作者： admin

Hedge fund founder hits back at Mamdani’s ‘creepy’ wealth tax video

A high-profile public feud has broken out between New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and billionaire hedge fund titan Ken Griffin over Mamdani’s signature policy initiative: a sweeping plan to raise taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents and ultra-luxury properties.

Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel, who holds the deed to the most expensive residential property ever purchased in the United States, slammed Mamdani’s proposal and the mayor’s public campaign for it during an appearance at Tuesday’s Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California. The billionaire called a video Mamdani filmed outside his $238 million Manhattan penthouse earlier this year “creepy and weird,” arguing that the stunt stokes dangerous political polarization that could lead to violence. He pointed to the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson near the property as evidence that public targeting of high-profile individuals creates unacceptable security risks.

“Anything that creates, like an agitation, in the extremist on either side of the aisle is a frightening dynamic,” Griffin told attendees. In response to his criticism, Griffin confirmed he would accelerate his existing shift of business operations from Manhattan to Miami, saying Mamdani’s agenda sends a clear message that achievement is not welcome in New York City. “Mamdani was making it really clear: New York doesn’t welcome success,” Griffin said. “I will double down focusing on Miami to grow my business interests rather than Manhattan.”

The contentious video in question was filmed in April to align with the U.S. annual tax filing deadline, as part of Mamdani’s push to introduce a new annual pied-à-terre tax. This levy would apply to non-resident-owned properties valued above $5 million, a policy explicitly designed to target wealthy individuals who park large sums of wealth in New York City real estate without maintaining primary residency or paying full local taxes. Standing directly outside the building that houses Griffin’s penthouse, Mamdani used the 2019 purchase of that unit – which still holds the record for the most expensive home ever bought in the U.S. – as a prominent example of the gap the new tax would close. Mamdani projects the pied-à-terre tax alone will generate at least $500 million in new annual revenue for the city, while broader tax increases on corporations and the wealthy could raise up to $9 billion to fund the mayor’s policy agenda. That broader package includes lifting the city’s corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5%.

In an official statement provided to the Wall Street Journal following Griffin’s comments, Mamdani’s press secretary Joe Calvello pushed back against the billionaire’s criticism while acknowledging his economic impact on New York. Calvello clarified that the mayor supports all successful New York-based entrepreneurs and business leaders, noting that Griffin himself is a major employer within city limits who contributes meaningfully to the local economy. However, Calvello reaffirmed the administration’s core position that the city’s current tax structure is fundamentally unfair and broken, requiring targeted reform to ask higher contributions from the wealthiest property owners.

Mamdani’s push for progressive wealth taxation has deeply divided public and political opinion in New York, with critics echoing Griffin’s warning that steep tax hikes will push wealthy individuals and major employers to relocate to lower-tax jurisdictions like Florida, ultimately reducing the city’s total tax revenue and harming local economic growth. Requests for additional comment from the mayor’s office were not immediately answered.

6 5 月, 2026
Foreign Office ‘working urgently’ to help Britons on virus-hit cruise get home

A deadly hantavirus outbreak has left more than 100 passengers and crew stranded aboard the expedition cruise vessel MV Hondius off the coast of Cape Verde, triggering an urgent multinational response to evacuate those infected and repatriate hundreds of stranded travelers, including 23 British nationals. Three passengers have died from the virus since the ship departed Argentina on a voyage one month ago, making this one of the most serious infectious disease outbreaks on a commercial passenger vessel in recent years.

According to official data released Tuesday by cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions, 19 passengers and four crew members on board are British citizens. Among those affected, a 56-year-old British doctor was among three symptomatic people evacuated from the vessel Wednesday for urgent medical care, and UK officials have confirmed the doctor is currently in stable condition. The other two evacuees include a 41-year-old Dutch crew member and a 65-year-old German passenger, who were also flown to receive treatment in the Netherlands, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed.

