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Showing posts from February 12, 2025

Melania Trump returns to Washington after four-week absence.

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After a four-week absence from Washington, first lady Melania Trump returned to the White House on Saturday for an annual dinner and reception with the nation’s governors. “She worked very hard on making sure that everything was beautiful. And she’s very good at that,” President Donald Trump said in brief remarks to governors in the candlelit East Room, his wife seated nearby at a table filled with overflowing vases of white hydrangeas and tulips. While Melania Trump may be preparing the White House for visitors — she announced in a statement last week that tours of the historic home are reopening to the public — the first lady apparently has had less interest in spending time there.  Since her husband took the oath of office on January 20, she has not spent significant time at the White House, according to sources with direct knowledge of her schedule. Melania Trump was an active presence during the first days of the president’s second term, but after joining her husband for...
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Trump’s Gaza ‘Riviera’ vision needed an Arab reality check. This royal visit only encouraged it.

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It was supposed to be the moment US President Donald Trump’s vision of bringing peace to the Middle East by redeveloping the war-torn Gaza strip into “Riviera” style premium housing and permanently relocating its more than 2 million residents finally got a reality check. Instead, it was the moment the true scale of the challenge facing America’s Arab allies became clear.  When King Abdullah II of Jordan met Trump at the Oval Office on Tuesday, there were widespread expectations that his visit – as the first Arab leader to meet the US president since his reelection – might help to rein in some of the more far-fetched elements of Trump’s vision.  (To recap, Trump apparently envisions the US taking control of the territory, rehoming millions of Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Egypt, replacing the rubble of Gaza with glass towers with Mediterranean views and inviting “the world’s people” to move in.) But it became clear almost as soon as Trump began talking at their joint p...
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American fighters are dying in Ukraine in growing numbers. Bringing their bodies home is a complex task

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More than 20 Americans are missing in action on the front lines in Ukraine, with a spike in casualties over the past six months as foreigners fill urgent gaps in the country’s embattled defenses, according to a CNN investigation. The bodies of at least five American volunteers who signed up to the Ukrainian military could not be retrieved from the battlefield after being killed in action in the past six months, CNN found. Two of these were repatriated from Russian-occupied territory on Friday to Ukrainian soil after lengthy negotiations. The stark testimony of their surviving colleagues, and the growing toll, portrays the obscure yet important role of American frontline fighters in a war President Donald Trump has called “ridiculous” and has pushed Russian President Vladimir Putin to end diplomatically. The relatives of the missing Americans have told CNN of the distressing lack of closure in not being able to bury their sons, of the legal limbo of not being able to officially ...
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Trump warns ‘all hell’ will break loose if Gaza hostages not returned

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US President Donald Trump warned Monday that “all hell” would break loose if every Israeli hostage was not released from Gaza within days, after Hamas threatened to postpone further exchanges under a fragile ceasefire deal it said Israel was violating. The truce that went into effect on January 19 largely halted more than 15 months of fighting in the Gaza Strip and saw five groups of Israeli hostages freed in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli custody.   But tensions have been running high since a shock proposal by Trump to take over the Gaza Strip and remove its more than 2 million inhabitants. Trump said Monday he would call for the end of the ceasefire if every Israeli hostage was not released by noon on Saturday.   “But as far as I’m concerned, if all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday 12 o’clock – I think it’s an appropriate time – I would say cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out,” Trump told reporters at the White Ho...
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'There were wounded soldiers on our dining table': Somalis recall Black Hawk crash.

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  The expression Black Hawk Down, the title of a Hollywood film, has become shorthand for a 1993 US military disaster in Somalia. Eighteen American soldiers lost their lives in the fighting that began on 3 October, but so did hundreds of Somalis. As Netflix launches a documentary about those events, the BBC has spoken to some Somalis still scarred by what happened. Despite being surrounded by the debris of an ongoing civil war, Mogadishu's residents in the early 1990s embraced the moments of serenity. The warm Sunday sunshine and cooling ocean breeze made for the perfect opportunity for Binti Ali Wardhere, 24 at the time, to visit relatives with her mother. "That day was calm," she remembers. But like everyone else in the city she was unaware that the Americans were getting ready to attack warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed – and what happened would change her life forever. The US had deployed soldiers to Somalia in 1992. They were there to support a UN mission that offered hum...
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