Top World News

Apr 22, 2025 - World

A respected immigration attorney expressed his shock and dismay on social media over the fate of a Venezuelan immigrant who disappeared after accidentally crossing into Canada and being detained by U.S. authorities.Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, wrote Tuesday, "This story from today is SHOCKING. The United States has disappeared a man. His last known whereabouts on March 15 was in the same place as others sent to El Salvador, but his name doesn't appear on the leaked list of people sent there. He is, for all intents and purposes, gone."The story Reichlin-Melnick referred to was written by Miriam Jordan, national immigration correspondent for The New York Times.Jordan wrote about Ricardo Prada Vásquez, who was working a delivery job in Detroit.He was heading to the address to drop off a McDonald's order "when he erroneously turned onto the Ambassador Bridge, which leads to Canada. It is a common mistake even for those who live in the Michigan border city. But for Mr. Prada, 32, it proved fateful," she wrote.ALSO READ: 'We know where this leads': How Trump’s crackdown puts Jewish people in perilU.S. authorities took Prada into custody when he tried to re-enter the country, and he was ordered deported," Jordan wrote."That evening, the Trump administration flew three planes carrying Venezuelan migrants from the Texas facility to El Salvador, where they have been ever since, locked up in a maximum-security prison and denied contact with the outside world."According to Jordan, Prada has not been heard from or seen since. "He is not on the list of 238 people who were deported to El Salvador that day. He does not appear in the photos and videos released by the authorities of shackled men with shaved heads."Jordan quoted a friend of Prada's saying, "He has simply disappeared.""Mr. Prada’s disappearance has created concerns that more immigrants have been deported to El Salvador than previously known," Jordan wrote. "It also raises the question of whether some deportees may have been sent to other countries with no record of it. The U.S. authorities have confirmed that he was removed from the United States. But to where?"Read The New York Times article here.

Apr 22, 2025 - World

U.S. diplomat Brett McGurk, who has held senior national security positions under both Republican and Democratic presidents, expressed his concern Tuesday on CNN over government insiders claiming the Pentagon was disintegrating under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's leadership. On Sunday, The New York Times reported that Hegseth used the unsecured Signal app a second time to share sensitive Houthi attack information with family members. Hegseth went on "Fox & Friends" Tuesday morning to blame the information "leak" on three Pentagon aides whom he appointed, then recently fired. One of those former aides, John Ullyot, wrote in an opinion piece for Politico that the past "month from hell" at the agency has led to "a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon." McGurk told CNN's Brianna Keilar on Tuesday, "I think the most significant news this week are the people who [Hegseth] picked, who are now out, who are saying the Pentagon is in a full-blown meltdown. So, these are his people. These are Trump appointees. This is a huge problem. Something is going on here that is deep and structural." ALSO READ: 'Promoted our tormenter': MAGA fans vent disgust at Trump official's latest move McGurk continued, "You cannot have this kind of disarray at the Pentagon. You know, the chain of command goes from...the president to the secretary of Defense. That's the chain of command. And then down to the combatant command. This is so important for the protection of our country. Every military deployment, everything runs through that office. So, to have an insider say it's a full-blown meltdown — a Trump appointee — that's a real concern." Keilar asked what McGurk thought might happen with Hegseth's tenure at the Pentagon. "Look, I want this administration to succeed. I support that campaign against the Houthis, it's important. You just can't have this kind of disarray at the Pentagon," McGurk reiterated. "And, Trump, who's famous for holding people accountable, I would expect eventually there's going to be a change." Keilar then asked, "If you are Iran...if you are Russia, how are you seeing this, with this chaos going on at the Pentagon?" "If I was in the White House now in national security role and seeing another foreign country, a foreign adversary, having this level of five senior officials being basically walked out of the Pentagon — the most senior military command of that foreign capital — I would think they got some real problems under the surface. If this is just what we're seeing, imagine what is actually going on." Watch the clip below via CNN.

Apr 22, 2025 - World

Labour backbenchers demand clarity on practical impact of transgender people’s use of toilets and hospital wardsMinisters have come under pressure to provide answers on how last week’s supreme court ruling on gender identity will affect the daily lives of transgender people, amid confusion over issues such as toilet provision and hospital wards.Keir Starmer said he welcomed what he called “real clarity” and “a welcome step forward” in his first response to the court decision, which ruled that “woman” in the Equality Act refers only to a biological woman. Continue reading...

Apr 22, 2025 - World

David Lammy to host US and European negotiators for ceasefire talks in London amid encouraging speculationDavid Lammy, the foreign secretary, will host US and European negotiators for fresh talks about Ukraine on Wednesday amid speculation that Russia has told Washington it might be willing to drop its claim to parts of Ukraine it does not occupy.The price would include the US making concessions to Moscow such as recognising the 2014 annexation of Crimea, though Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said no such proposal had been shared with him by the White House and that his country could not endorse it. Continue reading...

Apr 22, 2025 - World

Artificial Intelligence that's being built by private labs to store sensitive U.S. national security information is at risk of being hacked by the Chinese government, according to reporting from TIME.That's because components used to build the technology "are mostly or exclusively built in China," wrote correspondent Billy Perrigo.Perrigo reviewed a government-sponsored report titled America's Superintelligence Project, that was released to the public Tuesday as a redacted version.The report's authors with consulting firm Gladstone AI, surmised that "today’s top AI datacenters are vulnerable to both asymmetrical sabotage—where relatively cheap attacks could disable them for months—and exfiltration attacks, in which closely guarded AI models could be stolen or surveilled," Perrigo wrote.ALSO READ: 'Dictatorship, not a town hall': Families 'distraught' as MTG disruptors tased and jailedThe authors told TIME that "even the most advanced datacenters currently under construction—including OpenAI’s Stargate project—are likely vulnerable to the same attacks."“You could end up with dozens of datacenter sites that are essentially stranded assets that can’t be retrofitted for the level of security that’s required,” said Edouard Harris, one of the authors of the report. “That’s just a brutal gut-punch.”The authors speculated about a potential attack "that could be carried out for as little as $20,000, and if successful could knock a $2 billion datacenter offline from between six months to a year."When U.S. tech labs order parts to fix the AI hampered by an attack, "China...is likely to delay shipment," the report said.Perrigo wrote that "the report addresses calls from some in Silicon Valley and Washington to begin a 'Manhattan Project' for AI, aimed at developing what insiders call superintelligence: an AI technology so powerful that it could be used to gain a decisive strategic advantage over China."But, the authors warned, “if we’ve actually trained a real superintelligence that has goals different from our own, it probably won’t be containable in the long run.”Read the TIME article here.