标签： Oceania

U.S. President Donald Trump made a key announcement Thursday, confirming plans for a large-scale public rally in Washington D.C. on June 24 to mark the 250th anniversary of American independence, while confirming he had scrapped the planned series of anniversary concerts after multiple high-profile performers dropped out of the lineup.

Speaking on his personal social platform Truth Social, Trump framed the upcoming gathering as a historic event for the nation. “In celebration of our Country’s 250 Year History, we will be bringing you, LIVE, the Greatest Rally, EVER! It will be special at every level — A Rally to end all Rallies!” the 79-year-old Republican incumbent wrote.

Responding to the wave of artist withdrawals, Trump pushed back against the original concert format, arguing that big-name performers demanded exorbitant fees while offering little in terms of engaging performance. “We don’t want singers with no talent, but big fees to put you to sleep, we’ve told them all to stay home,” he said. “All we want is you, me, a few speakers, and the Greatest Music ever played, the same Music you have listened to for years!”

Trump confirmed that the rally will still feature musical performances, including from Lee Greenwood — the artist behind “God Bless the USA,” a long-standing staple of Trump’s political campaign rallies. The event will also include sets from U.S. military bands and choruses, he added, ending with a speech from himself, whom he described as “a fine and highly dignified gentleman known as, President DONALD J. TRUMP!”

While Trump had previously teased that the gathering would double as a rally for his “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement, he made no mention of the slogan or movement in Thursday’s official announcement.

The 250th anniversary celebrations have been a priority for Trump, who has sought to tie his presidency to the milestone. His most high-profile planned addition to the calendar is a mixed martial arts UFC fight, scheduled for June 14 — Trump’s 80th birthday — held in a custom-built arena constructed on the White House South Lawn. Construction work on that purpose-built venue is still ongoing as of this report.

Troubles have mounted for the anniversary celebrations in recent weeks, however. Shortly after being named as performers for a series of concerts tied to the July 4 holiday, multiple musical acts pulled out of the lineup, with several publicly citing concerns over the event’s heavy politicization. Among the high-profile withdrawals are popular country artist Martina McBride and Bret Michaels, lead vocalist of iconic 1980s rock band Poison.

The concerts were originally scheduled to launch June 25 on the National Mall, as part of a slate of official anniversary events organized by Freedom 251 — a public-private partnership group backed directly by Trump. After the wave of withdrawals, the remaining lineup is made up almost entirely of acts whose mainstream popularity peaked decades ago, including 1990s rapper Vanilla Ice and 1990s dance group C+C Music Factory. The truncated lineup has sparked widespread sarcasm and criticism across social media platforms from users and political observers.

U.S. President Donald Trump made a sweeping policy announcement Thursday, invoking a 75-year-old Cold War-era emergency law to unlock $700 million in public funding for a nationwide slate of coal development projects, marking his most aggressive step yet to ramp up production and use of the world’s most carbon-intensive fossil fuel.

Under the plan, the allocated funding will support operations across 10 U.S. states, extending the lifespan of more than a dozen existing coal-fired power plants and 42 active coal mines. It also paves the way for construction of two brand-new coal facilities and a large-scale coal export terminal on California’s coast, which Trump says will have annual handling capacity of 12 million tons of the fossil fuel. To redirect funds toward the new projects, the Trump administration is shifting $200 million originally earmarked for climate change initiatives—with portions going to a coal plant in Maryland, and the two new facilities in Alaska and West Virginia respectively.

The funding drawdown is authorized through the Defense Production Act (DPA), a 1950 law that grants sitting U.S. presidents broad emergency authority over domestic industrial production. In remarks at the announcement, Trump framed the initiative as a win for working-class households, claiming it would cut energy prices and reduce cost-of-living burdens for all Americans. Echoing language he has used throughout his political career, he referred to coal as “clean, beautiful” — a characterization that directly contradicts established climate science that labels coal the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming.

