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  • Four takeaways from Musk vs OpenAI trial

    Four takeaways from Musk vs OpenAI trial

    After three weeks of heated courtroom proceedings, one of Silicon Valley’s most consequential legal battles centered on the artificial intelligence industry is drawing to a close. The civil suit filed by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk against OpenAI and its co-founders, widely labeled as the tech hub’s first major AI industry trial, is set to go to the jury for deliberation as early as Monday. As the legal process wraps up, four standout moments have come to define the clash between two of the founding factions of one of the world’s most valuable AI companies.

    First, Musk has framed his own role in OpenAI’s founding as that of a naive, altruistic pioneer who poured resources into a project for the public good, only to be pushed aside by the co-founders who built a multi-trillion-dollar business from his initial investment. Opening his case on April 28, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO positioned himself as a Good Samaritan focused on safeguarding humanity from unregulated superintelligence that could pose existential risks if controlled by bad actors. “I came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people, taught them everything I know, provided all of the initial funding,” Musk told the court of OpenAI’s 2015 launch. He added: “I gave $38 million essentially for nothing, which they used to build a company worth $800 billion. I was literally an idiot,” blaming his own early lack of suspicion for the current conflict. Throughout his testimony, Musk displayed clear frustration, accusing OpenAI’s legal team of asking loaded questions designed to trap him. In response, OpenAI lead counsel William Savitt leaned into pointed cross-examination, wrapping his aggressive questioning in polite language that began with the line: “Mr. Musk, you are a brilliant man.”

    The second defining moment came when OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman took the stand to deliver his sharp counterattack, trading his signature casual attire of T-shirts, jeans and sneakers for a formal dark suit and tie. For most of the trial, Altman sat expressionless in the front row of the Oakland courtroom, but when his turn to testify arrived on May 12, he did not hold back. Musk’s lead attorney Steven Molo opened by asking Altman if he had always told the truth throughout his life, to which Altman replied candidly: “I’m sure there have been times in my life when I didn’t.” But he quickly pivoted to strike back at Musk’s claims, alleging that as early as 2017, Musk demanded 90% of OpenAI’s total equity and refused to put a power-sharing agreement in writing. Altman explained that the remaining co-founders had no choice but to push back on the demand, arguing that artificial general intelligence — the superintelligent system OpenAI initially set out to build — should never fall under the exclusive control of a single individual.

    Third, decades-old personal notebooks kept by OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman became a central piece of evidence in the case. Throughout the trial, Brockman has been a consistent presence in court, filling yellow notepads with detailed notes on every day’s proceedings. But during his May 4 cross-examination, it was his old private journals from the early days of OpenAI that took center stage. Musk’s legal team pulled out embarrassing excerpts that appeared to show Brockman was focused from early on on growing his personal wealth and pushing Musk out of the organization. One entry asked: “financially, what will take me to $1B?” Another noted Brockman’s goal to convert OpenAI to a benefit corporation without Musk’s involvement, and a third entry even described a plan to take control of the original non-profit foundation from Musk as “pretty morally bankrupt.” Brockman pushed back firmly against the attempt to frame him as unethical, telling the court: “There’s nothing in there I’m ashamed of.” He added that the journal failed to record details of a 2017 explosive confrontation with Musk, where Brockman said he genuinely believed Musk was about to physically assault him. While Musk never touched him, Brockman testified that Musk ripped a Tesla painting — a gift to the company from one of the co-founders — off the wall and stormed out of the room. Today, Brockman’s stake in OpenAI is valued at roughly $30 billion.

    The final high-profile moment of the trial came with the testimony of Shivon Zilis, a shadowy figure with close ties to both Musk and OpenAI who rarely appears in public. Zilis, who is the mother of four of Musk’s children, conceived via in vitro fertilization, served on OpenAI’s board of directors from 2020 to 2023, and also holds a senior role at Musk’s neurotechnology firm Neuralink. Her dual role put her in the awkward position of being a close colleague to Musk and a personal friend to Altman, and OpenAI has accused her of acting as a secret mole for Musk during her time on the board. When her relationship with Musk was brought up in court, Zilis responded with dry sarcasm, saying: “Relationship is a relative term,” before acknowledging that “there have been romantic moments.” While her in-court testimony drew intense media curiosity, the greater impact on the case may come from the content of private text messages Zilis sent to both Musk and Altman. Those communications could lead the jury to conclude that Musk was fully aware of OpenAI’s strategic shift toward for-profit development long before he filed his 2023 lawsuit. If the jury agrees that Musk had this information years earlier, his entire case could be dismissed before jurors even begin deliberating on the core legal claims.