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper issued an official statement Wednesday acknowledging the severity of the crisis, saying, “This situation is very serious and deeply stressful for those affected and their families.” She added that the UK Foreign Office is working around the clock to bring all stranded British citizens home safely, with consular teams maintaining direct, ongoing contact with all UK nationals on board the vessel.

After days of diplomatic negotiation and public health coordination, Spanish authorities granted the vessel permission to dock at the Granadilla port on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, despite initial public health concerns raised by local officials. Spain’s Health Minister Mónica García confirmed Wednesday that once the ship docks, all passengers will be disembarked for processing. Spanish citizens will be transferred to Madrid for mandatory quarantine, while asymptomatic passengers from other countries will be cleared for repatriation to their home nations.

As of Thursday, approximately 150 people remain on the MV Hondius, held under strict precautionary isolation and infection control measures implemented by the cruise line. Investigators have not yet identified the origin of the outbreak, and it remains unclear whether any individuals outside the ship’s passenger and crew complement have contracted the virus.

The UK’s response to the incident is being led by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which is working in close partnership with the WHO and health authorities across several Atlantic territories including St Helena, Tristan da Cunha and Ascension Island to implement isolation protocols, contact tracing and coordinated response planning. A UK Foreign Office spokesperson emphasized that the core priority of the operation is to ensure all British nationals can return home safely while maintaining full public health protections to prevent further spread of the virus.

For the general public in the UK, the UKHSA has stressed that the overall risk of widespread hantavirus transmission remains very low, and there is no cause for undue public concern. Hantaviruses are a family of pathogens primarily carried by rodent populations including mice and rats, with human infection most commonly occurring through exposure to contaminated rodent excreta. Common symptoms of infection include high fever, extreme fatigue, widespread muscle pain, abdominal discomfort, nausea and vomiting, and in severe cases the virus can cause life-threatening respiratory or kidney complications.

Multilateral coordination continues to advance the repatriation process, with UK officials working closely with Spanish, Dutch and other national governments to facilitate medical evacuations and speed the safe return of all stranded travelers.

6 5 月, 2026
Watch: Passengers told virus-hit ship ‘not infectious’ after first death

A chilling moment from the early days of the global COVID-19 pandemic has been preserved on camera by a content creator who was trapped aboard a virus-plagued cruise ship when the first fatality was recorded. Turkish YouTuber Ruhi Çenet, who built his platform on sharing travel and exploration content with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, was among the passengers confined to the vessel when the fatal outbreak unfolded on April 12. That day, as the first death from the virus was announced to the people on board, ship officials made a controversial public statement that would later raise questions about crisis communication amid the spreading pandemic: they reassured passengers that the ship itself was still not an infectious environment.

6 5 月, 2026
French professor investigated for awarding himself fake prize

A years-long academic hoax involving a completely fabricated prestigious prize has shaken the French higher education system, leaving a veteran scholar under criminal investigation and suspended from his longtime position. Florent Montaclair, who taught for two decades at a university in Besançon, eastern France, stands accused of inventing a Nobel-equivalent award in philology — the study of language through historical texts — and then awarding the top honor to himself to bolster his professional credentials.

The elaborate scheme dates back to 2015, when local press in Besançon published a story touting Montaclair as a finalist for the Nobel Prize. By the end of that year, reports claimed he had claimed the Gold Medal of Philology, a fictional award tied to a fake governing body: the International Society of Philology. In June 2016, the self-styled laureate held an official award ceremony at France’s National Assembly in Paris, an event attended by sitting government ministers and even Nobel Prize winners. Later that same year, Montaclair expanded his hoax by presenting an honorary version of his fake medal to 88-year-old legendary American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky at a public event in Brussels, with footage of the ceremony still accessible online.

