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Reuters

  • UK council wins bid to move asylum seekers from hotel amid anti-immigration protests

    UK council wins bid to move asylum seekers from hotel amid anti-immigration protests

    LONDON: A British district council on Tuesday won its bid to have asylum seekers temporarily removed from a hotel that has become the focal point for protests after a resident was charged with sexual assault.

    Epping Forest District Council took legal action to stop asylum seekers from being housed in the Bell Hotel in Epping, in the county of Essex, about 20 miles (32.19 km) north of London.

    Anti-immigration protesters and pro-immigration groups have gathered outside the hotel since an Ethiopian asylum seeker was charged in July with sexual assault and other offences. He has denied the charges and is due to stand trial next week.

    Judge Stephen Eyre granted the council an interim injunction against the owner of the hotel, ruling that asylum seekers should be removed by September 12. The hotel’s owner said it would seek to appeal the ruling.

    Eyre also dismissed a last-minute attempt on Tuesday by the Home Office, Britain’s interior ministry, to intervene in the case in support of the hotel owner.

    The Home Office’s lawyer, Edward Brown, had argued the injunction would have a “substantial impact” on the government’s ability to comply with its legal duty to provide accommodation, describing the hotel as “a key part of national asylum accommodation infrastructure.”

    Border Security Minister Angela Eagle said in a statement: “We will continue working with local authorities and communities to address legitimate concerns. Our work continues to close all asylum hotels by the end of this Parliament (2029).”

    Hundreds of people have protested outside the Bell Hotel since two asylum seekers were charged over separate incidents, with 16 people also having been charged in relation to what Essex Police described as criminal disorder in Epping.

    Care4Calais, a charity supporting asylum seekers and refugees, said some residents have felt frightened and frustrated after being threatened, chased, and had objects thrown at them since the protests in Epping began.

    Local police have been on high alert after nationwide rioting last summer, when racist unrest involving far-right supporters broke out after misinformation that the murderer of three girls in Southport was a radical Islamist migrant.

    Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged to stop thousands of migrants arriving in Britain via small boats, but his government is struggling to do so and faces mounting pressure to show voters he can counter illegal immigration, with support rising for Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK party.

  • Air Canada to resume service as flight attendants’ union ends strike

    Air Canada to resume service as flight attendants’ union ends strike

    Air Canada’s unionized flight attendants reached an agreement with the country’s largest carrier on Tuesday, ending the first strike by its cabin crew in 40 years that had upended travel plans for hundreds of thousands of passengers.

    The strike that lasted nearly four days had led the airline that serves about 130,000 people daily to withdraw its third quarter and full-year earnings guidance.

    Shares of Air Canada rose 4% in early trading. They have lost 14% of their value so far this year.

    The carrier said it would gradually resume operations and a full restoration may require a week or more, while the union said it has completed mediation with the airline and its low-cost affiliate Air Canada Rouge.

    “The Strike has ended. We have a tentative agreement we will bring forward to you,” the Canadian Union of Public Employees said in a Facebook post.

    Air Canada said some flights will be canceled over the next seven to ten days until the schedule is stabilized and that customers with canceled flights can choose between a refund, travel credit, or rebooking on another airline.

    The flight attendants walked off the job on Saturday after contract talks with the carrier failed. They had sought pay for tasks such as boarding passengers.
    While the details of the negotiations were not immediately released, the union said unpaid work was over.

    Over the past two years, unions in aerospace, construction, airline and rail sectors have pushed employers for higher pay, improved conditions and better benefits amid a tight labor market.

    Air Canada’s flight attendants have for months argued new contracts should include pay for work done on the ground, such as boarding passengers.

    Its CEO had on Monday in a Reuters interview stopped short of offering plans to break the deadlock, while defending the airline’s offer of a 38% boost to flight attendants’ total compensation.

    While many customers had expressed support for the flight attendants, frustration with flight cancellations was growing.

    Retiree Klaus Hickman missed a flight to Toronto earlier in the week. While he rebooked on another airline, he was concerned about returning to Calgary on time for a connecting flight to Germany.

    Hickman sympathizes with workers demanding better pay but is worried about his own health and travel challenges.

    “They want to get more money to survive. And so it is with everybody else,” he said.
    Canada’s largest carrier normally carries 130,000 people daily and is part of the global Star Alliance of airlines.

