Pakistan says troops kill 33 'Indian-sponsored' militants crossing from Afghanistan
The fighters were intercepted and engaged with "precise" fire, the military's public relations wing said, adding that weapons, ammunition and explosives were recovered.
Pakistan and India, nuclear-armed neighbours with a history of conflict, often accuse each other of backing insurgents. New Delhi denies supporting militants in Pakistan.
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Ukrainian troops have little hope for peace as Trump deadline for Russia arrives
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RTÉ News
13 minutes ago
- RTÉ News
Can Trump explain away Epstein scandal to MAGA supporters
Donald Trump has called the Epstein scandal 'bullshit', he called believers 'idiots' and 'selfish people" and urged supporters to forget about his former friend, but unlike many other scandals involving the US president, it just won't go away. Mr Trump's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal has been the administration's biggest political problem to date. The conspiracy theory around the disgraced financier and sexual predator, that the US President helped fuel, seemingly has turned around to bite him. Many loyal Trump followers believe Epstein kept a list of hugely powerful people who had engaged in sex with women and underage girls that he trafficked. The conspiracy suggests Epstein didn't take his own life but rather that these powerful people on the list had him killed before he could out them. Believers have been calling for the release of this list for years, and when US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in February that the list was sitting on her desk, conspiracists broke into a fever. But when Trump's Department of Justice announced last month that the list didn't exist, many lost faith. There has been fierce criticism of Donald Trump, from some of his most fervent supporters for the first time, from QAnon influencers to conservative podcast hosts. QAnon is a widely followed conspiracy theory purporting that a mysterious government insider called Q is leaking secrets to help Mr Trump battle the deep state and a cabal of powerful paedophiles including the likes of Hillary Clinton. But the narrative that all the conspiracists have turned against their supposed saviour, isn't quite as clear cut as it has been made out. Ciarán O'Connor, who researches conspiracy theories for think tank ISD Global said the belief in conspiracy theories is very hard to break. 'Conspiracy theories are elastic' "Conspiracy theories are elastic, they're self-sealing and they're quite often impossible to disprove," he said. "Especially to a base that is radicalised and so supportive and has been fed a diet of conspiracy fantasy plots over time by someone like President Trump". But, Will Sommer, journalist with The Bullwark and author of 'Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America' says this feels different. He says: "All of these other Trump scandals like, taking this plane from Qatar, things like that, they've sort of immunised the audience to not care about these ethical conflicts, but the difference being that with Epstein. "I mean they, the right-wing media figures, people like Cash Patel, who's now in the administration. "They all said like this is really, really, important. You should care a lot about this and then suddenly, Trump says: 'Shut up. Stop asking about it. You're you're an idiot if you believe this.' "And so there has been this whiplash." Mr O'Connor also sees the beginnings of a significant fracture. "President Trump created a lot of MAGA content creators, and the promise to find out the truth about Epstein as their raison d'être," he says. "So Epstein and allegations around him and trying to prove them kind of became a purity test for the MAGA base." Some blips in conspiracies like the promise to arrest Hillary Clinton, that didn't happen can be explained away as part of a longer-term plan, but the Epstein list is so central to the whole conspiracy world, that it can't be just batted away. "Donald Trump has tried distraction in recent weeks, by bringing up the Russia Hoax and suggesting that Obama could be arrested by posting a fake AI video of the former president being hauled off in cuffs from the Oval Office, but people have seen through the tactic and become even more enraged," says Mr O'Connor. Much ire has been directed towards Kash Patel, director of the FBI and Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI, both of whom made their name as conspiracy theory peddlers whose central theme was the need to expose the Epstein list. But now that they're in government they're towing the same line as previous administrations whom they labelled as the deep state that Donald Trump is supposedly battling. Loyal followers like podcaster Andrew Shulz are turning against Mr Trump. On his hugely successful show 'Flagrant' this week he said: "He put Bongino and Kash in there, which might be the stupidest thing in the history of the world. "Why would you put the two guys that have non-stop pounded the pavement talking about how we're going to expose this Epstein thing, and the second they get in there like: 'You better shut the f*ck up." 'A line in the sand' Even podcasting powerhouse Joe Rogan has called the Epstein issue 'a line in the sand'. It seems the best media manipulator in all of politics fundamentally misreading the media landscape before him. Mr Sommer says it's very unusual for Donald Trump to be so out of step with his base for even 24 hours, and now we've seen a whole month of it. We know from reporting in the Wall Street Journal that Pam Bondi told the president that he's mentioned in the Epstein files, not necessarily in a criminal way, but it certainly could be embarrassing for him. "It seems he's acting in a way that that seems so unlike him but that he's sort of protecting something larger or avoiding a bigger pain," says Sommer. Yet such is the elasticity and strength of belief in the conspiracy that Mr O'Connor doesn't rule it out. "MAGA influencers may well possibly find ways to find a comfortable through line between Trump's rejections that there is anything important in the Epstein client list, to the kind of drip, drip of further calls for investigations where Ghislaine Maxwell may come into it. "Time will tell on that," he adds. One of the explanations that is surfacing among right wing commentators and conspiracy theorists is that maybe Ghislaine Maxwell is innocent, and maybe she could come clean, exonerate Mr Trump and name the real culprits. But Mr Sommer thinks this would be a difficult sell to the MAGA crowd, partly because it has happened so quickly. With other scandals like 6 January, there was time to build a counter narrative and suggest that maybe the rioters were innocent, but this has been so abrupt, there's been no time to rehabilitate Ghislaine Maxwell for example "To convince people that it's OK to pardon this sex offender, like a sex trafficker," he says. "It's not easy. It's the ultimate test of Trump's idea that that he could shoot someone in the middle of the street and get away with it." And ultimately it will be Trump rather than any right-wing influencers that will have to do the convincing. "Unlike anyone else in his administration or the wider MAGA media world, no one can really speak to the MAGA base quite like Trump," say Mr O'Connor. Nobody expects hardcore MAGA supporters to suddenly vote for democrats, but they could become disillusioned and not vote, and independent voters could be swayed. The Epstein files are likely to haunt the US President right up to next year's midterm elections and possibly beyond.