This move is consistent with the Trump administration’s broader energy agenda, rolled out after he returned to the presidency last year. A long-time skeptic of anthropogenic climate change, Trump has repeatedly dismissed the scientific consensus that human activity causes global warming as a “hoax”, and has moved systematically to roll back decades of federal environmental regulations that restrict fossil fuel extraction and use. Thursday’s announcement is not the first pro-coal action his administration has taken in 2025: on February 11, he signed an executive order directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to negotiate long-term coal supply contracts with domestic power plants. At that public White House event, Trump was surrounded by hard-hatted coal miners and celebrated as the “undisputed champion” of the U.S. coal industry. The very next day, he repealed the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding”, a foundational regulatory ruling that has underpinned all federal U.S. climate policy for 16 years. That rollback is already facing legal challenge from a broad coalition of environmental and public health groups.

Industry and climate data underscores how far the Trump administration’s policy deviates from global trends. Analysis from energy research group Global Energy Monitor shows that while the world added more coal power capacity in 2025, overall coal consumption declined across most major economies — with the United States standing alone as the only large economy to register a substantial increase in coal-fired electricity generation. As of 2025, federal U.S. Energy Information Administration data puts coal’s share of domestic power generation at 17 percent.

The announcement comes as global climate leaders have issued renewed warnings about the risks of expanding coal use. Just last week, the United Nations warned that global average temperatures are on track to remain at or near record highs over the next five years. UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell reiterated that the primary driver of anthropogenic global warming is the continued burning of fossil fuels — with coal identified as the single largest contributor to rising temperatures. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright defended the administration’s policy in comments on the initiative, framing coal as “a critical source of our electricity, also a critical source for our industry.”

In an unprecedented public diplomatic move that marks one of the highest-profile direct outreach attempts from Kyiv to the Kremlin since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky formally proposed a face-to-face negotiating meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin alongside a temporary full ceasefire for the duration of talks in an open letter published Thursday. The appeal landed just hours after Putin acknowledged growing gaps in Russia’s air defense networks, amid a sharp uptick in long-range Ukrainian drone strikes penetrating deep into Russian territory, including attacks on targets in Saint Petersburg this week.

Zelensky’s public letter laid out the core terms of his proposal clearly: an immediate, full ceasefire that would remain in place throughout the negotiations, and a set meeting date for direct talks between the two heads of state. “Ukraine proposes ending this war through direct engagement between us — you and me. I am proposing a meeting,” the letter read. “I propose to set a clear date for such a meeting. Ukraine is ready for a full ceasefire for the duration of the negotiations.” The Ukrainian president also issued a stark warning: “If you do not personally come to the conclusion that it is time to end this war, Ukraine will continue fighting for its existence.”

The timing of the appeal was significant: it came one day after Ukrainian drones carried out strikes in Saint Petersburg, Putin’s hometown, which was playing host to the high-profile Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), a landmark annual event often called Russia’s equivalent of the World Economic Forum in Davos. This direct public address to Putin from Zelensky remains a rare occurrence, even after more than three years of open conflict. Zelensky has long held that only direct, face-to-face talks with the Russian leader can produce a viable territorial peace agreement, after months of US-facilitated indirect negotiations failed to bring the two warring parties any closer to a breakthrough deal.

Russia has set hard preconditions for any formal peace talks, demanding that Ukraine withdraw all its military forces from the entirety of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, large swathes of which remain under Kyiv’s control more than three years into the invasion. Ahead of the publication of Zelensky’s letter, Putin spoke to international reporters in Saint Petersburg and repeated longstanding Russian questions over Zelensky’s constitutional legitimacy, arguing that the expiration of Zelensky’s original five-year presidential term in 2024 required further “analysis” of his status. Ukraine has held that the country’s martial law, which bans national elections during wartime, gives the current administration full legal standing, and Zelensky has previously offered to hold a public vote or referendum on any final peace settlement once a full ceasefire is implemented.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to the letter publicly shortly after its release, noting that Putin had not yet been presented with the document, but claimed that “Zelensky can come at any time to Moscow” for talks. This proposal was already explicitly rejected by Zelensky in his original letter, ruling out any meeting on Russian territory. Putin has for months maintained that he will only meet Zelensky to sign off on a fully pre-negotiated deal, refusing to hold open-ended talks before an agreement is already finalized.