  • Jury to decide fate of Musk’s blockbuster suit against OpenAI

    Jury to decide fate of Musk’s blockbuster suit against OpenAI

    Three weeks of dramatic, star-studded testimony in one of the most consequential Silicon Valley legal battles in recent memory drew to a close this week, with jurors set to begin deliberations Monday on Elon Musk’s blockbuster lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman. At the heart of the dispute is a bitter clash over the original founding mission of the AI firm that kicked off the global generative AI boom: Musk alleges Altman and other early leaders betrayed the organization’s founding promise to develop open, non-profit AI for the public good, instead steering it toward profit-driven growth that has turned it into an $850 billion private sector powerhouse.

    The trial, held in Oakland, California just outside the global tech hub of San Francisco, has seen dozens of Silicon Valley’s most prominent figures take the stand to testify about the behind-the-scenes clashes that have roiled OpenAI for years. Musk, the world’s richest person who helped launch OpenAI in 2015 before stepping down from the board in 2018, argues that the company’s radical transformation from a small, scrappy non-profit research lab to the creator of ChatGPT, the product that ignited today’s global AI race, amounts to a breach of the founding agreement and a misuse of his $38 million original donation.

    Musk’s legal team centered its closing argument, delivered Thursday, on challenging Altman’s personal credibility. Lead Musk attorney Steven Molo attacked the OpenAI chief’s integrity, arguing that the company’s leadership abandoned the core non-profit mission that convinced Musk and other early donors to back the project. “A non-profit devoted to the safe development of artificial intelligence, open sourced as practical, for the benefit of humanity. You know, we’re supposed to buy that,” Molo told the nine-member jury.

    OpenAI’s legal team fired back with a direct assault on Musk’s own claims, pointing out that even close associates of the billionaire have failed to back his version of events. OpenAI attorney Sarah Eddy highlighted testimony from Shivon Zilis, a business partner of Musk who is also the mother of four of his children, who acted as an intermediary between Musk and Altman in years after Musk left OpenAI. “Even the people who work for him, even the mother of his children, can’t back his story,” Eddy argued.

    The trial has also brought renewed public attention to long-swirling allegations about Altman’s leadership style. The OpenAI CEO was unexpectedly ousted by the company’s board in November 2023 over claims he lacked candor with leadership, only to be reinstated days later after massive pressure from OpenAI employees and major investors. Allegations of behind-the-scenes manipulation and a toxic internal culture dogged Altman throughout the three weeks of testimony.

    Before the jury can rule on the core claims of the lawsuit, it must first resolve a critical threshold question: whether Musk, who filed the suit in 2024, four years after his last financial contribution to OpenAI, brought the claim within the state’s statutory deadline for legal action. If jurors find the suit was filed too late, the case will be dismissed immediately. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has ruled that the jury’s decision on this timeline question will be advisory, but she has indicated she will almost certainly follow the jury’s recommendation.

    If the case moves forward, jurors will then weigh whether Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman improperly misused Musk’s $38 million donation, which Musk says was earmarked to keep OpenAI operating as a public-benefit research lab, and broke binding promises to retain the non-profit structure to pursue personal profit and commercial growth.

    Musk’s requested remedy is extraordinary: he is demanding that OpenAI reverse its transformation and return to full non-profit status. Such a ruling would force OpenAI to scrap its planned initial public offering, unwind its multi-billion dollar partnerships and investment ties with major tech backers including Microsoft, Amazon and SoftBank, and rewrite its entire corporate structure. The jury will also consider whether Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest single backer which has committed $13 billion to the company, knowingly facilitated OpenAI’s shift away from its original non-profit mandate.

    Since leaving OpenAI in 2018, Musk has built his own competing AI initiatives, first through his rocket company SpaceX and more recently through dedicated AI startup xAI, which has so far struggled to compete with OpenAI and other leading AI players like California-based Anthropic. As Judge Rogers noted during the trial, the entire dispute ultimately boils down to a fundamental question for the nine jurors: which side of this battle between two of tech’s most high-profile billionaires can they believe? A win for Musk could deliver a fatal blow to OpenAI, upending the global AI race that the company helped launch with the 2022 release of ChatGPT.