    James Numfor, 38, from Regina, Saskatchewan, had been stranded in Toronto for two nights since returning from Cameroon for his brother’s funeral. Air Canada only provided one night in a hotel for his family before leaving them without further support, he said.
    He had slept in the airport with his family.

    ents Air Canada’s 10,400 flight attendants, wanted to make gains on unpaid work that go beyond recent advances secured by their counterparts at U.S. carriers like American Airlines

    In a rare act of defiance, the union remained on strike even after the Canada Industrial Relations Board declared its action unlawful.

    Their refusal to follow a federal labor board order for the flight attendants to return to work had created a three-way standoff between the company, workers and the government.

    Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu had urged both sides to consider government mediation and raised pressure on Air Canada on Monday, promising to investigate allegations of unpaid work in the airline sector.

  • Trump says Putin may not want to make a deal on Ukraine

    Trump says Putin may not want to make a deal on Ukraine

    U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he hoped Russia’s Vladimir Putin would move forward on ending the war in Ukraine but conceded that the Kremlin leader may not want to make a deal at all, adding this would create a “rough situation” for Putin.

    In an interview with the Fox News “Fox & Friends” programme, Trump said he believed Putin’s course of action would become clear in the next couple of weeks. Trump again ruled out American boots on the ground in Ukraine and gave no specifics about the security guarantees he has previously said Washington could offer Kyiv under any post-war settlement.

    “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem (reaching a peace deal), to be honest with you. I think Putin is tired of it. I think they’re all tired of it, but you never know,” Trump said.

    “We’re going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks … It’s possible that he doesn’t want to make a deal,” said Trump, who has previously threatened more sanctions on Russia and nations that buy its oil if Putin does not make peace.

    Ukraine and its European allies have been buoyed by Trump’s promise of security guarantees to help end the war during an extraordinary summit on Monday but face many unanswered questions, including how willing Russia will be to play ball.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed Monday’s talks at the White House with the U.S. president as a “major step forward” towards ending Europe’s deadliest conflict in 80 years and setting up a trilateral meeting with Putin and Trump in the coming weeks.

    Zelenskiy was flanked by the leaders of allies including Germany, France and Britain at the summit and his warm rapport with Trump contrasted sharply with their disastrous Oval Office meeting in February.

    But beyond the optics, the path to peace remains deeply uncertain and Zelenskiy may be forced to make painful compromises to end the war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Analysts say more than 1 million people have been killed or wounded in the conflict.

    RUSSIAN ATTACKS

    While the Washington talks allowed for a temporary sense of relief in Kyiv, there was no let-up in the fighting. Russia launched 270 drones and 10 missiles in an overnight attack on Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said, the largest this month. The energy ministry said Russia had targeted energy facilities in the central Poltava region, home to Ukraine’s only oil refinery, causing big fires.

    However, Russia also returned the bodies of 1,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers on Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said. Moscow received 19 bodies of its own soldiers in return, according to the state-run TASS news agency.

    “The good news (from Monday’s summit) is that there was no blow-up. Trump didn’t demand Ukrainian capitulation nor cut off support. The mood music was positive and the trans-Atlantic alliance lives on,” John Foreman, a former British defence attache to Kyiv and Moscow, told Reuters.

    “On the downside, there is a great deal of uncertainty about the nature of security guarantees and what exactly the U.S. has in mind.”

    Ukraine’s allies held talks in the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” format on Tuesday, discussing additional sanctions to crank up the pressure on Russia. The grouping has also agreed that planning teams will meet U.S. counterparts in the coming days to advance plans for security guarantees for Ukraine.

    NATO military leaders are expected to meet on Wednesday to discuss Ukraine, with U.S. General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expected to attend the meeting virtually, officials told Reuters.

    ‘TIPTOEING AROUND TRUMP’

    Russia has made no explicit commitment to a meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow did not reject any formats for discussing peace in Ukraine but any meeting of national leaders “must be prepared with utmost thoroughness”.

    Putin has said Russia will not tolerate troops from the NATO alliance in Ukraine. He has also shown no sign of backing down from demands for territory, including land not under Russia’s military control, following his summit with Trump last Friday in Alaska.

    Neil Melvin, director, International Security at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, said Russia could drag out the war while trying to deflect U.S. pressure with a protracted peace negotiation.