The fake International Society of Philology even maintains a public website that lists supposed prize winners dating all the way back to 1967, including iconic Italian writer Umberto Eco. Observers have since noted that the unpolished, low-budget design of the site should have raised red flags early on. Beyond the invented prize and society, Montaclair also added a falsified academic credential to his resume: a doctorate in French literature and grammar from an institution called the University of Philology and Education in Lewes, Delaware. Public records confirm no such university has ever existed.

The hoax went undetected in France for years, even after it was exposed in 2019. That year, after Montaclair named Romanian philologist Eugen Simion as the next Gold Medal recipient, the announcement triggered a firestorm of interest in Romania, where skeptical local journalists launched an investigation that quickly uncovered the entire fraud. Despite the revelation, the truth never spread to French academic circles, and Montaclair continued teaching at his university for several more years.

The full scope of the fraud only came to light last year, when Montaclair was scheduled to lead an academic panel on disinformation and fake news. A colleague, recalling the old rumors from Romania, flagged the issue to university leadership, prompting an official probe. When French law enforcement searched Montaclair’s home in February of this year, the scholar immediately acknowledged the hoax, investigators report. He told officers he had personally ordered the gold medal from a Paris-based jeweller just weeks before the 2016 ceremony, paying just €250 (approximately £215) for the award.

In his defense, Montaclair has denied the fraud amounts to criminal conduct. He claims the invented award was simply a failed attempt to establish a new academic distinction, not a con. He also notes that the local media that originally covered his “Nobel shortlist” nomination were responsible for framing the fake award as a Nobel-equivalent honor, rather than making that claim himself.

Investigators from the Besançon public prosecutor’s office are currently examining whether the fake credentials helped Montaclair advance his academic career or gain unfair professional or financial benefits. Prosecutor Paul-Edouard Lallois, who is leading the probe, called the affair “such an unlikely tale, it could be out of a film.” If investigators cannot prove the hoax resulted in illegal gain, prosecuting Montaclair on criminal charges may prove impossible. Currently, Montaclair has been suspended without restriction from his university position, pending the outcome of the ongoing investigation.

6 5 月, 2026
Piqué gets 6-match suspension and 2-month ban for altercation with match officials in 2nd division

MADRID — In a disciplinary decision released this Wednesday, the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) has handed former Spanish national team and FC Barcelona icon Gerard Piqué a six-match ban, following controversial comments he directed at match officials during a recent Segunda División fixture. Piqué, who owns FC Andorra, has also been barred from carrying out his duties as the club’s majority owner for a two-month period, penalties stemming from incidents that unfolded during Andorra’s 1-0 home defeat to Albacete on 1 May.

The disciplinary body has additionally levied a €1,500 ($1,762) fine against FC Andorra itself, and ordered the partial closure of the club’s stadium for two upcoming league matches. According to the official RFEF report documenting the exchange, Piqué told a match official: “In another country, they would tear you apart, but here in Andorra we are a civilized country.”

Piqué first acquired FC Andorra back in 2018 alongside a consortium of fellow investors, at a time when the small club — based in the tiny Pyrenean microstate wedged between Spain and France — was competing in Spain’s fifth tier of domestic soccer. Founded in 1942, the side had spent the vast majority of its 81-year history competing in the lower divisions of the Spanish football pyramid before Piqué’s takeover.
Under Piqué’s ownership, FC Andorra has climbed rapidly through the league system, securing promotion to the Segunda División in 2022. At the current stage of the 2023-2024 campaign, the club holds 10th position in the 22-team second-tier standings, a solid mid-table performance for a side that reached the professional ranks just two seasons ago. The disciplinary sanctions mark a rare high-profile disciplinary action against a high-profile club owner in Spanish football, bringing renewed attention to standards of conduct for club officials toward match officials.

6 5 月, 2026
How China quietly erased Taiwan from coffee’s world stage

In April 2026, barista Bala claimed the top prize at the World Latte Art Championship in San Diego, wowing judges with intricate latte art of a raccoon, giraffe, and red pandas to secure a winning score of 531 points. The event counted Chinese coffee chain Luckin Coffee as an official sponsor, and when Bala stepped onto the winner’s podium, competition organizers initially listed him as representing Taiwan.