  • Treasurer orders investors dump shares of WA rare earths miner over Chinese control fears

    Treasurer orders investors dump shares of WA rare earths miner over Chinese control fears

    Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers has issued binding divestment orders compelling six investors linked to China to sell their entire 17.5% stake in Northern Minerals, the ASX-listed developer of a strategically critical rare earths project in remote Western Australia, over national security and foreign investment rule compliance concerns. The forced sale, which impacts nearly 1.68 billion shares valued at around AU$40.4 million, marks the latest escalation in a months-long regulatory battle over control of the Browns Range project, which is set to produce heavy rare earth elements critical to global semiconductor manufacturing, defense supply chains, and clean energy technologies. The investors subject to the orders include three companies registered in Beijing, Hong Kong, and the British Virgin Islands, as well as two individual Chinese citizens, all of whom have been given a 14-day deadline to complete the full divestment of their holdings. In a public statement released Monday, Chalmers emphasized that Australia maintains a rigorous, even-handed foreign investment regulatory framework designed to protect core national interests. “We operate a robust and non-discriminatory foreign investment framework and will take further action if required to protect our national interest in relation to this matter,” Chalmers said. Northern Minerals, which has already received full regulatory approval to bring the Browns Range mine into production, paused trading on the Australian Securities Exchange shortly before market open on Monday before publishing full details of the divestment orders in an official filing an hour later. When operational, the project will produce two of the most strategically vital heavy rare earths globally: dysprosium, where China controls roughly 60% of total global supply, and terbium, where China dominates approximately 90% of global refining capacity. Both elements are irreplaceable components in high-strength permanent magnets used for everything from electric vehicle motors to advanced defense weapons systems. Breakdown of the required divestments, as outlined in Northern Minerals’ ASX filing, shows the largest single stake to be sold is the 619 million shares held by British Virgin Islands-registered Real International Resources, which accumulated the holding between 2023 and early 2025. Hong Kong-based Qogir Trading and Service Co. is ordered to offload 523.5 million shares, while Beijing-registered Vastness Investment Group and Chinese national Chuanyou Cong have each been directed to sell 130 million shares. Hong Kong’s Ying Tak must dispose of 93 million shares it acquired last November, and a second Chinese national, Zhongxiong Lin, has to sell 39.8 million shares. This latest action builds on prior regulatory enforcement against non-compliant foreign investors in the project. Back in June 2025, Chalmers took two other investors to the Federal Court of Australia over alleged breaches of the country’s Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act. One of those entities, Indian Ocean International Shipping and Service Company, and its sole director, Chinese national Jing Tian, had already been ordered to divest their Northern Minerals stake a year prior, but failed to comply. The Federal Court ultimately imposed a combined AU$14 million fine for the violation, one of the largest penalties ever issued for foreign investment non-compliance in Australia. Vastness Investment Group, which already holds a 7.7% stake in Northern Minerals, escalated tensions earlier this year when it called for an extraordinary general meeting to vote on the removal of independent director Adam Handley. The legality of that move has been contested in court, with a ruling requiring the meeting to be held no later than June 30, 2025. The ongoing regulatory dispute dates back to 2024, when Chalmers issued his first round of divestment orders covering 613 million Northern Minerals shares. In April 2025, Northern Minerals disclosed to the ASX that roughly 60% of those ordered shares had been transferred to Ying Tak, prompting Chalmers to immediately issue a separate order barring the company from recognizing Ying Tak’s voting rights on any of its holdings.

  • AFL 2026: Melbourne forward Bayley Fritsch on contract talks, moments against Hawthorn and Steven King

    AFL 2026: Melbourne forward Bayley Fritsch on contract talks, moments against Hawthorn and Steven King

    As the Melbourne Demons mount an unexpected on-field resurgence under new head coach Steven King, star goalkicker Bayley Fritsch has opened up about progressing contract extension talks and his unshakable belief that his top AFL performances are still to come.

    The 29-year-old forward, currently in the final season of the contract he signed following his breakout 2021 campaign, confirmed that negotiations on a new deal to stay at the club have reached a productive phase. Fritsch, a left-footed sharpshooter, was dropped from the senior side last season but earned his place back after just one week out, and has since become a key fixture in the rejuvenated Demons line-up.

    For Fritsch, there is no question of continuing his career anywhere other than Melbourne. “It’s something that’s obviously playing out behind the scenes, I think we’re in good conversations with the club,” he told reporters. “I don’t see myself anywhere else. Hopefully, we can get something sorted pretty soon.”

    A late bloomer in professional AFL ranks, Fritsch was not drafted until he was 19, and he argues that late start means he still has plenty of high-quality playing years left in him. “I started pretty late, so I’d like to think I can play well into my 30s,” he explained. “I feel I’ve got a lot of good footy ahead of me. There’s still plenty of things to work on in my game and I think I’m still improving every year.”

    Fritsch’s mixed performance in the third quarter of Saturday’s clash against Hawthorn laid bare the fluctuating nature of his 2024 form so far. After pulling off a desperate match-winning tackle and nailing a long-range goal, he made a selfish call to shoot for goal again instead of playing a simple handball to an unmarked Latrelle Pickett. Looking back on the mistake, Fritsch admitted he let the roar of the 70,000-strong home crowd get the better of him. “If I had my time again, I would’ve heard him, I would’ve handballed it, but that’s footy,” he said.