The public exchange comes amid shifting battlefield dynamics that have worked in Ukraine’s favor in recent months. After accelerating its long-range retaliatory strikes against Russian military and energy infrastructure in response to relentless Russian nightly missile barrages across Ukraine, Kyiv has managed to recapture more territory than it lost to Russian forces for two consecutive months, according to an Agence France-Presse analysis of data from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. Russia’s overall offensive advance across the front line has slowed sharply since late 2025, with Ukrainian forces pushing back in multiple sectors.

During his forum address in Saint Petersburg, Putin struck a defiant tone amid shifting realities, hailing what he called his forces’ battlefield achievements and rejecting suggestions that the full-scale invasion has become a strategic failure for Russia. “We are advancing along the entire line of contact,” he told reporters, adding that “We are absolutely ready and willing to reach an agreement with Ukraine through peaceful means.” At the same time, he conceded the urgent need to upgrade and reinforce Russia’s air defense networks in the wake of the Saint Petersburg drone strikes: “Russia has an air defence system. Yes, we must improve it. Yes, we must strengthen it. And we will do so.”

The head of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi has issued an urgent call for Iran to grant international inspectors immediate access to its bomb-damaged nuclear facilities, amid growing global fears over nuclear proliferation risks. In a confidential IAEA report obtained by Agence France-Presse (AFP) and released Thursday, the watchdog reaffirmed that its prolonged inability to access and verify Iran’s nuclear stockpiles constitutes a serious proliferation concern, urging Tehran to cooperate with inspectors in a constructive manner.

Diplomatic insiders familiar with the report’s contents note that satellite imagery analysis has detected no visible activity at Iran’s key nuclear sites since the outbreak of the latest regional Middle East conflict. However, the IAEA has been completely locked out of most critical Iranian nuclear facilities since joint Israeli-U.S. military strikes targeting nuclear installations during a 12-day conflict in June 2025. Additional strikes against Iranian nuclear infrastructure during the war that began on February 28 have further complicated inspection efforts, and the agency has repeatedly requested unfettered access over the past months with no result.

This development aligns with a recent CNN report from Sunday, which cited satellite data showing Iran has reopened 50 of the 69 tunnel entrances destroyed by U.S. and Israeli strikes at 18 underground missile facilities. Beyond that, the IAEA confirmed this week it was only able to carry out a limited inspection at the Bushehr nuclear power plant – the only Iranian nuclear site accessible to inspectors so far. Bushehr, which was originally built and operates with Russian support for civilian energy purposes, was also hit during the 2025 military strikes.

In the official report, the IAEA acknowledged that repeated military attacks on Iranian nuclear infrastructure have created an unprecedented, complex situation for verification work. Even so, the agency emphasized that immediate access to carry out full verification activities across all Iranian sites remains critical. The findings of the confidential report will be the focus of discussion at the upcoming IAEA Board of Governors meeting scheduled for next week.

Before the June 2025 U.S. strikes, IAEA analysts calculated that Iran held approximately 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity. This level is extremely close to the 90 percent enrichment required to build a functional nuclear weapon, and far exceeds the 3.67 percent limit set by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – the now-defunct nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers. Since the 2025 strikes, the exact location and status of this large enriched uranium stockpile has remained completely unknown to international inspectors.

“The agency’s lack of access to verify the previously declared highly enriched uranium and low enriched uranium for nearly a year — which is long overdue according to standard safeguard practices — is a matter of proliferation concern,” the report stated. Grossi’s official call to Iran, included in the report, stressed “utmost urgency” for Tehran to engage constructively with the IAEA to enable full, effective implementation of international nuclear safeguard protocols across the country.

Israel and the United States have long maintained that Iran harbors secret ambitions to develop a nuclear weapons arsenal. U.S. President Donald Trump has cited this alleged threat as the core justification for launching military strikes against Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure. In any potential peace deal to end the ongoing conflict, Trump has insisted Iran must agree to two non-negotiable terms: permanent abandonment of any nuclear weapons program, and full destruction of its existing enriched uranium stockpile.

For its part, the Iranian government in Tehran has repeatedly denied any intention to pursue military nuclear applications, maintaining that all of its nuclear research and development activities are strictly for peaceful civilian purposes, and that Iran retains an inherent right to develop nuclear energy under international non-proliferation treaties.