What followed just one week later was a quiet, unannounced revision that has exposed how geopolitical pressure can penetrate even niche, seemingly apolitical global cultural industries. The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA), which oversees the World Coffee Championships (WCC), altered Bala’s affiliation in official records, changing the listing from “Taiwan” to “Chinese Taipei” with no public explanation. The organization went further, removing older ranking documents from its website that had for years listed past Taiwanese champions under the same original designation.

This small bureaucratic change is far more than a trivial footnote to broader geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Taiwan. It marks a clear signal that Chinese coercive pressure has expanded into an under-monitored domain: the global governance infrastructure of the international specialty coffee sector. The incident also lays bare a stark truth: when private non-governmental organizations that manage global cultural and industrial activities face large-scale geopolitical pressure, their long-proclaimed neutrality collapses almost immediately.

Taiwan’s specialty coffee community climbed to global prominence gradually, building its legacy over more than two decades of competition. The World Barista Championship launched in 2000, but it was not until 2007 that the first Taiwanese competitor, national champion Lin Tung-Yuan (Van Lin), stepped onto the international stage. What came next was an extraordinary streak of success: Pang-Yu Liu took gold at the 2014 World Cup Tasters Championship, while Jacky Lai won the 2014 World Coffee Roasting Championship in the same year. Berg Wu became Taiwan’s first World Barista Champion in 2016, followed by Chad Wang’s win at the 2017 World Brewers Cup, and Xie Yi-chen claimed the 2024 World Latte Art Championship title. Bala’s 2026 victory was the latest milestone in this decades-long journey.

As recently as 2022, the SCA itself celebrated Taiwan’s thriving specialty coffee scene when it announced it would bring the WCC event to Taipei, highlighting the island’s estimated 4,000 roasters and 16 world championship finalists, explicitly naming the island’s top competitors under their Taiwanese affiliations. Through 19 years of advocacy, the Taiwan Coffee Association had fought to retain the “Taiwan” designation for its competitors — a fight that ended in defeat with the 2026 revision.

The name change did not occur in a vacuum. Just six months prior, in October 2025, the SCA made another consequential institutional shift: it absorbed the widely recognized Q Grader Program — a global certification for coffee quality assessment held by roughly 10,000 professionals worldwide — from the Coffee Quality Institute, which had managed the program for 20 years. The SCA restructured the certification around its 2023 Coffee Value Assessment (CVA) framework, which for the first time formally recognizes origin, processing method, and cultural context as core components of a coffee’s overall value, noting publicly that “coffee is more than a score — it is culture, craftsmanship and context.”

The contrast between this rhetoric and the quiet renaming of Taiwan is not a contradiction, but a reflection of a single underlying logic. Once origin becomes a formal part of commercial coffee value, the question of who controls how an origin is named shifts from a mundane administrative task to an exercise of geopolitical power. The progressive language of respect for cultural context serves as a market positioning tool, while the renaming demonstrates how that power is actually exercised.

In a May 1 statement, the SCA defended its decision, framing it as a routine administrative change and pointing to the naming conventions used by the International Olympic Committee and FIFA as precedent. That comparison confirms the core issue: like these large international sports bodies, the SCA is a private organization that governs a global cultural activity while remaining highly vulnerable to pressure from its largest single market, China. Its commitment to neutrality holds only until pressure becomes too great to resist.

Coinciding with the SCA’s revision was another major shift in the global coffee industry that underscores growing Chinese influence. In late April 2026, just days before the name change was implemented, Centurium Capital — the controlling shareholder of Luckin Coffee, the official sponsor of Bala’s winning championship — announced it had acquired iconic American third-wave coffee chain Blue Bottle Coffee from Nestle in a deal worth under $400 million. While the two events have not been publicly linked, their timing tells a broader story: Chinese capital is not only lobbying for policy changes in global coffee governance, it is actively buying up the cultural infrastructure that these global bodies regulate.