    The Demons have emerged as one of the form teams of the 2024 season under first-year coach King, notching seven wins from their opening 10 matches with an attacking style of play that marks a stark shift from the club’s recent game plans. King has set his side an ambitious target: to become a must-watch “box office” team capable of scoring 100 points every week.

    Fritsch has heaped praise on the new coach, crediting King for instilling unwavering belief in the playing group from his first day in charge. “The sky is the limit,” Fritsch said. “That’s one thing Kingy said on day one: ‘If you don’t have an eye on the premiership, what’s the point of playing?’ It’s not saying we think we’re going to win the premiership, but you’ve got to have a goal and obviously that’s everyone’s goal. If you don’t have the goal to win the premiership coming into day one of pre-season, then I think you’re in the wrong mindset. We’ll keep taking it week by week, as cliche as it is, (and) keep working on our game, but I think we’re in a really good spot.”

  • White House mass prayer event seeks to reclaim US Christian roots

    White House mass prayer event seeks to reclaim US Christian roots

    On a Sunday on Washington’s National Mall, thousands of conservative Christian supporters gathered for a high-profile mass prayer rally organized by the Trump White House, kicking off a controversial event tied to the United States’ 250th anniversary celebrations that has reignited fierce national debate over the intersection of faith and government. The gathering was framed by organizers as a mission to revive what they frame as the nation’s forgotten founding principles rooted in Christianity, but critics immediately decried it as a blatant embrace of Christian nationalism that erodes the constitutional separation of church and state.

    The day-long outdoor event featured a lineup of political leaders and prominent evangelical figures, mixing religious worship with overt political messaging. Attendees filled the open green space of the Mall, singing contemporary Christian hymns and listening to a series of addresses from both pastors and top Trump administration officials. Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered pre-recorded video remarks to the assembled crowd, while former and current President Donald Trump made a brief video appearance, reading a well-known biblical passage promising divine healing for nations that turn to God. House Speaker Mike Johnson opened the event with a prayer targeting what he called “sinister ideologies” spreading across the country, arguing that the nation’s core moral and spiritual identity had come under sustained attack. “We’ve witnessed attacks on our history, on our heroes and the cherished moral and spiritual identity of this great nation,” Johnson told the gathering. “We turn to you once again to save us from these afflictions.”

    The event comes as muscular Christian nationalism – an ideology that binds American national identity explicitly to Christian faith – has gained unprecedented access to power following Trump’s return to the presidency, with white evangelical voters remaining one of the president’s most loyal and vocal base of support. Hegseth, one of the most high-profile evangelical figures in the cabinet, is a member of an ultra-conservative evangelical congregation and has drawn attention for framing ongoing U.S. conflicts including the Iran war through bellicose religious rhetoric. Speaking to the crowd, Virginia pastor Gary Hamrick doubled down on this framing, framing the moment as an existential spiritual conflict for the nation’s future. “Today, friends, we are in a spiritual war,” Hamrick said. “This is a battle for the very soul of America.”

    The U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment explicitly prohibits the federal government from establishing an official national religion, while also guaranteeing the free exercise of all religious beliefs, a balance that has been at the center of debate around the event. Ahead of the rally, Johnson pushed back against critics during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, arguing that the term “Christian nationalism” is nothing more than a pejorative label invented by opponents seeking to censor Christian voices in public life. For many attendees who traveled from across the country to attend the rally, the event was a long-overdue correction to what they see as decades of declining religious influence in American public life. Jeana Dobbins, a 67-year-old retiree who made the trip from North Carolina, told Agence France-Presse she came to “rededicate our country back to God. Our country has fallen away in so many areas.” Sarah Tyson, who traveled from New York with a church group and held a hand-painted “Jesus Saves” sign, echoed that sentiment, saying she believes Trump was divinely chosen to lead a national spiritual revival. “God ordained him for a time like this, because these United States needs to wake up,” Tyson said.

    While every modern U.S. administration has hosted or attended faith-based gatherings to mark national holidays or moments of national significance, Sunday’s event stands out for its massive scale and the direct involvement of nearly the entire top tier of the Trump administration. Of the 20 scheduled “faith leader” speakers, nearly all were evangelical Protestant, with only a single rabbi and one retired Catholic archbishop included on the roster. Religious studies scholars note that while blending conservative Christianity and nationalist rhetoric is not a new tactic in American politics, the scope of official government backing for the event marks a significant shift.

    “It’s not unprecedented to have a group of evangelical pastors or conservative clergy come together for something like this and blend a certain kind of nationalism with a certain kind of conservative Christianity,” said Sam Perry, a professor at Baylor University, a prominent Christian higher education institution in Texas. But “the Trump administration taking the lead on this celebration at this scale is different than previous events,” Perry added. Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida, argued that the narrow lineup of speakers reveals an underlying vision of American identity that excludes non-Christians and people of color. While the event’s official website claims it welcomes “Americans of every background,” Ingersoll said the speaker list reflects “an idea of American identity that is rooted in whiteness and Christianity.” The event, she added, “sends a specific message… that they are the mainstream Americans, and the rest of us are sidelined.”