Irish Independent
2 hours ago
- Irish Independent
Volodymyr Zelensky vows Ukraine will not cede territory in effort to end Russian invasion
US president Donald Trump will meet Russian president Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, with the apparent exclusion of Mr Zelensky from talks aimed at ending Russia's invasion of its neighbour — now halfway through a fourth year. Mr Zelensky's comments were his first response to news of that meeting as well as reports that talks between Washington and Moscow centre around a deal that would lock in Russia's occupation of territory seized during its military invasion, according to sources. That includes a demand by Putin that Ukraine cede Crimea, which Kremlin forces illegally annexed in 2014, as well as its entire eastern Donbas area. It would require Mr Zelensky to withdraw troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kyiv. National security advisers from Europe, Ukraine and the US planned to discuss 'progress toward securing a just and lasting peace', a Downing Street spokesperson said. The talks followed an earlier call between Mr Zelensky and UK prime minister Keir Starmer, and a flurry of diplomacy involving the Ukraine president and other leaders. UK foreign secretary David Lammy and US vice-president JD Vance co-hosted the meeting. The talks were attended by US officials via video link, the Wall Street Journal reported, adding that European powers offered a counterproposal for talks with Russia that would in the first instance demand a ceasefire. Any decisions taken without Ukraine 'are at the same time decisions against peace. They will not achieve anything,' Mr Zelensky said. 'The answer to the Ukrainian territorial question is already in the constitution of Ukraine. No one will deviate from this.' The UK and Ukraine 'share the same view on the need for a truly lasting peace for Ukraine and on the danger of Russia's plan to reduce everything to discussing the impossible', Mr Zelensky said in a separate post after his call with Mr Starmer. Mr Zelensky also had calls with French president Emmanuel Macron and Finnish president Alexander Stubb, as well as the prime ministers of Spain, Denmark and Estonia, according to his posts. Separately, Mr Macron had phone discussions with Starmer and German chancellor Friedrich Merz, the French president said on X. 'Ukraine's future cannot be decided without the Ukrainians,' Mr Macron said. 'Europeans will also necessarily be part of the solution, as their own security is at stake.' In turn, Putin spoke yesterday with Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the latest in the series of international calls by the Russian leader since he met with US special envoy Steve Witkoff earlier this week. Amid preparations for talks, Russia and Ukraine continued to trade air attacks. Russia shot down a total of 162 Ukrainian drones over its territory from late Friday through noon yesterday, according to the nation's defence ministry. Three unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) targeting Moscow were downed in the first half of the day, the capital's mayor said in Telegram posts. Ukrainian drones hit a UAV storage facility in Kzyl Yul in the Russian republic of Tatarstan, 1,300km from Ukrainian territory, the Security Service of Ukraine said on Telegram. Russian defence minister Andrey Belousov inspected facilities of the nation's Baltic fleet in the Kaliningrad region, Russia's exclave neighbouring Lithuania and Poland. Belousov said the means of repelling drone attacks is among the fleet's priorities. Ukraine's air forces on Telegram reported 47 drones and two Iskander missiles fired by Russia overnight. According to preliminary data, air defences had repelled one Iskander missile and 16 UAVs. Before Trump announced the summit, his efforts to pressure Russia into stopping the fighting had delivered no progress. The Kremlin's bigger army is slowly advancing deeper into Ukraine at great cost in troops and armour while it relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities. Yesterday, two people died and 16 were wounded when a Russian drone hit a minibus in the suburbs of the Ukrainian city of Kherson. Two others died after a Russian drone struck their car in the Zaporizhzhia region. Ukraine's air force said it intercepted 16 of the 47 Russian drones launched overnight, while 31 drones hit targets across 15 different locations. It also said it shot down one of the two missiles Russia deployed. Russia's defence ministry said its air defences shot down 97 Ukrainian drones overnight and 21 more yesterday morning.
Irish Independent
2 hours ago
- Irish Independent
‘This kind of racism used to shock us, now it's part of normal life' – Indians in Ireland living in fear amid spate of violent attacks
Less than a month ago, an Indian family were sitting in their apartment in an affluent neighbourhood in South Dublin when a group of four strangers showed up screaming racial slurs outside on their patio.
