Erin Patterson found guilty of all counts in Australia mushroom murders case
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The Guardian
12 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Tony Blair thinktank worked with project developing ‘Trump Riviera' Gaza plan
Tony Blair's thinktank worked with a project developing a postwar Gaza plan that included the creation of a 'Trump Riviera' and a manufacturing zone named after Elon Musk. The project, led by Israeli business people and using financial models developed by the US consulting firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG), was developed against the backdrop of Donald Trump's vision of taking over the Palestinian territory and transforming it into a resort. While the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) said it was not involved in the authorship of the plan, two staff took part in calls as the project evolved. The staff also took part in a message group used for the project, along with figures from BCG and the Israeli business people, while a TBI document titled 'Gaza Economic Blueprint' was shared within it, the Financial Times reported. The report prompted an angry reaction from the institute, which Blair set up after he left Downing Street. It has more than 900 staff in more than 45 countries. The former UK prime minister has been involved in the region and worked for nearly eight years as special representative of the Quartet of international powers seeking a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. He resigned in 2015. The institute denied it was involved in the preparation of a slide deck, which the FT reported had been developed by the Israeli business people using BCG's financial models and was said to have proposed paying half a million Palestinians to leave the area. The slides reportedly outlined a plan called the 'Great Trust' and was shared with the Trump administration. It envisaged that private investors would have been attracted to Gaza once many of the inhabitants had been paid to leave. The plan outlined in the slides was reported to have been created to attract Trump's attention and that of wealthy Gulf rulers. Among 10 'mega projects', the document includes the 'MBS Ring' and 'MBZ Central' highways — named after the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and an 'Elon Musk smart manufacturing zone' In February, Trump retweeted an AI-generated video and said: 'We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal … the Riviera of the Middle East, it could be so magnificent.' Blair's institute said it was not involved in the preparation of the slide deck, which it described as 'a BCG deck', and added that it had no input into its contents. 'Tony Blair himself has neither spoken to the people who prepared this deck nor commented on it. The TBI team speaks to many different groups and organisations with postwar 'plans' for Gaza, but had nothing to do with the authorship of this plan,' a spokesperson said. 'TBI staff participated in two calls, as they have done with many other people with 'Gaza plans' and interacting with them doesn't mean endorsement. But we were not involved in drawing up the deck, it is emphatically not TBI work or 'joint' work so it would be completely wrong to suggest it is. 'Of course we're opposed to any plan which tries to make Gazans leave Gaza. We want them to be able to stay and live in Gaza.' 'The TBI document referred to is an internal TBI document looking at proposals being made by various parties covering all the different aspects of what a postwar Gaza could look like, though it is one of many such internal documents.' The spokesperson said that TBI's work in the region has always been dedicated to building a better Gaza for Gazans, adding: 'Tony Blair has worked for this since leaving office. It has never been about relocating Gazans, which is a proposal TBI has never authored, developed or endorsed.' The TBI, which describes itself as a 'not-for-profit, non-partisan organisation helping governments and leaders turn bold ideas into reality'. BCG has been embroiled in a separate controversy over its connection to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the controversial Israeli- and US-backed delivery group. The consulting company said last month that it had cancelled its contract with the GHF amid growing media scrutiny into the group's work and sources of funding. BCG has sought to disassociate itself from the work in Gaza and has reportedly fired two partners who it said had mislead senior management. TheFT reported last week that the BCG team had been involved in modelling of the potential reconstruction of Gaza.
The Independent
13 minutes ago
- The Independent
FBI says no ‘Epstein client list' after Musk's Trump allegations
A new memo from the Department of Justice and FBI states that Jeffrey Epstein had no "client list" and found no credible evidence of blackmail. The two-page memo also confirmed that the convicted paedophile died by suicide in a New York City jail cell on 10 August 2019, addressing long-standing conspiracy theories. Law enforcement agencies released ten hours of surveillance footage from the Metropolitan Correctional Center, further supporting the conclusion that Epstein's death was a suicide. The memo clarifies that no new evidence has been found in the Epstein case, and no further investigations will be launched into other individuals. The memo's release follows accusations by Elon Musk that Donald Trump was in the "Epstein files," with Musk reacting strongly to the new findings.
The Independent
18 minutes ago
- The Independent
A Vermont dairy farm was raided. The mixed messages from Washington since then have increased fears
After six 12-hour shifts milking cows, José Molina-Aguilar's lone day off was hardly relaxing. On April 21, he and seven co-workers were arrested on a Vermont dairy farm in what advocates say was one of the state's largest-ever immigration raids. 'I saw through the window of the house that immigration were already there, inside the farm, and that's when they detained us,' he said in a recent interview. 'I was in the process of asylum, and even with that, they didn't respect the document that I was still holding in my hands.' Four of the workers were swiftly deported to Mexico. Molina-Aguilar, released after a month in a Texas detention center with his asylum case still pending, is now working at a different farm and speaking out. 'We must fight as a community so that we can all have, and keep fighting for, the rights that we have in this country,' he said. The owner of the targeted farm declined to comment. But Brett Stokes, a lawyer representing the detained workers, said the raid sent shock waves through the entire Northeast agriculture industry. 'These strong-arm tactics that we're seeing and these increases in enforcement, whether legal or not, all play a role in stoking fear in the community,' said Stokes, director of the Center for Justice Reform Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School. That fear remains given the mixed messages coming from the White House. President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to deport millions of immigrants working in the U.S. illegally, last month paused arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels. But less than a week later, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said worksite enforcement would continue. Asked for updated comment Monday, the department repeated McLaughlin's earlier statement. 'Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability,' she said. Such uncertainty is causing problems in big states like California, where farms produce more than three-quarters of the country's fruit and more than a third of its vegetables. But it's also affecting small states like Vermont, where dairy is as much a part of the state's identity as its famous maple syrup. Nearly two-thirds of all milk production in New England comes from Vermont, where more than half the state's farmland is dedicated to dairy and dairy crops. There are roughly 113,000 cows and 7,500 goats spread across 480 farms, according to the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, which pegs the industry's annual economic impact at $5.4 billion. That impact has more than doubled in the last decade, with widespread help from immigrant labor. More than 90% of the farms surveyed for the agency's recent report employed migrant workers. Among them is Wuendy Bernardo, who has lived on a Vermont dairy farm for more than a decade and has an active application to stop her deportation on humanitarian grounds: Bernardo is the primary caregiver for her five children and her two orphaned younger sisters, according to a 2023 letter signed by dozens of state lawmakers. Hundreds of Bernardo's supporters showed up for her most recent check-in with immigration officials. 'It's really difficult because every time I come here, I don't know if I'll be going back to my family or not,' she said after being told to return in a month. Like Molina-Aguilar, Rossy Alfaro also worked 12-hour days with one day off per week on a Vermont farm. Now an advocate with Migrant Justice, she said the dairy industry would collapse without immigrant workers. 'It would all go down,' she said. 'There are many people working long hours, without complaining, without being able to say, 'I don't want to work.' They just do the job.' ___