    The rally took place on the National Mall, the iconic stretch of federal parkland between the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial that has hosted decades of defining mass gatherings for American democracy, most notably the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where 250,000 people gathered to hear Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.

  • International dive group joins Maldives search for missing Italians

    International dive group joins Maldives search for missing Italians

    One of the deadliest diving accidents in the history of the Maldives, a top Indian Ocean diving destination, has triggered a wide-ranging multinational recovery effort, with an international dive safety organization deploying specialist personnel to assist in locating four missing Italian nationals. The tragedy, which unfolded last Thursday, unfolded when a group of five Italian divers got into distress while exploring a deep submerged cave in a remote stretch of the Maldives’ waters. By the end of the same day, local authorities had only recovered one of the five victims’ bodies, leaving four still unaccounted for deep inside the cave system. The disaster compounded when a Maldivian National Defence Force rescue diver, Staff Sergeant Mohamed Mahudhy, developed life-threatening decompression complications during an initial search mission, and passed away in a local hospital on Saturday. Following the diver’s death, the initial search operation was temporarily paused.

    According to Mohamed Hussain Shareef, chief spokesperson for the Maldivian government, the international community has already stepped forward to offer support for the challenging high-risk recovery operation. Italy, the United Kingdom, and Australia had already deployed assets and personnel to assist before Sunday. On that same day, three specialist diving experts from Divers Alert Network (DAN), an international dive safety group commissioned by the Italian government, arrived in the Maldives to join the mission, with their active deployment on the search expected to start Monday. The United States has also extended an offer of assistance to the Maldivian government. Currently, all international support efforts are coordinated jointly between DAN and the Maldivian Coast Guard, which has dispatched its largest operational vessel to the remote search site to facilitate operations.

    The single recovered Italian victim was pulled from the cave at an approximate depth of 60 meters, a depth that poses extreme risk even to highly experienced technical divers, making the ongoing recovery operation particularly challenging. On Saturday night, the Maldives held a full military honors funeral for Staff Sergeant Mahudhy, honoring his sacrifice during the rescue mission. In comments to Agence France-Presse, Shareef expressed the shared grief of both the Maldivian and Italian people: “We are very sad about the tragic loss of the Italians. We are also very saddened by the loss of our own diver. We are two nations united in grief.”

    Italy’s foreign ministry has confirmed the five Italian deaths, and the University of Genoa has released details identifying the victims: the group includes a marine biology professor from the institution, the professor’s daughter, and two early-career researchers from the university. In the wake of the disaster, Maldivian regulators took swift administrative action on Saturday, suspending the operating license of the luxury live-aboard dive vessel that the Italian group had departed from for the fatal dive.

    As a nation made up of more than 1,100 low-lying coral islands and atolls spread across 800 kilometers of the Indian Ocean along the equator, tourism anchored around pristine coastal and marine environments is the single largest contributor to the Maldivian economy. The country’s crystal-clear turquoise waters, unspoiled beaches, and vibrant diverse coral reefs draw recreational divers and snorkelers from across the globe, many of whom choose to stay on secluded island resorts or live-aboard dive vessels that access remote, unspoiled dive sites. While a small number of diving-related fatalities have been recorded in the Maldives in recent years, official data shows that such accidents remain relatively uncommon in the country’s thriving adventure tourism sector.

  • Trump issues dire warning to Iran to accept peace deal

    Trump issues dire warning to Iran to accept peace deal

    Escalating tensions across the Middle East reached a new boiling point on Sunday, as former President Donald Trump delivered a stark ultimatum to Iran, demanding Tehran immediately accept a U.S.-brokered peace deal or face catastrophic consequences that would leave the Islamic republic “nothing left.”

    The regional conflict, which began on February 28 when joint U.S. and Israeli military forces launched large-scale strikes against Iran, has remained deadlocked for weeks, failing to produce any breakthrough toward de-escalation even as it sends shockwaves through global energy markets and upends security across the Middle East. In a post published Sunday on his Truth Social platform, Trump doubled down on pressure against Tehran, writing, “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”

    Beyond the core U.S.-Iran conflict, the war has triggered widespread secondary instability across the region. It has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic global chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world’s peacetime oil exports pass. It has also dragged neighboring Israel and Lebanon into a violent parallel confrontation, even as fragile ceasefires hold in name on multiple fronts.