    “I think behind this there’s a struggle going on between Ukraine and the Europeans on one side, and the Russians on the other, not to present themselves to Trump as the obstacle to his peace process,” Melvin said.

    “They’re all tiptoeing around Trump” to avoid any blame, he said, adding that on security guarantees, “the problem is that what Trump has said is so vague it’s very hard to take it seriously”.

  • Intel gets $2 billion lifeline

    Intel gets $2 billion lifeline

    Intel is getting a $2 billion capital injection from SoftBank Group in a major vote of confidence for the troubled U.S. chipmaker that is in the middle of a turnaround effort.

    The equity investment, announced by the two companies on Monday, is a lifeline for the once-iconic U.S. chipmaker which has struggled to compete after years of management blunders that left it with virtually no foothold in the booming artificial intelligence chip industry.

    It will make SoftBank a top-10 shareholder of Intel and add to the Japanese tech investor’s ambitious bet on artificial intelligence that includes the $500 billion Stargate U.S. data center project.

    The deal follows media reports last week that the U.S. government may buy a stake in Intel, after a meeting between new CEO Lip-Bu Tan and President Donald Trump that was sparked by the President’s demand for Tan’s resignation over his ties to Chinese firms.

    SoftBank’s decision to invest in Intel is not connected to Trump, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    “This strategic investment reflects our belief that advanced semiconductor manufacturing and supply will further expand in the United States, with Intel playing a critical role,” SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said in a statement.

    It will pay $23 per Intel share, a slight discount to Monday’s closing price of $23.66.
    SoftBank’s investment will come via a primary issuance of common stock by Intel, and, based on the U.S. company’s market capitalisation at close of trading on Monday, represent an equity stake of just under 2%, an Intel spokesperson said.

    Read more: Trump demands ‘highly conflicted’ Intel CEO resign

    The Japanese company would become the sixth largest investor in Intel, according to LSEG data.

    SoftBank shares dropped more than 5% on Tuesday following the announcement, while Intel surged 5.6% in after-market hours trading.

    The Japanese company will only take an equity stake in Intel and will neither seek a board seat nor commit to buying Intel’s chips, the person familiar with the matter said.

    MULTIPLE CHALLENGES

    Intel has struggled financially and recorded an annual loss of $18.8 billion in 2024, its first such loss since 1986, as it grapples with multiple challenges.

    Its longtime rival AMD has been gaining share in Intel’s mainstay personal computer and server semiconductor markets, while its ambitious and costly plan for a chip contracting business that rivals that of Taiwan’s TSMC has failed to take off.

    The company is now considering a significant change to its contract chip manufacturing business to win major customers, Reuters reported last month, in a potentially expensive shift from its previous strategies.

    “Intel’s dual role as designer and manufacturer/fabricator uniquely positions it as potentially the best platform in the U.S. to compete with TSMC,” said Charu Chanana, chief investment strategist at Saxo.

    Bloomberg News reported earlier on Monday that the U.S. government is in talks to take a 10% stake in Intel.

    SoftBank declined to provide more details on the Intel investment when asked to comment by Reuters.

    The Intel funding is the latest in the Japanese company’s run of mammoth investment announcements in 2025, which include committing $30 billion to ChatGPT maker OpenAI as well as leading the financing for Stargate.

    On Monday Taiwan’s Foxconn said it plans to manufacture data centre equipment with SoftBank at the Taiwanese firm’s former electric vehicle factory in Ohio as part of the Stargate project.

  • North Korea’s Kim calls for rapid nuclear buildup

    North Korea’s Kim calls for rapid nuclear buildup

    North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country needed to rapidly expand its nuclear armament and called U.S.-South Korea military exercises an “obvious expression of their will to provoke war,” state media KCNA reported on Tuesday.

    South Korea and its ally the United States kicked off joint military drills this week, including testing an upgraded response to heightened North Korean nuclear threats.

    Pyongyang regularly criticises such drills as rehearsals for invasion and sometimes responds with weapons tests, but Seoul and Washington say they are purely defensive.

    The 11-day annual exercises, called Ulchi Freedom Shield, will be on a similar scale to 2024 but adjusted by rescheduling 20 out of 40 field training events to September, South Korea’s military said earlier.

    Those delays come as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung says he wants to ease tensions with North Korea, though analysts are sceptical about Pyongyang’s response.

