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Reuters

  • Hamas hostage videos silenced Israeli media’s talk of Gaza aid crisis

    Hamas hostage videos silenced Israeli media’s talk of Gaza aid crisis

    A growing willingness among Israeli news media to critically explore the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has all but evaporated in recent weeks after fighter group Hamas released videos of two emaciated Israeli hostages.

    In late July, as images of starving Gazans stirred international outcry, some Israeli press and broadcasters began to carry reports on the worsening conditions there, urging a more robust aid response.

    Yonit Levi, the main news anchor of Channel 12, branded the humanitarian crisis in Gaza a “moral failure” live on air, and the heads of some universities and the national Holocaust memorial appealed to the government to help hungry Gazans.

    Israeli media has largely focused during 22 months of war on the trauma and impact on Israelis of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack, in which, according to Israeli tallies, some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. Coverage has concentrated on the fate of the hostages and the casualties suffered by the Israeli army.

    Some Israelis welcomed Levi’s comment and the spate of reports discussing conditions in Gaza as evidence of a readiness to examine the impact of the war on Palestinian civilians.

    But the mood in Israel hardened dramatically when, on July 31, Hamas released a video of the skeletal 21-year-old Israeli hostage Rom Braslavski, weeping and in pain. It was followed three days later by a video of Evyatar David, 24, who said he was being forced to dig his own grave.

    The videos – which one Palestinian source said were designed to show the terrible impact of restricted aid flows in Gaza – backfired, shutting down the growing sympathy in Israel towards civilians there.

    Amid international condemnation of Hamas, thousands of protestors took to the streets in Israel to demand the immediate return of the hostages. About 50 hostages are still in Gaza, but only around 20 of them are thought to still be alive.

    Uri Dagon, deputy editor-in-chief of Yisrael Hayom, Israel’s most widely circulated newspaper, said that with hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, Israelis “don’t have the ability to experience the pain of the other side.”

    “I know that sounds terrible but it’s the truth,” he said.

    Dagon accused foreign media of falling into a “campaign of lies” about starvation in Gaza: while his paper had published articles on suffering there, it emphasized that Hamas was to blame. He questioned why foreign outlets that published photos of emaciated Gazans had not given the same prominence to the harrowing images of Evyatar David.

    “I suggest senior editors in the international press review themselves and only then discuss how the Israeli press is conducting itself,” Dagon said.

    DENIALS OF STARVATION

    Polls in the wake of Oct. 7 that showed most Palestinians approved of the attack sowed anger in Israel. Videos of Gazans crowding around hostages in the immediate aftermath of the raid, filming them on their mobile phones, spitting on them and beating them also fuelled lasting resentment.

    Harel Chorev, a senior researcher Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University specializing in media and Palestinian society, said such incidents made it difficult for many Israelis to feel sympathy for people in Gaza.

    While international media, barred by Israel from entering Gaza, have relied on Palestinian journalists, many Israelis have little faith in their reporting. Some cite the lack of press freedom in Gaza under Hamas’ authoritarian rule.

    “I don’t think there is a famine in Gaza,” said Orit Maimon, 28, a lawyer from Tel Aviv. “I don’t think the situation there is ideal or very good but I don’t think there is a famine.”

    The Gaza health ministry says 222 people have died of starvation and malnutrition, including 101 children, since the war began.

    Right-wing Channel 14 has devoted coverage in recent weeks to discrediting some reports of starving children. When a child featured in a front-page photograph in Britain’s Daily Express newspaper was discovered to have a pre-existing health condition, some Israeli outlets reacted with outrage.

    A poll released this month by The Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank, found that 78% of Jewish Israelis think Israel is making a substantial effort to avoid Palestinian suffering while only 15% think Israel could do more and chooses not to.

    The Israeli offensive makes reporting in Gaza perilous. According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, a professional body, Israel has killed more than 230 journalists in Gaza since November. Reuters was unable to verify those figures independently.

    Israel denies deliberately targeting journalists and says many of those killed were members of militant groups working under the guise of the press.

    On Sunday, Israel’s military said it killed an Al Jazeera journalist in an airstrike: it accused 28-year-old Anas Al Sharif of being a Hamas cell leader. Al Sharif had rejected the accusations, which Israel made before he was killed, and rights advocates said Al Sharif was targeted for his reporting.

    More than 61,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s military campaign, according to Gaza health officials

    CRITICISM OF THE GOVERNMENT

    Polls conducted over the course of the war found that around 70% of the Israeli public wants to see Israel make a deal to release the hostages, even if that means ending the war immediately.