    Iran, which provides military and financial support to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, has set a precondition of a permanent ceasefire in southern Lebanon before it will enter any broader peace negotiations with the U.S. That demand comes as Trump has grown increasingly frustrated by Tehran’s refusal to accept terms on Washington’s schedule.

    The situation on the Lebanese border remained deadly over the weekend, despite a recently extended ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. An unnamed Israeli military official confirmed Sunday that Hezbollah launched approximately 200 projectiles at Israeli territory and military positions over the previous 48 hours. In response, new Israeli airstrikes across southern Lebanon killed five people, including two children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Lebanese official data underscores the scale of the human toll: since the broader regional war began, more than 2,900 people have been killed in Lebanon, with 400 of those deaths occurring after a partial truce took effect on April 17.

    While a bilateral truce between Washington and Tehran went into effect on April 8, peace negotiations have remained completely stalled, with low-level sporadic attacks continuing across multiple fronts. On Sunday, Iranian state media pushed back against U.S. negotiating positions, reporting that Washington had failed to offer any concrete concessions in its latest response to Iran’s proposed negotiation agenda.

    According to Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency, the U.S. delivered a five-point proposal that includes extreme demands: requiring Iran to operate only a single nuclear facility and transfer its entire stockpile of highly enriched uranium to U.S. control. The report added that Washington has also refused to release even 25% of the billions of dollars in Iranian assets frozen abroad, and has rejected any calls for reparations to cover war-related damage to Iranian infrastructure. Another major Iranian state outlet, Mehr News Agency, summed up Tehran’s view of the negotiation impasse, noting that “the United States, offering no tangible concessions, wants to obtain concessions that it failed to obtain during the war, which will lead to an impasse in the negotiations.”

    Unrest spread beyond the core conflict zones on Sunday, as authorities in the United Arab Emirates confirmed that a drone strike sparked a fire near a nuclear power plant in Abu Dhabi. Officials reported no injuries and no disruption to plant operations or radiation levels, but the attack underscores the spread of violence to Gulf states. The strike follows a pattern of recent attacks linked to Iranian-backed armed groups, which maintain drone-equipped factions in Iraq, while Tehran’s Yemeni ally the Houthi movement also operates advanced combat drones capable of long-range strikes.

    Diplomatic efforts to break the impasse continued Sunday, with Pakistan stepping in as a third-party mediator. Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi held talks in Tehran with Iran’s chief negotiator and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. Following the meeting, Ghalibaf emphasized the far-reaching destabilizing impact of the U.S.-Israeli war on the entire Middle East. “Some governments in the region believed that the presence of the United States would bring them security, but recent events showed that this presence is not only incapable of providing security, but also creates the grounds for insecurity,” he said in a social media statement.

    Earlier this week, Trump held a high-stakes summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping where the Iran conflict was a core topic of discussion, but the meeting produced little visible progress toward a diplomatic resolution. Trump claimed after the meeting that Xi assured him China would not provide military assistance to Iran. For its part, the Chinese Foreign Ministry released a statement Friday calling for the immediate reopening of global shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz, aligning with global calls to restore critical energy trade routes.

  • World champions England see off France to clinch another Women’s Six Nations

    World champions England see off France to clinch another Women’s Six Nations

    Reigning world champions England have cemented their dominance in European women’s rugby, securing an eighth consecutive Women’s Six Nations title and fifth straight Grand Slam after a hard-fought 43-28 away win against France in Bordeaux on Sunday. The victory stretched the Red Roses’ extraordinary unbeaten streak, which has now run for nearly four years across 38 consecutive test matches. Sunday’s title decider pitted two undefeated sides against one another, with France entering the clash boasting four wins from four matches just like their English visitors, setting up a much-anticipated battle for the championship crown.

    In a major show of England’s unrivaled depth across the squad, head coach John Mitchell was forced to leave more than a dozen first-team players sidelined for the final fixture, with absences stemming from pregnancy, injury, and retirement following the side’s 2024 World Cup triumph. France got off to a blistering start, putting together a spectacular full-field attacking move that saw scrum-half Pauline Bourdon Sansus cross the line for an opening try, which Carla Arbez converted to give the hosts an early 7-0 lead.

    England responded swiftly, however, with prop Sarah Bern powering over the line for a try converted by fly-half Zoe Harrison to level the scores in the 22nd minute. Seven minutes later, Red Roses captain Meg Jones launched a clever kick downfield from a loose ball, which bounced perfectly into the path of full-back Ellie Kildunne for England’s second try. Four minutes before halftime, a sharp cross-field attacking move ended with right wing Jess Breach extending England’s lead, and Kildunne grabbed her second try before the break to leave the visitors with a commanding 26-7 halftime advantage.