For analysts and policymakers tracking Chinese “sharp power” expansion, the incident carries a clear warning: coercive pressure has now reached niche global sectors that have flown under the radar of most monitoring efforts. The Taipei Times reported that the name change followed suspected behind-the-scenes political pressure from China, with sources noting Luckin’s role as a top championship sponsor points to implicit Chinese influence. If a global standards body for a cultural industry can be pressured into such a change with no public pushback, no similar private global governance body is immune to the same pressure — from industry consortia to certification groups to sports federations across the world.

For consumers who see purchasing ethically sourced specialty coffee as a small political act of supporting producers and their identities, the lesson is equally sobering. The specialty coffee industry’s widely used progressive language of honoring origin, terroir, and cultural context did not protect Taiwan’s coffee community from erasure of its identity. In fact, it created the conditions for that erasure, by shifting authority over defining origin from producers themselves to global certifying bodies.

In response to the change, Taiwan’s coffee community has launched a public pushback, organizing a “one-person-one-email” campaign calling on the WCC to reverse the revision. Berg Wu, the 2016 world champion, was among the first to speak out publicly. “Taiwan is not just a name,” he wrote on Facebook shortly after the change. “It is an identity and a shared memory built by many competitors, coaches, judges, cafes, roasters, and all the consumers who have supported us along the way.” That 26-year-old shared legacy was altered in just seven days, a quiet reminder of how geopolitical power can reshape even the most unexpected corners of global culture.

6 5 月, 2026
EU auditors sound alarm over billions in COVID recovery funds that can’t be clearly traced

BRUSSELS – In a newly released audit report published Wednesday, the European Court of Auditors has raised critical transparency concerns around the EU’s landmark €577 billion ($679 billion) post-COVID-19 economic recovery fund, stating that auditors cannot fully trace how billions in public funding are allocated across the bloc’s 27 member states.

The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the largest component of the EU’s collective pandemic response, was established in 2020 at the height of the global health crisis. When national governments imposed border closures, strict lockdowns, and raced to secure vaccine supplies to curb the spread of the deadly coronavirus, the EU fell into its deepest post-WWII recession. Designed to deliver targeted grants and loans to member states for projects focused on sustainable growth, digital transition, and green transformation, the fund departed from traditional EU budget processes: instead of disbursing funds based on projected project costs, payments are released only after pre-agreed policy and reform milestones are met. To ensure public accountability, RRF rules require national governments to publish the identities of their top 100 funding beneficiaries.

Despite these safeguards, the audit found major gaps in public disclosure. Examining reporting from 10 selected member states, auditors found that the published top 100 beneficiaries are almost entirely public entities – national ministries, government agencies, and subnational governments – with almost no transparency around private sector recipients, including businesses and large industry consortiums that receive billions in funding. Thousands of final recipients remain unlisted in public records.

“Without clear, complete information on where the money goes, we cannot verify if funds are distributed fairly, if dangerous concentration of funding exists, or if EU taxpayer money delivers tangible value for ordinary citizens,” explained Ivana Maletić, the European Court of Auditors member who led the audit. Maletić emphasized that transparency is not a trivial administrative detail, but a foundational requirement for public trust and democratic accountability. She added that EU legislators investigating potential misuse of public funds have repeatedly requested details on transfers to private companies and consortiums, information that auditors were unable to obtain. The audit specifically noted that French authorities cited excessive administrative burden as a reason for failing to share details on final private recipients, even upon formal request.