    Several Israeli media have criticized Netanyahu’s government for failing to bring the hostages home or to enunciate a clear plan for Gaza after the conflict. Amongst its most outspoken critics has been left-leaning newspaper Haaretz, which has also published considerable reporting on the suffering in Gaza, including investigative pieces on army operations there.

    In November, Netanyahu’s cabinet – which includes far-right ultranationalist parties – approved a ban on officials talking to Haaretz and government advertising boycott of the paper, accusing it of supporting “the enemies of the state in the midst of a war”.

    The Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment for this story.

    Netanyahu’s ministers have also put forward a proposal to privatize Channel 11, the public broadcaster, which a spokesperson for his Likud party criticized for serving the radical left and damaging Israelis’ morale. Some media experts have warned this could have a chilling effect on media coverage of the government.

    Asa Shapira, head of the Marketing and Advertising studies at Tel Aviv University, said the government’s actions impact what Israeli channels decide to show.

    While editorial decisions to focus on the fate of Israeli hostages was a response to public concern, there was also fear of attracting government disapproval, he said.

  • Oil gains as US-China tariff pause extension boosts trade hopes

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

    Oil prices rose on Tuesday as the United States and China extended a pause on higher tariffs, easing concerns an escalation of their trade war would disrupt their economies and crimp fuel demand in the world’s two largest oil consumers.

    Brent crude futures gained 26 cents, or 0.39%, to $66.89 a barrel by 0015 GMT, while US West Texas Intermediate crude futures rose 22 cents, or 0.34%, to $64.18.

    US President Donald Trump extended a tariff truce with China by another 90 days, a White House official said on Monday, staving off triple-digit duties on Chinese goods as US retailers prepared for the critical end-of-year holiday season.

    This raised hopes that an agreement could be attained between the world’s two largest economies, and could help sidestep a virtual trade embargo between them. Tariffs risk slowing down economic growth, which could sap global fuel demand and drag oil prices lower.

    Investors are also looking ahead to a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 15 in Alaska to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.

    The meeting is set amid heightened US pressure on Russia, with the threat of harsher penalties on Russian oil buyers such as China and India if no peace deal is reached that could upset oil trade flows.

    Read more: US, China extend tariff truce by 90 days, staving off surge in duties

    “Any peace deal between Russia and Ukraine would end the risk of disruption to Russian oil that has been hovering over the market,” ANZ senior commodity strategist Daniel Hynes wrote in a note.

    Trump set a deadline of last Friday for Russia to agree to peace in Ukraine or have its oil buyers face secondary sanctions, while pressing India to reduce purchases of Russian oil.

    Washington has also been pressing Beijing to stop buying Russian oil, with Trump threatening to impose secondary tariffs on China.

    The risk of those sanctions being enacted has receded ahead of the August 15 Trump-Putin meeting.

    Also on the radar is US inflation data later in the day, that could hint at the Federal Reserve’s interest rate path. Any sign that the central bank may cut rates soon would support crude prices.

  • US, China extend tariff truce by 90 days, staving off surge in duties

    US, China extend tariff truce by 90 days, staving off surge in duties

    The United States and China on Monday extended a tariff truce for another 90 days, staving off triple-digit duties on each other’s goods as US retailers get ready to ramp up inventories ahead of the critical end-of-year holiday season.

    US President Donald Trump announced on his Truth Social platform that he had signed an executive order suspending the imposition of higher tariffs until 12:01 a.m. EST (0501 GMT) on November 10, with all other elements of the truce to remain in place.

    China’s Commerce Ministry issued a parallel pause on extra tariffs early on Tuesday, also postponing for 90 days the addition of US firms it had targeted in April to trade and investment restriction lists.

    “The United States continues to have discussions with the PRC to address the lack of trade reciprocity in our economic relationship and our resulting national and economic security concerns,” Trump’s executive order stated, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China. “Through these discussions, the PRC continues to take significant steps toward remedying non-reciprocal trade arrangements and addressing the concerns of the United States relating to economic and national security matters.”

    The tariff truce between Beijing and Washington had been due to expire on Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT). The extension until early November buys crucial time for the seasonal autumn surge of imports for the Christmas season, including electronics, apparel and toys at lower tariff rates.

    Read more: Trump says he will take control of DC police, deploy National Guard to US capital

    The new order prevents US tariffs on Chinese goods from shooting up to 145%, while Chinese tariffs on US goods were set to hit 125% – rates that would have resulted in a virtual trade embargo between the two countries. It locks in place – at least for now – a 30% tariff on Chinese imports, with Chinese duties on US imports at 10%.