    An early second-half penalty from Harrison pushed England’s lead out to 22 points at 29-7, but France mounted a fierce comeback to claw their way back into the contest. Anais Grando crossed in the right corner for a try, before Bourdon Sansus caught England off guard with a sniping break from a close-range scrum to score under the posts on the hour mark. Arbez converted both tries to cut England’s lead to just eight points at 29-21 heading into the final quarter, setting up a tense finale.

    Breach put a stop to France’s comeback momentum in the 65th minute, when Kildunne delivered a perfectly timed pass to send the winger over for her second try. Harrison’s conversion restored England’s comfortable advantage at 36-21. France’s hopes of a late turnaround were further damaged when replacement scrum-half Alexandra Chambon was sent to the sin bin for a high tackle on Claudia Moloney-MacDonald, leaving the hosts down to 14 players for the final 10 minutes. England sealed the win with a sixth try from Amy Cokayne, who crossed on the blindside from a close-range line-out with two minutes remaining. Harrison added the extra points, and a late converted try from France’s Rose Bernadou on the final play of the game was not enough to alter the final result.

    In earlier kickoffs across the tournament, Ireland delivered a dominant performance to claim third place in the standings, routing Scotland 54-0 in their first ever stand-alone women’s Six Nations match at Dublin’s iconic Lansdowne Road. The Irish side ran in seven tries in a stunning first-half display, with No 8 Aoife Wafer crossing twice to put Ireland 47-0 up at the break. Scotland avoided a scoreless result with a late try from Aicha Sutcliffe on the final play, but the result marked a fourth defeat from five matches for the side in this year’s championship. “The first half was the best version of us and we were excellent,” Ireland coach Scott Bemand told the BBC after the match.

    In Cardiff, Italy ran in seven tries to secure a 43-24 win over Wales, which stretched Wales’ losing streak to a record nine consecutive test matches. Wales held a surprise 19-17 halftime lead, but Italy pulled clear after the break to claim a comfortable win. The result means Wales have finished bottom of the Women’s Six Nations table for the second consecutive year, after losing all five of their 2025 championship fixtures. For head coach Sean Jones, who took charge in January 2024, the defeat leaves him with just one win from 15 tests in charge, and he offered no excuses for the result post-match. “What I’ve just said to the players is that we’ve just got to be better,” he said.

  • WHO declares international emergency as Ebola outbreak kills more than 80 in DR Congo

    WHO declares international emergency as Ebola outbreak kills more than 80 in DR Congo

    The World Health Organization (WHO) has officially declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) in response to a fast-spreading Ebola outbreak caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has already claimed more than 80 lives across two countries. This marks the 17th Ebola outbreak the Central African nation has faced, with public health experts warning of extreme risks of regional and cross-border spread amid a lack of targeted medical countermeasures.

    The first confirmed case in Goma, a major population hub in eastern DRC currently held by the Rwanda-backed M23 militia, was verified by national laboratory testing on Sunday, amplifying global alarm over the outbreak’s trajectory. According to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), as of Saturday, the outbreak has been linked to 88 confirmed deaths and 336 suspected cases of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever.

    Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director of the Congolese National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB), detailed that the Goma patient is the widow of an Ebola victim who died in the northeastern city of Bunia. The woman, already infected when she traveled to Goma after her husband’s death, represents the first confirmed case in a major urban center, raising fears of wider community transmission.

    WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the emergency declaration via the social platform X, noting that while the outbreak qualifies as a PHEIC— the global body’s second-highest alert level under the International Health Regulations (IHR), with a pandemic classified as the highest— it does not yet meet the formal criteria for a pandemic. The WHO emphasized that critical gaps remain in understanding the outbreak’s full scale, writing, “There are significant uncertainties to the true number of infected persons and geographic spread.”

    A core challenge facing response teams is the nature of the strain itself. Unlike the more common Zaire Ebola strain, for which effective vaccines are widely available, the Bundibugyo strain— first identified in 2007— has no licensed vaccine or specific antiviral treatment. DRC Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba highlighted the strain’s extreme virulence, noting that its fatality rate can reach 50 percent. By comparison, the Zaire strain has a recorded fatality rate of 60 to 90 percent, but the availability of vaccines and treatments has drastically reduced mortality in recent outbreaks.

    The current outbreak was first confirmed in Ituri Province, a northeastern region bordering Uganda and South Sudan, on August 15. Local civil society representative Isaac Nyakulinda told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that communities in the affected area have been struggling to cope for weeks. “We’ve been seeing people die for the past two weeks,” Nyakulinda said. “There is nowhere to isolate the sick. They are dying at home and their bodies are being handled by their family members, increasing the risk of further transmission.”