Cases of fraudulent diversion of RRF funding have already been documented: two years ago, law enforcement agencies in Italy, Austria, Romania and Slovakia arrested 22 people as part of a crackdown on a criminal ring accused of siphoning more than €600 million ($700 million) in pandemic relief funds.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch which manages the RRF, has pushed back against the auditors’ criticism. Commission officials noted that the framework for the fund was negotiated and approved by all 27 member states, limiting the executive’s ability to impose stricter transparency rules unilaterally. It defended the milestone-based payment model, arguing that its existing system of payment review, progress reporting, and ongoing engagement with member states to resolve reporting inconsistencies is functioning as designed.

The auditors’ broader concern extends beyond the current RRF: they warn that the flexible, conditions-based model used for the recovery fund is gaining support among policymakers, and could be expanded to major spending areas in the EU’s next seven-year long-term budget (2028-2034), which is expected to total roughly €2 trillion ($2.4 trillion). If adopted for traditional spending lines such as agricultural subsidies and infrastructure grants, the same lack of transparency could become systemic, Maletić argued. The milestone model, she said, is unacceptably opaque and boils down to arbitrary allocation of funds to recipients, making it unsuitable for longstanding EU budget policies. The commission dismissed this concern, noting that any future changes to EU budget architecture will be decided jointly by member states and the directly elected European Parliament.

6 5 月, 2026
CNN founder Ted Turner dies at 87

Ted Turner, the pioneering American media mogul who revolutionized global journalism by creating the world’s first 24-hour rolling cable news network CNN, has passed away at the age of 87, CNN confirmed in an official announcement.

Turner’s entry into the media industry came long before the launch of CNN. After his father’s death, he took over the family’s already successful billboard business at a young age, before expanding into broadcasting with the purchase of an Atlanta, Georgia radio station. Over 10 years, that single small station grew into the foundation of Turner Broadcasting System (TBS), establishing Turner as one of the most powerful media figures in the United States.

In 1980, Turner made his most iconic mark on media history, launching CNN as the world’s first channel dedicated entirely to nonstop, up-to-date news coverage. The new network faced early financial and operational struggles, but it quickly proved the value of its 24-hour news model through high-stakes breaking coverage. It delivered fast, continuous updates on the 1981 assassination attempt on U.S. President Ronald Reagan and the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster, cementing its reputation as a go-to source for breaking news. CNN reached a new milestone during the 1990-1991 Gulf War, when it became the first outlet to provide live, on-the-ground rolling coverage from Iraq. Its reporting was so respected that even President George H.W. Bush once acknowledged he learned more about global events from CNN than from the Central Intelligence Agency.

CNN’s trailblazing success reshaped the entire global media industry, inspiring a wave of competing 24-hour news channels, including Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, which launched in 1996. Beyond CNN, Turner built a sprawling television empire that included basic cable channels TBS and TNT, the classic film-focused Turner Classic Movies, and children’s entertainment staple Cartoon Network. His business career included a number of high-profile moves as well: a 1985 $1.5 billion acquisition of MGM film studios that ultimately proved unsuccessful, followed by purchases of major production houses Castle Rock Entertainment and New Line Cinema in the 1990s, before TBS merged with media giant Time Warner.

Outside of media, Turner led a diverse public life. A world-class competitive sailor, he took home sailing’s most prestigious prize, the America’s Cup, in 1977. He also owned three major Atlanta professional sports teams: the Atlanta Braves Major League Baseball team, the Atlanta Hawks NBA basketball team, and the Atlanta Thrashers NHL ice hockey team. From 1991 to 2001, he was married to renowned American actress Jane Fonda.

In a statement following Turner’s death, CNN Chairman and CEO Mark Thompson paid tribute to the network’s founder, calling him an intensely dedicated, intrepid leader who was never afraid to trust his own instincts. “He was and always will be the presiding spirit of CNN,” Thompson said. “Ted is the giant on whose shoulders we stand, and we will all take a moment today to recognize him and his impact on our lives and the world.”