    The exercises were a “clear expression of … their intention to remain most hostile and confrontational” to North Korea, Kim said during his visit to a navy destroyer on Monday, according to KCNA’s English translation of his remarks.

    Read more: 80 years on, Korean survivors of WWII atomic bombs still suffer

    He said the security environment required the North to “rapidly expand” its nuclear armament, noting that recent U.S.-South Korea exercises involved a “nuclear element”.

    Efforts by the United States and its allies to tackle North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons are expected to be discussed at an upcoming meeting between U.S.

    President Donald Trump and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in Washington.

    “Through this move, North Korea is demonstrating its refusal to accept denuclearisation and the will to irreversibly upgrade nuclear weapons,” said Hong Min, North Korea analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification.

    A report by the Federation of American Scientists last year concluded that while North Korea may have produced enough fissile material to build up to 90 nuclear warheads, it had likely assembled closer to 50.

    North Korea plans to build a third 5,000-tonne Choe Hyon-class destroyer by October next year and is testing cruise and anti-air missiles for those warships.

  • Trump administration revoked more than 6,000 student visas, State Dept says

    Trump administration revoked more than 6,000 student visas, State Dept says

    WASHINGTON: The administration of President Donald Trump has revoked more than 6,000 student visas for overstays and breaking the law, including a small minority for “support for terrorism,” a State Department official said on Monday.

    The move, first reported by Fox Digital, comes as the Trump administration has adopted a particularly hard-line approach toward student visas as part of its immigration crackdown, tightening social media vetting and expanding screening.

    Directives from the State Department this year have ordered U.S. diplomats abroad to be vigilant against any applicants whom Washington may see as hostile to the United States and with a history of political activism.

    Around 4,000 visas were canceled because the visitors broke the law, with the vast majority being assault, the official said. Driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs and burglary were other offenses, the official added.

    About 200 to 300 visas were revoked for terrorism, the official said, citing a rule about visa ineligibility under the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual. The rule identifies ineligibility grounds generally as “engaging in terrorist activities” and “having certain links to terrorist organizations.”

    The official did not say which groups the students whose visas have been revoked were in support of.

    President Donald Trump has clashed with several top-level U.S. universities, accusing them of becoming bastions of antisemitism following large-scale student protests advocating for Palestinian rights amid the Gaza war. In his clash with Harvard, Trump has frozen funding for investigations and threatened to remove the university’s tax-exempt status, prompting several European nations to increase research grants to attract talent.

    U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said he has revoked the visas of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, including students, because they got involved in activities which he said went against U.S. foreign policy priorities.

    Trump administration officials have said that student visa and green card holders are subject to deportation over their support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza, calling their actions a threat to U.S. foreign policy and accusing them of being pro-Hamas.

    A Tufts University student from Turkey was held for over six weeks in an immigration detention center in Louisiana after co-writing an opinion piece criticizing her school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza. She was released from custody after a federal judge granted her bail.

    Trump’s critics have called the effort an attack on free speech rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

  • Trump says Ukraine will get ‘a lot of help’ on security

    Trump says Ukraine will get ‘a lot of help’ on security

    WASHINGTON: U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that the United States would “help out” Europe in providing security for Ukraine as part of any deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, as he and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy began a hastily arranged White House meeting to discuss a path to peace.

    Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy seated beside him, Trump also expressed hope that Monday’s summit could eventually lead to a trilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding that he believes Putin wants the war to end.

    Zelenskiy and a group of European leaders arrived in Washington facing increased pressure from Trump to reach a resolution to end the war on terms more favorable to Moscow, after Trump and Putin met in Alaska on Friday for nearly three hours.

    “We need to stop this war, to stop Russia and we need support – American and European partners,” Zelenskiy told reporters.

    Trump greeted Zelenskiy outside the White House, shaking his hand and expressing delight at Zelenskiy’s black suit, a departure from his typical military clothes. When a reporter asked Trump what his message was to the people of Ukraine, he said twice, “We love them.”

    Zelenskiy thanked him, and Trump put his hand on Zelenskiy’s back in a show of affection before the two men went inside to the Oval Office, where their last meeting in February ended in disaster after Trump dressed Zelenskiy down in front of television cameras.