    “We’ll see what happens,” Trump told a news conference earlier on Monday, highlighting what he called his good relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

    China said the extension was “a measure to further implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state during their June 5 call,” and would provide stability to the global economy.

    Trump told CNBC last week that the US and China were getting very close to a trade agreement and he would meet with Xi before the end of the year if a deal was struck.

    “It’s positive news,” said Wendy Cutler, a former senior US trade official who is now a vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Combined with some of the de-escalatory steps both the United States and China have taken in recent weeks, it demonstrated that both sides are trying to see if they can reach some kind of a deal that would lay the groundwork for a Xi-Trump meeting this fall.”

  • In India, Trump’s tariffs spark calls to boycott American goods

    In India, Trump’s tariffs spark calls to boycott American goods

    NEW DELHI: From McDonald’s and Coca-Cola to Amazon and Apple, U.S.-based multinationals are facing calls for a boycott in India as business executives and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s supporters stoke anti-American sentiment to protest against U.S. tariffs.

    India, the world’s most populous nation, is a key market for American brands that have rapidly expanded to target a growing base of affluent consumers, many of whom remain infatuated with international labels seen as symbols of moving up in life.

    India, for example, is the biggest market by users for Meta’s WhatsApp and Domino’s has more restaurants than any other brand in the country. Beverages like Pepsi and Coca-Cola often dominate store shelves, and people still queue up when a new Apple store opens or a Starbucks cafe doles out discounts.

    Although there was no immediate indication of sales being hit, there’s a growing chorus both on social media and offline to buy local and ditch American products after Donald Trump imposed a 50% tariff on goods from India, rattling exporters and damaging ties between New Delhi and Washington. McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Amazon and Apple did not immediately respond to Reuters queries.

    Manish Chowdhary, co-founder of India’s Wow Skin Science, took to LinkedIn with a video message urging support for farmers and startups to make “Made in India” a “global obsession,” and to learn from South Korea whose food and beauty products are famous worldwide.

    “We have lined up for products from thousands of miles away. We have proudly spent on brands that we don’t own, while our own makers fight for attention in their own country,” he said.

    Read More: Modi to visit China for first time in 7 years as tensions with US rise

    Rahm Shastry, CEO of India’s DriveU, which provides a car driver on call service, wrote on LinkedIn: “India should have its own home-grown Twitter/Google/YouTube/WhatsApp/FB — like China has.”

    To be fair, Indian retail companies give foreign brands like Starbucks stiff competition in the domestic market, but going global has been a challenge.
    Indian IT services firms, however, have become deeply entrenched in the global economy, with the likes of TCS, and Infosys providing software solutions to clients world over.

    On Sunday, Modi made a “special appeal” for becoming self-reliant, telling a gathering in Bengaluru that Indian technology companies made products for the world but “now is the time for us to give more priority to India’s needs.”

    He did not name any company.

    DON’T DRAG MY MCPUFF INTO IT

    Even as anti-American protests simmer, Tesla launched its second showroom in India in New Delhi, with Monday’s opening attended by Indian commerce ministry officials and U.S. embassy officials.

    The Swadeshi Jagran Manch group, which is linked to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, took out small public rallies across India on Sunday, urging people to boycott American brands.

    “People are now looking at Indian products. It will take some time to fructify,” Ashwani Mahajan, the group’s co-convenor, told Reuters. “This is a call for nationalism, patriotism.”

    He also shared with Reuters a table his group is circulating on WhatsApp, listing Indian brands of bath soaps, toothpaste and cold drinks that people could choose over foreign ones.

    On social media, one of the group’s campaigns is a graphic titled “Boycott foreign food chains”, with logos of McDonald’s (MCD.N), opens new tab and many other restaurant brands.

    In Uttar Pradesh, Rajat Gupta, 37, who was dining at a McDonald’s in Lucknow on Monday, said he wasn’t concerned about the tariff protests and simply enjoyed the 49-rupee ($0.55) coffee he considered good value for money.

    “Tariffs are a matter of diplomacy and my McPuff, coffee should not be dragged into it,” he said.

  • Sharron Davies thrilled by 12-year-old’s medal feat

    Sharron Davies thrilled by 12-year-old’s medal feat

    LONDON, Aug 11- Sharron Davies will never forget the thrill of swimming at the Olympics as a 13-year-old and is sure Chinese sensation Yu Zidi will have felt similar excitement as the youngest world championships medallist at 12.

    The pre-teen prodigy made headlines when she took bronze with her country’s 4x200m freestyle relay team in Singapore last month.