6 5 月, 2026
Trump pauses ‘Project Freedom’ amid potential deal with Iran

Tensions in one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints have taken a sudden turn, after former U.S. President Donald Trump announced a temporary halt to Washington’s newly launched naval escort mission through the Strait of Hormuz. The pause, he says, comes amid unexpected signals that a breakthrough in a negotiated agreement with Iran could be close at hand.

Launched just days earlier amid an ongoing Iranian blockade of the strategic waterway, the U.S. mission — codenamed Operation Project Freedom — was framed by the Trump administration as an effort to free commercial vessels blocked by Tehran and secure safe passage for global maritime traffic. In a post to his Truth Social platform, Trump clarified that while the naval escort operation will be paused for a short window, the existing economic blockade on Iran will stay fully in place, unchanged.

The pause was agreed following a request from Pakistan and other partner nations, Trump explained, to create space for negotiators to work toward finalizing and signing a new agreement between Washington and Tehran. A spokesperson for U.S. Central Command (Centcom) had previously characterized the initiative as a targeted temporary mission to protect maritime transit, designed to create what officials called a “safe corridor” and “security umbrella” spanning the strait. The spokesperson added that the U.S. had already received encouraging feedback from international shipowners and maritime insurance providers ahead of the pause. The operation, which drew on a force of more than 100 aircraft and roughly 15,000 military personnel, was billed by Trump when it launched on Sunday as a humanitarian mission to retrieve vessels that Tehran had barred from exiting the waterway. At that time, the president issued a sharp warning to Iran, stating that any attempt to interfere with the operation would trigger an immediate U.S. military response.

The days leading up to the pause have been marked by competing, conflicting claims of military clashes between the two nations. Shortly after Trump’s initial warning, Iran’s Fars News Agency reported that Iranian forces had hit a U.S. warship with two missiles as it moved through the strait. Trump quickly denied the report the following Monday, and instead claimed that only a South Korean-flagged vessel had been struck, adding that U.S. forces had destroyed seven Iranian fast-attack boats operating in the Gulf. Iran has since denied Trump’s account of the clash.

Located between Iran on its northern coast and Oman to the south, the Strait of Hormuz is widely recognized as the world’s most vital energy chokepoint. Roughly one-fifth of the globe’s daily crude oil and global liquefied natural gas supplies transit through the narrow waterway, making any disruption to shipping there a critical concern for global energy markets. The International Energy Agency has previously noted that a full or prolonged closure of the strait would cause the largest global supply disruption in history, cutting off more than 10 million barrels of daily oil output and reducing global LNG supplies by 20 percent.

Trump’s announcement of the operational pause comes against a backdrop of steadily escalating regional tensions, even after a regional ceasefire went into effect on April 8. Just days before the pause, U.S. military forces claimed to have targeted multiple Iranian vessels operating in the strait. Separately, the United Arab Emirates’ defense ministry has accused Iran of carrying out back-to-back days of missile and drone attacks on Emirati territory. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson has rejected those accusations as entirely unfounded, insisting that all recent Iranian military action has been directed solely at U.S. targets. The spokesperson added in an official statement that Iran will not hesitate to take all necessary and appropriate measures to defend its core national interests and territorial security.

6 5 月, 2026
CNN founder Ted Turner: 20th century media giant

The world of 20th century media has lost one of its most transformative figures: Ted Turner, the brash, risk-taking visionary who launched the world’s first 24-hour cable news network CNN and reshaped global journalism forever, has died at the age of 87. His death was announced publicly on Wednesday, closing the book on a life that extended far beyond media into sports, high-stakes business, and large-scale philanthropic and environmental action.

Born Robert Edward “Ted” Turner III in Cincinnati, Ohio in November 1938, Turner’s trajectory into media leadership began under tragic circumstances. After his father died by suicide amid crippling financial stress, a young Turner stepped in to salvage the family’s failing advertising business. He would not stop there: building a portfolio of local radio stations through the 1960s, he made his first foray into television in 1970 with the purchase of a struggling Atlanta-based broadcast station. A decade later, that small station became the cornerstone of his nationwide Turner Broadcasting System, and the profits from the growing network laid the groundwork for the project that would make his name: the launch of CNN in 1980.