    This time, the leaders of Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Finland, the European Union and NATO joined Zelenskiy to demonstrate solidarity with Ukraine and push for strong security guarantees in any post-war settlement.

    Trump is pressing for a quick end to Europe’s deadliest war in 80 years, and Kyiv and its allies worry he could seek to force an agreement on Russia’s terms after the president on Friday in Alaska rolled out the red carpet – literally – for Putin, who faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for war crimes.

    The European leaders will meet with Trump afterwards in the White House’s East Room at 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT), according to the White House. Such a high-level gathering at the White House on such short notice appears to be unprecedented in recent times.

    Russian attacks overnight on Ukrainian cities killed at least 10 people, in what Zelenskiy called a “cynical” effort to undermine talks.

    Trump has rejected accusations that the Alaska summit had been a win for Putin, who has faced diplomatic isolation since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

    “I know exactly what I’m doing, and I don’t need the advice of people who have been working on all of these conflicts for years, and were never able to do a thing to stop them,” Trump wrote on social media.

    Trump’s team has said there will have to be compromises on both sides to end the conflict. But the president himself has put the burden on Zelenskiy to end the war, saying Ukraine should give up hopes of getting back Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, or of joining the NATO military alliance.

    Zelenskiy “can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump said on social media.

    PUTIN’S PROPOSALS

    Zelenskiy has already all but rejected the outline of Putin’s proposals from the Alaska meeting. Those include handing over the remaining quarter of its eastern Donetsk region, which is largely controlled by Russia. Ukrainian forces are deeply dug into the region, whose towns and hills serve as a crucial defensive zone to stymie Russian attacks.

    Any concession of Ukrainian territory would have to be approved by a referendum.

    Zelenskiy is also seeking an immediate ceasefire to conduct deeper peace talks, a position that his European allies have also backed. Trump previously favored that idea but reversed course after the summit with Putin, instead indicating support for Russia’s preference to negotiate a comprehensive deal while fighting rumbles on.

    Ukraine and its allies have taken heart from some developments, including Trump’s apparent willingness to provide post-settlement security guarantees for Ukraine. A German government spokesperson said on Monday that European leaders would seek more details on that in the talks in Washington.

    The war, which began with a full-scale invasion by Russia in February 2022, has killed or wounded more than a million people from both sides, including thousands of mostly Ukrainian civilians, according to analysts, and destroyed wide swaths of the country.

    Russia has been slowly grinding forward on the battlefield, pressing its advantages in men and firepower. Putin says he is ready to continue fighting until his military objectives are achieved.

    Officials in Ukraine said a drone attack on a residential complex in the northern city of Kharkiv killed at least seven people, including a toddler and her 16-year-old brother. Strikes in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia killed three people, they said.

    Russia says it does not deliberately target civilians, and the Defense Ministry’s daily report did not refer to any strike on Kharkiv.

    Local resident Olena Yakusheva said the attack hit an apartment block that was home to many families. “There are no offices here or anything else, we lived here peacefully in our homes,” she said.

    Ukraine’s military said on Monday that its drones had struck an oil pumping station in Russia’s Tambov region, leading to the suspension of supplies via the Druzhba pipeline.

  • Trump vows to target mail-in ballots ahead of 2026 midterm election

    Trump vows to target mail-in ballots ahead of 2026 midterm election

    U.S. President Donald Trump pledged on Monday to issue an executive order to end the use of mail-in ballots and voting machines ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, a move likely to spark legal challenges by the states.

    “I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES,” he wrote in a social media post.

    Trump, who has promoted the false narrative that he, not Democrat Joe Biden, won the 2020 election, has long cast doubt on the security of mail-in ballots and urged his fellow Republicans to try harder to overhaul the U.S. voting system.

    Some Republican states, such as Florida, however, have embraced mail-in voting as a safe, convenient way to expand voter participation. Trump voted by mail in some previous elections and urged his supporters to do so for the 2024 presidential election.

    Mail-in ballots hit record highs in the U.S. in 2020 amid the pandemic as states expanded options for voters, but the numbers dropped in 2024, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

    More than two-thirds of voters in the 2024 general election cast their ballots in person, while about three in 10 ballots were cast through mail voting, according to the commission.

    Trump’s comments follow his meeting with his Russian counterpart on Friday, after which Trump said Vladimir Putin agreed with him on ending mail-in balloting.

