The U.S. has reached a framework agreement with China to avoid imposing an additional 100 per cent tariff on Chinese imports, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said yesterday. The development comes during the first leg of President Donald Trump’s diplomacy tour in Asia, easing tensions before this week’s highly anticipated meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.  Beyond trade talk, Trump is expected to urge Xi to join the US pressure campaign against Russia. Trump spent the first day of h

Suspects have been arrested over the brazen jewellery heist at the Louvre, just as one of them was about to fly out of France, the Paris prosecutor said on Sunday. Two men in their 30s and originally from the capital's Seine-Saint-Denis suburb - which includes some of the country's most deprived areas - were detained on Saturday evening, according to Le Parisien newspaper, which first broke the story. They were known to French police and one of the suspects was about to fly to Algeria from Cha

Changpeng Zhao, founder of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has been pardoned by US President Donald Trump. Zhao, also known as "CZ", was sentenced to four months in prison in April 2024 after pleading guilty to violating US money laundering laws. Binance also pleaded guilty and was ordered to pay $4.3bn (£3.4bn) after a US investigation found it helped users bypass sanctions. The pardon reignited debate over the White House embrace of cryptocurrency as the Trump family's

The US has announced new sanctions targeting Russia's two largest oil companies in an effort to pressure Moscow to negotiate a peace deal in Ukraine. The announcement came one day after US President Donald Trump said a planned meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Budapest would be shelved indefinitely. "Every time I speak to Vladimir, I have good conversations and then they don't go anywhere," Trump said. While the economic impact to Russia is likely to be minimal, it repres

Mosquitoes have been discovered in Iceland in a first for the island nation, which has long been one of the world’s mosquito-free places, a researcher told AFP Monday. Three Culiseta annulata mosquitoes, two females and one male, were sighted around 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the capital, Reykjavik, according to Matthias Alfredsson, an entomologist at the Natural Science Institute of Iceland. “They were all collected from wine ropes… aimed at attracting moths,” the researcher said in an

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review whether Americans who regularly use marijuana can legally possess firearms, a case that could further define the boundaries of the Second Amendment and federal drug law. The dispute arises from a Justice Department appeal seeking to revive a prosecution against a Texas man, Ali Danial Hemani, after the Fifth Circuit struck down the federal statute barring gun ownership by unlawful drug users. The law, which dates back decades, prohibits individuals wh

France’s ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy became the first former head of an EU state to be jailed Tuesday, proclaiming his innocence as he entered a Paris prison. France’s right-wing leader from 2007 to 2012 was found guilty last month of seeking to acquire funding from Moamer Kadhafi’s Libya for the campaign that saw him elected. AFP journalists saw the 70-year-old — who has appealed the verdict — leave his home, and after a short drive flanked by police on motorbikes, enter the La Sante prison

Food Stamps, the country’s biggest anti-hunger lifeline, is about to collapse—and millions of Americans are staring down an empty November. As the government shutdown stretches into its third week, 42 million people across the U.S. could lose access to food stamps. According to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP, is projected to run out of funds by November 1. She warned that “millions and millions” of families could soon be