    Congolese health officials traced the outbreak back to an index case, a nurse who first presented with Ebola symptoms at a Bunia health facility on April 24. Early symptoms of Ebola include fever, vomiting, and haemorrhaging, progressing to severe organ failure and internal bleeding in advanced cases. The virus, which is thought to originate in bat populations, spreads between humans through direct contact with bodily fluids or infected blood; victims only become contagious once symptoms develop, and the incubation period can last up to 21 days.

    On Saturday, officials confirmed that the outbreak has already crossed international borders, with one Congolese national dying of the disease in neighboring Uganda. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders), the leading medical aid group working on the ground, is mobilizing for a large-scale emergency response, but has flagged multiple barriers to effective action.

    “The number of cases and deaths we are seeing in such a short timeframe, combined with the spread across several health zones and now across the border, is extremely concerning,” said Trish Newport, MSF’s Emergency Programme Manager. The DRC’s poor transport and communications infrastructure, a longstanding challenge for public health responses, has slowed the movement of critical medical supplies to affected regions. The country, home to more than 100 million people and four times the size of France, has limited paved road networks in remote rural areas where the outbreak first took hold.

    Most of the early transmission has occurred in hard-to-reach areas, meaning only a small share of suspected cases have been confirmed via laboratory testing. Even so, the WHO says early indicators point to a far larger outbreak than currently documented: high positivity rates from initial tested samples, cross-border transmission, and rising numbers of suspected cases “all point towards a potentially much larger outbreak than what is currently being detected and reported, with significant local and regional risk of spread.”

    This outbreak comes just months after DRC declared an end to its previous Ebola outbreak in the same region, which was declared eradicated in December 2024 after killing 34 people. Since Ebola was first identified in 1976, the virus has killed roughly 15,000 people across Africa, despite major medical advances in prevention and treatment over the past decade. The 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak in eastern DRC remains the deadliest in the country’s history, killing nearly 2,300 people before it was contained.

  • Italian PM meets victims of Modena car incident

    Italian PM meets victims of Modena car incident

    A violent car ramming incident in the northern Italian city of Modena that left eight pedestrians wounded has sparked political friction, even as the country’s top leaders rushed to visit victims and law enforcement worked to untangle the motives behind the attack.

    The episode unfolded on Saturday afternoon, when a 31-year-old local man of Moroccan heritage drove his vehicle at high speed into a busy downtown street crowded with pedestrians and cyclists, according to official accounts and security footage broadcast by local media. After striking multiple people, the driver crashed into a storefront, colliding head-on with one woman who later required a double amputation. Four of the eight injured people remain in serious condition as of Sunday.

    After attempting to flee the scene, the suspect was cornered by four bystanders who intervened to stop him. He pulled a knife during the confrontation and wounded one of the good Samaritans before being detained. Investigators later confirmed the driver is an Italian citizen and an economics graduate who had no prior criminal record. Authorities confirmed he had a documented history of mental health challenges: he received treatment at a local mental health facility in 2022 for schizoid disorders, but was lost to follow-up care after an initial observation period. Tests ruled out the influence of psychotropic substances at the time of the attack, and searches of his home near Modena have found no evidence of ideological radicalization, ruling out a terrorist link to date.

    Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, head of the country’s far-right-led governing coalition, canceled a scheduled official trip to Cyprus to travel to Modena on Sunday alongside President Sergio Mattarella. The pair visited injured victims at local hospitals, and Meloni took to social media to praise the courage of the civilians who detained the suspect, calling the attack “extremely serious.”

    Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi told reporters Sunday that early investigations point to the incident being driven by psychiatric issues, stressing that it appears to be an isolated, tragic event. “There are sometimes situations in which reasons overlap, so we will let investigators complete their work,” Piantedosi said. “But from what we know now, the city can be reassured that this is not part of a broader threat.” He joined other officials in commending the quick action of the civilians who stopped the suspect.

    But even as investigators worked, political factions quickly moved to leverage the incident for their own policy goals. Far-right parties in Meloni’s coalition — including the League, led by Matteo Salvini — seized on the attacker’s migrant heritage to push for harsher immigration controls, even though he is a native-born Italian citizen. Salvini claimed the attack proved that integration of second-generation immigrants in Italy had “failed,” and the League called for new legislation to revoke residence permits from immigrants who commit crimes.

    These moves drew sharp pushback from Modena’s center-left mayor Massimo Mezzetti, who pointed out that two of the four bystanders who stopped the knife-wielding suspect were Egyptian nationals. Mezzetti called on residents to gather for a unity rally in the city center Sunday evening, framing the event as a rebuke to bad-faith political actors. “We need to unite against those who want to divide and sow hatred,” the mayor said. “This is the best response to the vultures on social media who are trying to use this extremely serious incident for political ends.” Elly Schlein, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, also planned a visit to the city Sunday to meet with local officials and victims.