    Each of the 50 U.S. states runs elections separately, but Trump warned them to comply.

    “Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do,” Trump wrote.

    Trump repeated the false claim on Monday that the U.S. is the only country that permits mail-in balloting.

    Nearly three dozen countries from Canada to Germany and South Korea allow some form of postal vote, though more than half of them place some restrictions on which voters qualify, according to the Sweden-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an intergovernmental advocacy group.

    Trump previously signed a March 25 executive order targeting elections that has been blocked by the courts after Democrat-led states sued.

  • Pakistan tell Babar to improve strike rate for T20 comeback

    Pakistan tell Babar to improve strike rate for T20 comeback

    Former Pakistan captain Babar Azam has been told to improve his batting against spin and boost his overall strike rate to be considered for Twenty20 Internationals, coach Mike Hesson said.

    The 30-year-old is Pakistan’s batting mainstay in other formats but has not played a T20 International since their tour of South Africa late last year.

    Babar Azam could not find a place in the Pakistan squad for the Asia Cup next month as the team management showed faith in rising players such as Sahibzada Farhan.

    “There’s no doubt Babar’s been asked to improve in some areas around taking on spin and in terms of his strike rate,” Hesson said of the top-order batter who has a modest strike rate of 129 in T20 Internationals.

    “Those are things he’s working really hard on. But at the moment the players we have, have done exceptionally well.

    “Sahibzada Farhan has played six games and won three player-of-the-match awards.”

    Babar Azam should use the Big Bash League in Australia to improve his 20-overs batting and stage a comeback, Hesson said.

    Read more: Kamran Akmal urges Babar, Rizwan’s inclusion in squad for Asia Cup

    “A player like Babar has an opportunity to play in the BBL and show he’s improving in those areas in T20s. He’s too good a player not to consider,” he said.

    Pakistan will begin their Asia Cup Group A campaign against Oman in Dubai on September 12 before meeting arch-rivals India at the same venue two days later.

    Pakistan squad for Tri-Series and Asia Cup 2025:

    Salman Ali Agha (captain), Abrar Ahmed, Faheem Ashraf, Fakhar Zaman, Haris Rauf, Hasan Ali, Hasan Nawaz, Hussain Talat, Khushdil Shah, Mohammad Haris (wicket-keeper), Mohammad Nawaz, Mohammad Wasim Jr., Sahibzada Farhan, Saim Ayub, Salman Mirza, Shaheen Shah Afridi, and Sufiyan Muqeem.

  • Oil falls on easing Russia supply concerns after Trump-Putin meet

    Oil falls on easing Russia supply concerns after Trump-Putin meet

    Oil prices slipped on Monday as the US did not exert more pressure on Russia to end the Ukraine war by implementing further measures to disrupt Russian oil exports after the presidents from both countries met on Friday.

    Brent crude futures dropped 26 cents, or 0.39%, to $65.59 a barrel by 0028 GMT while US West Texas Intermediate crude was at $62.62 a barrel, down 18 cents, or 0.29%.

    US President Donald Trump met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday and emerged more aligned with Moscow on seeking a peace deal instead of a ceasefire first.

    Trump will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and European leaders on Monday to strike a quick peace deal to end Europe’s deadliest war in 80 years.

    The US president said on Friday he did not immediately need to consider retaliatory tariffs on countries such as China for buying Russian oil but might have to “in two or three weeks”, cooling concerns about a disruption in Russian supply.

    China, the world’s biggest oil importer is the largest Russian oil buyer followed by India.

    Read more: Oil gains as US-China tariff pause extension boosts trade hopes

    “What was primarily in play were the secondary tariffs targeting the key importers of Russian energy, and President Trump has indeed indicated that he will pause pursuing incremental action on this front, at least for China,” RBC Capital analyst Helima Croft said in a note.

    “The status quo remains largely intact for now,” Croft said, adding that Moscow will not walk back on territorial demands while Ukraine and some European leaders will balk at the land-for-peace deal.

    Investors are also watching Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s comments at the Jackson Hole meeting this week to search for clues on the path of interest rate cuts that could boost stocks to more record highs.

    “It’s likely he will remain non-committal and data-dependent, especially with one more payroll and CPI (Consumer Price Index) report before the September 17th FOMC meeting,” IG market analyst Tony Sycamore said in a note.