DR Congo: Fears of renewed violence grow as fighting erupts again
18/07/2025
Tanzania: Tundu Lissu's trial postponed again ahead of election
18/07/2025
Congress approves Trump's $9 billion cut to public broadcasting and foreign aid
18/07/2025
Nigeria's diplomatic recall risks stalling global cooperation (experts)
18/07/2025
Sirens wail, cities shut down as Taiwan simulates Chinese air raid
18/07/2025
Heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan kill 63 people in 24 hours
18/07/2025
Child labour rises in Gaza as families struggle to survive
18/07/2025
Spain taming fire that belched smoke cloud over Madrid
18/07/2025
Syria: Renewed Druze and Bedouin clashes, UN rights chief urges prompt probe
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AFP
19 minutes ago
- AFP
Explicit Fed chair resignation video spreading online is fake
"BREAKING: Total chaos erupts at the FED. Jerome Powell RESIGNS live on stage at FED emergency meeting," says a July 21, 2025 post on X. Image Screenshot from X taken July 25, 2025 The video purports to show Powell cursing the economy, inflation, Wall Street and the press before declaring that he is "out." Similar posts spread across X and media platforms as Powell faces intensified criticism from Trump, who has pushed the Federal Reserve chair to lower interest rates and lambasted the Fed's $2.5 billion renovation project. The two bickered over the price tag for the makeover during a July 25 meeting, with Powell correcting the president's false claim that the facelift would cost $3.1 billion. But the video purporting to show Powell lashing out and announcing his departure is fake, with its audio created using artificial The voice-cloning detection tool within the Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify, assessed that clip's audio is "very likely AI-generated." g the Federal Reserve's YouTube channel, AFP matched the visual to a March 22, 2023 press conference delivered after the Fed hiked interest rates (archived here). Specifically, the altered clip lifted footage from CNBC's live coverage of the event (archived here). AFP matched Powell's hand movements in the doctored video to a moment in the press conference when Powell, asked whether disinflation was occurring, responded that inflation on goods had been coming down for six months. Image Screenshot from X taken July 25, 2025 Image Screenshot of CNBC's YouTube channel taken July 25, 2025 No notice saying Powell had resigned appeared on the Federal Reserve's website as of July 25, 2025 (archived here). AFP previously debunked a fabricated resignation letter that bore signs of artificial intelligence but was nonetheless circulated by conservative commentators and a US senator. Trump, who appointed Powell to the role in 2017, has floated the idea of removing the chairman but also said he is unlikely to oust him before his term expires in May 2026. The Republican said following his July 25, 2025 meeting with the Federal Reserve chair: "To do that is a big move and I just don't think it's necessary, and I believe that he's going to do the right thing." AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about US politics here.
France 24
21 minutes ago
- France 24
Trump blurs business and politics at new golf course opening in Scotland
Lashed by cold winds and overlooking choppy, steel-gray North Sea waters, the breathtaking sand dunes of Scotland 's northeastern coast rank among Donald Trump 's favourite spots on earth. 'At some point, maybe in my very old age, I'll go there and do the most beautiful thing you've ever seen," Trump said in 2023, during his New York civil fraud trial, talking about his plans for future developments on his property in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire. At 79 and back in the White House, Trump is making at least part of that pledge a reality, traveling to Scotland on Friday as his family's business prepares for the Aug. 13 opening of a new course it's billing as 'the greatest 36 holes in golf." Trump will be in Scotland until Tuesday and plans to talk trade with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The Aberdeen area is already home to another of his courses, Trump International Scotland, and the Republican president also plans to visit a Trump course near Turnberry, around 200 miles (320 kilometres) away on Scotland's southwest coast. Using a presidential overseas trip — with its sprawling entourage of advisers, White House and support staffers, Secret Service agents and reporters — to help show off Trump-brand golf destinations demonstrates how the president has become increasingly comfortable intermingling his governing pursuits with promoting his family's business interests. The White House has brushed off questions about potential conflicts of interest, arguing Trump's business success before he entered politics was a key to his appeal with voters. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers called the Scotland swing a 'working trip". But she added Trump 'has built the best and most beautiful world-class golf courses anywhere in the world, which is why they continue to be used for prestigious tournaments and by the most elite players in the sport'. Trump went to Scotland to play his Turnberry course during his first term in 2018 while en route to a meeting in Finland with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This time, his trip comes as the new golf course is about to debut and is already actively selling tee times. It's not cheap for the president to travel. The helicopters that operate as Marine One when the president is on board cost between $16,700 and nearly $20,000 per hour to operate, according to Pentagon data for fiscal year 2022. The modified Boeing 747s that serve as the iconic Air Force One cost about $200,000 per hour to fly. That's not to mention the military cargo aircraft that fly ahead of the president with his armoured limousines and other official vehicles. 'We're at a point where the Trump administration is so intertwined with the Trump business that he doesn't seem to see much of a difference,' said Jordan Libowitz, vice president for the ethics watchdog organisation Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. 'It's as if the White House were almost an arm of the Trump Organization.' 