harder for junior people who can share cultures, can come in with new ideas,” Pleeth said. “It's a talent tax.”
Trump just opened himself up for his 'next prosecution' in The Hague: pro-MAGA professor
Donald Trump on Sunday was warned about yet another criminal prosecution that's coming his way.Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at George Mason University Scalia Law School and a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, over the weekend published a piece called "The Next Prosecution of Donald Trump" in which he claims "plans are under way to try him in the International Criminal Court.""This time he can strike first," Kontorovich argues.According to Kontorovich's analysis, the international court will try to "find a jurisdictional hook" in the president's actions."Before his second term began, President Trump was prosecuted repeatedly in state court, federal court and the Senate. After it ends, he could face trial in another venue, the International Criminal Court in The Hague," Kontorovich said. "The U.S. didn’t sign the Rome Statute and therefore doesn’t belong to the ICC, but the court can find a jurisdictional hook in actions the administration has taken abroad in ICC member states."Specifically, Kontorovich says Trump may have opened the door to his future prosecution with the recent attacks on purported smuggling boat operations."The strikes on Venezuelan narcoterror smuggling boats provide one possible avenue. Shortly after the U.S. Navy destroyed the first such vessel, Ken Roth, a former head of Human Rights Watch, endorsed ICC intervention. 'Trump just did what the International Criminal Court has charged former Philippines Pres. Duterte with doing—ordering the summary execution of alleged drug traffickers,' Mr. Roth tweeted," the professor wrote. "Venezuela is a Rome Statute party, which in the court’s thinking gives it jurisdiction over U.S. officials and servicemen involved in the attacks. The ICC has already launched an investigation against a nonmember state (Israel) based on a single boarding of a vessel flagged by a member state, so it has all the precedents it needs."He goes on to offer advice for how Trump can attack the ICC and circumvent the future prosecution.Read the piece here.
Trump cusses out Netanyahu for downplaying progress with Hamas: report
President Donald Trump used profane language to scold Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for trying to downplay progress on ending the war in Gaza.According to Axios, Trump expected Netanyahu to declare victory after Hamas agreed to return the remaining hostages, but wanted to negotiate other parts of the peace deal. Netanyahu, however, discounted the importance of the progress."Bibi told Trump this is nothing to celebrate, and that it doesn't mean anything," one source told Axios."I don't know why you're always so f------ negative. This is a win. Take it," Trump reportedly fired back.Netanyahu eventually accepted the conditions and ordered an end to air strikes in exchange for the hostages.In an interview with Axios on Saturday, Trump said that the deal gave Israel a "chance for victory." And he said Netanyahu had eventually agreed to get on board."He was fine with it. He's got to be fine with it. He has no choice. With me, you got to be fine," the U.S. president insisted.
Hamas says they'll release all hostages under Trump's Gaza plan: report
Hamas has responded to the demands outlined by President Donald Trump in an effort to establish peace. According to Reuters, Hamas said on Friday it will release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms outlined in the Gaza proposal. They have not signed onto the plan, but it's a significant first step in the direction of ending the war.
Trump spurs conservative outrage with 'ridiculous' promise made to 'funder of terrorism'
An executive order signed by Donald Trump stating that any armed attack against Qatar would be considered "a threat to the peace and security of the United States" received fierce pushback from the editors of the conservative National Review.The EO, dated Sept. 29, explicitly states: “In the event of such an attack, the United States shall take all lawful and appropriate measures — including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military — to defend the interests of the United States and of the State of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.”As explained in the scathing National Review editorial published on Friday, that mirrors the NATO Article 5 guarantee which states that an attack on one member of NATO is an attack on all members, which the editors called, in this case, “ridiculous."As they noted, despite allowing a U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf country, Qatar was called by Trump in 2017 “a funder of terrorism at a very high level.”The editors asked “what reasonable basis should the president ask Americans” to defend Qatar when the country is obviously attempting to “cozy up to both the United States and Islamist jihadis of all stripes.”“Qatar materially supports Hamas (and the Taliban, which harbored al-Qaeda and made war on America for 20 years), and it is a principal proponent of the Muslim Brotherhood and its loathsome Sunni Islamist ideology. What’s more, it is an ally of the Shiite jihadist regime across the Persian Gulf in Iran,” the editors wrote.Based upon that alone, they asked, “...can Americans at least ask that those countries to whom we would send our sons and daughters to defend be genuine friends of the United States?”“A president of the United States has no unilateral authority to give another country a security guarantee — at least one that the U.S. must honor. Presidential executive orders can be reversed or ignored by the next president,” they noted.You can read more here.
'Unleash hell!' Trump issues apocalyptic threat in new push for Gaza ceasefire
President Donald Trump issued an apocalyptic threat against Hamas to accept a "last chance" agreement or face annihilation.The U.S. president posted a 329-word statement Friday morning on his Truth Social platform demanding Hamas accept the terms of a ceasefire proposal, three days after setting a deadline of “three or four days" to respond to a 20-point plan to end the two-year war in Gaza, and Trump said that Israel was waiting for him to approve another massive strike."Hamas has been a ruthless and violent threat, for many years, in the Middle East!" Trump posted. "They have killed (and made lives unbearably miserable), culminating with the October 7th MASSACRE, in Israel, babies, woman, children, old people, and many young men and women, boys and girls, getting ready to celebrate their future lives together.""As retribution for the October 7th attack on civilization, more than 25,000 Hamas 'soldiers' have already been killed," he added. "Most of the rest are surrounded and MILITARILY TRAPPED, just waiting for me to give the word, 'GO,' for their lives to be quickly extinguished. As for the rest, we know where and who you are, and you will be hunted down, and killed."Trump's statement echoed demands by Israel's defense minister ordering all remaining Palestinians to leave the famine-stricken Gaza City for the south or face the "full force" of its military."I am asking that all innocent Palestinians immediately leave this area of potentially great future death for safer parts of Gaza," Trump posted. "Everyone will be well cared for by those that are waiting to help. Fortunately for Hamas, however, they will be given one last chance! Great, powerful, and very rich Nations of the Middle East, and the surrounding areas beyond, together with the United States of America, have agreed, with Israel signing on, to PEACE, after 3000 years, in the Middle East.""THIS DEAL ALSO SPARES THE LIVES OF ALL REMAINING HAMAS FIGHTERS!" Trump added. "The details of the document are known to the WORLD, and it is a great one for ALL! We will have PEACE in the Middle East one way or the other. The violence and bloodshed will stop. RELEASES THE HOSTAGES, ALL OF THEM, INCLUDING THE BODIES OF THOSE THAT ARE DEAD, NOW!"Trump set another deadline for Hamas to accept the terms of the ceasefire before he gives Israel the green light to attack."An Agreement must be reached with Hamas by Sunday Evening at SIX (6) P.M., Washington, D.C. time," Trump posted. "Every Country has signed on! If this LAST CHANCE agreement is not reached, all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas. THERE WILL BE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST ONE WAY OR THE OTHER. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP"
Oct 16, 2025