CNN revolutionized news consumption entirely. As the first non-stop 24-hour cable news outlet, it arrived at a moment when American audiences were already shifting from over-the-air broadcast to cable television, and it rose to global prominence during the 1990–1991 Gulf War, when it delivered unprecedented, continuous live coverage of the conflict via cutting-edge satellite technology. CNN’s runaway success sparked a global industry shift, inspiring the launch of competing 24-hour networks from Turner rivals and peers including Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, MSNBC, and dozens of similar outlets across every continent.

Turner’s media empire expanded far beyond breaking news. His portfolio grew to include entertainment and sports networks TBS and TNT, classic film outlet Turner Classic Movies, and children’s network Cartoon Network, among other properties. Along the way, he made a series of high-stakes business bets: a 1980s attempt to acquire broadcast giant CBS ended in failure, and he purchased MGM/UA Entertainment Co. studios for a short period before selling the studio back just months later, retaining the rights to most of its iconic film library.

The 1990s brought the largest deal of Turner’s career: a 1996 merger between Turner Broadcasting and media giant Time Warner that elevated him to the role of vice chairman of the combined entertainment powerhouse. Five years later, internet pioneer AOL acquired Time Warner in a $165 billion deal that remains the largest corporate merger in history. But the combination quickly unraveled as AOL’s business fortunes collapsed, with the deal unwound entirely within a decade. As Time Warner’s largest individual shareholder, Turner lost billions of dollars in the failed combination.

Beyond boardrooms and newsrooms, Turner was a towering figure in global sports. He purchased the MLB’s Atlanta Braves in 1976, leading the once-struggling franchise to multiple World Series appearances and a championship title in 1995. He also owned the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks and the NHL’s Atlanta Thrashers, with all three teams transferring to Time Warner as part of the 1996 merger; the Braves continued to play at the Turner-named Turner Field until 2016. On the water, Turner skippered the U.S. yacht *Courageous* to victory in the 1977 America’s Cup, and his decades-long rivalry with fellow media titan Rupert Murdoch intensified after a 1983 collision between Murdoch-sponsored and Turner-owned yachts during the Sydney-Hobart race sank Turner’s schooner, leading Turner to famously challenge Murdoch to a public fistfight.

Against the backdrop of Cold War tensions and tit-for-tat Olympic boycotts between the U.S. and Soviet Union in the 1980s, Turner launched the Goodwill Games, an international multi-sport event designed to ease global tensions; the last Games were held in 2001.

Turner was also a familiar public figure for his high-profile personal life, most notably his 10-year marriage to Academy Award-winning actress Jane Fonda, his third wife, which ended in divorce in 2001. By his own account, the split was driven by Fonda’s conversion to Christianity, while Fonda countered that Turner required constant, full-time attention that amounted to caregiving rather than a partnership. Turner was named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1991, the same year the pair married.

In his later life, Turner dedicated himself nearly full-time to philanthropy and environmental conservation after stepping down from his role at Time Warner in 2003. A longtime critic of wealthy individuals who refused to give away their fortunes, he made a landmark $1 billion donation to the United Nations in 1998 to found the UN Foundation, which has since advanced work on climate action, sustainable development, public health, and technological equity. He had already founded the Turner Foundation in 1990, which has disbursed roughly $380 million to support climate action and improvements to global air and water quality. In 1997, he launched the Turner Endangered Species Fund, which partners with private landowners to protect at-risk species from gopher tortoises to monarch butterflies. Most recently, in 2015, he launched Ted Turner Reserves, an eco-tourism venture that gives visitors access to his four New Mexico properties to learn about on-site conservation work.

6 5 月, 2026