01:41 During his first term, the Trump Organization signed an ethics pact barring deals with foreign companies. An ethics frameworks for Trump's second term allows them. Trump's assets are in a trust run by his children, who are also handling day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization while he's in the White House. The company has inked many recent, lucrative foreign agreements involving golf courses, including plans to build luxury developments in Qatar and Vietnam, even as the administration negotiates tariff rates for those countries and around the globe. Trump's existing Aberdeenshire course, meanwhile, has a history nearly as rocky as the area's cliffs. It has struggled to turn a profit and was found by Scottish conservation authorities to have partially destroyed nearby sand dunes. Trump's company also was ordered to cover the Scottish government's legal costs after the course unsuccessfully sued over the construction of a nearby wind farm, arguing in part that it hurt golfers' views. And the development was part of the massive civil case, which accused Trump of inflating his wealth to secure loans and make business deals. Trump's company's initial plans for his first Aberdeen-area course called for a luxury hotel and nearby housing. His company received permission to build 500 houses, but Trump suggested he'd be allowed to build five times as many and borrowed against their values without actually building any homes, the lawsuit alleged. Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump liable last year and ordered his company to pay $355 million in fines — a judgment that has grown with interest to more than $510 million as Trump appeals. Family financial interests aside, Trump isn't the first sitting US president to golf in Scotland. That was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who played in Turnberry in 1959. George W. Bush visited the famed course at Gleneagles in 2005 but didn't play. Many historians trace golf back to Scotland in the Middle Ages. Among the earliest known references to game was a Scottish Parliament resolution in 1457 that tried to ban it, along with soccer, because of fears both were distracting men from practicing archery — then considered vital to national defence. The first US president to golf regularly was William Howard Taft, who served from 1909 to 1913 and ignored warnings from his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt, that playing too much would make it seem like he wasn't working hard enough. Woodrow Wilson played nearly every day but Sundays, and even had the Secret Service paint his golf balls red so he could practice in the snow, said Mike Trostel, director of the World Golf Hall of Fame. Warren G. Harding trained his dog Laddie Boy to fetch golf balls while he practiced. Lyndon B. Johnson's swing was sometimes described as looking like a man trying to kill a rattlesnake. Bill Clinton, who liked to joke that he was the only president whose game improved while in office, restored a putting green on the White House's South Lawn. It was originally installed by Eisenhower, who was such an avid user that he left cleat marks in the wooden floors of the Oval Office by the door leading out to it. Bush stopped golfing after the start of the Iraq war in 2003 because of the optics. Barack Obama had a golf simulator installed in the White House that Trump upgraded during his first term, Trostel said. 01:50 John F. Kennedy largely hid his love of the game as president, but he played on Harvard's golf team and nearly made a hole-in-one at California's renowned Cypress Point Golf Club just before the 1960 Democratic National Convention. 'I'd say, between President Trump and President John F. Kennedy, those are two of the most skilled golfers we've had in the White House,' Trostel said. Trump, Trostel said, has a handicap index — how many strokes above par a golfer is likely to score — of a very strong 2.5, though he's not posted an official round with the US Golf Association since 2021. That's better than Joe Biden 's handicap of 6.7, which also might be outdated, and Obama, who once described his own handicap as an 'honest 13'. The White House described Trump as a championship-level golfer but said he plays with no handicap.
France 24
2 hours ago
- France 24
Trump says '50/50 chance' of US-EU trade deal
In an attempt to slash his country's trade deficits, Trump has vowed to hit dozens of countries with punitive tariff hikes if they do not hammer out a pact with Washington by August 1. "I would say that we have a 50/50 chance, maybe less than that, but a 50/50 chance of making a deal with the EU," Trump told reporters before leaving the White House for a trip to Scotland. His administration promised "90 deals in 90 days" as it delayed the imposition of higher duties in April, but has so far unveiled just five agreements, including with Britain, Japan and the Philippines. The EU's 27 countries have been allowing the European Commission to focus on seeking a deal to avoid hefty US tariffs, with Trump threatening 30 percent levies without an accord by month's end. Brussels and Washington appear to be inching towards a deal with a baseline 15 percent US tariff on EU goods, and potential carve-outs for critical sectors, multiple diplomats have told AFP. But EU member states on Thursday backed a package of retaliation on $109 billion (93 billion euros) of US goods -- to kick in from August 7 if talks fall short. Von der Leyen said Friday she will meet Trump in Scotland this weekend to address the tariffs standoff. "Following a good call with @POTUS, we have agreed to meet in Scotland on Sunday to discuss transatlantic trade relations, and how we can keep them strong," she wrote on X. Trump claimed that most of the deals he was seeking had been completed, although he made clear that he was talking about sending letters imposing tariffs on US trade partners, rather than negotiating free trade agreements. Tariffs charged on other countries are ultimately passed on as a sales tax to US consumers, because they are paid by importers, not the country supplying the goods or services. "I don't want to hurt countries, but we're going to send a letter out some time during the week, and it's basically going to say, 'You're going to pay 10 percent, you're going to pay 15 percent, you're going to pay maybe less,' I don't know," Trump told reporters. Trump said his negotiators were working "diligently" with EU officials, but he added that "we haven't really had a lot of luck" in talks with Canada, which Trump has threatened with a 35 percent tariff.