    Sharron Davies swam for Britain at 11 and made her Olympic debut in Montreal in 1976. At 14, she twice won bronze at the European championships and by 15 was a double Commonwealth Games champion.

    While some have raised questions about safeguarding, mental health, stress and the ethics of someone competing at elite level while still so young, Davies saw no reason to be concerned.

    “I don’t have any particular qualms,” she told Reuters in a telephone interview.
    “It didn’t traumatise me. In fact, when you’re young, people presume that this is going to make you extremely nervous but in fact the opposite happens.

    “You know that every time you get into the water you’re going to swim faster, because you’re just growing and getting better at 12 and you have the next 10 years in front of you.”

    Davies compared that to the stress of being an older athlete in their last major meet and knowing that one final race, maybe only seconds in the pool, could be life-changing.
    Yu’s experience, she suggested, will have been very different.

    “That 12-year-old thought this was just ‘everything is a bonus, I’m just having the best time ever…’ the pressure is not there,” she said. “At 12, you just don’t even think about that. You just think about how amazing it is to be part of this.”

    Davies, who won 400m Individual Medley silver at the 1980 Moscow Olympics at a time when doped East German swimmers dominated the pool, said she was “on cloud nine” at making the Olympic squad.

    “I just thought everything was amazing. I was just so lucky to be there and to experience it all and just to be part of it,” she explained.

    “There was nothing for me to lose and everything to gain. And it would have been the same for her (Yu Zidi).”

    Davies said age limits, with 14 the usual entry point for less elite performers, were meaningless when such an obvious talent came along.

    “If someone is good enough to be there, how do you say ‘Well, you can’t come?’,” she asked. “I think if someone is good enough, it’d be very unfair to take her moment away.

    “God forbid something terrible happened to her and she tripped and broke her leg or something next year and it ruined her career. And she never had that opportunity when she was good enough.

    “So I think it’s a tough one to say she shouldn’t have been there. It didn’t mark me. It certainly didn’t mark (diver) Tom Daley. From personal experience, the pressure comes later in life not early.”

    Daley, the 2020 Olympic 10m synchro gold medallist, was 14 when he competed for Britain in the 2008 Olympics — younger than Yu Zidi will be if she competes at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

    Sharron Davies broke both her arms at 11 falling out of a tree and then resumed training in the pool with plaster casts wrapped in plastic bags. Much has changed in a more professional era.

    “I think that we have a lot more medical attention now than we used to have,” she said. “They understand rest breaks as well, whereas we just didn’t get those. We were lucky if we got three weeks off a year.

    “Nowadays they will say to some of the more senior athletes, ‘go and take a year off, take six months off, go just be normal for a little while and come back hungry again’. None of those things happened back in my day, sadly.

    “So I think we’ve learned a lot of lessons.”

  • Trump says he will take control of DC police, deploy National Guard to US capital

    Trump says he will take control of DC police, deploy National Guard to US capital

    WASHINGTON, Aug 11: President Donald Trump said on Monday he was deploying 800 National Guard troops to the U.S. capital and putting Washington’s police department under federal control to combat what he said was a wave of lawlessness, despite statistics showing that violent crime hit a 30-year low in 2024.

    “I’m deploying the National Guard to help reestablish law, order and public safety in Washington, D.C.,” Trump told reporters at the White House, flanked by administration officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

    “Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals.”

    Trump’s announcement is his latest effort to target Democratic-run cities by exercising executive power over traditionally local matters, and he has shown particular interest in asserting more control over Washington.

    The Republican president has dismissed criticism that he is manufacturing a crisis to justify expanding presidential authority in a heavily Democratic city.

    Hundreds of officers and agents from over a dozen federal agencies, including the FBI, ICE, DEA and ATF, have fanned out across the city in recent days.

    Trump said he would also send in the U.S. military “if needed,” and Hegseth said he was prepared to call in additional National Guard troops from outside Washington. Bondi will oversee the police force takeover, Trump said.

    In making his announcement, Trump described Washington as a hellscape of bloodthirsty criminals and unchecked violence.

    The Democratic mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, has pushed back on Trump’s claims, saying the city is “not experiencing a crime spike” and highlighting that violent crime hit its lowest level in more than three decades last year.

    Violent crime fell 26% in the first seven months of 2025 after dropping 35% in 2024, and overall crime dropped 7%, according to the city’s police department.

    TRUMP RAMPS UP RHETORIC

    Over the past week, Trump has intensified his messaging, suggesting he might attempt to strip the city of its local autonomy and implement a full federal takeover.

    The District of Columbia, established in 1790, operates under the Home Rule Act, which gives Congress ultimate authority but allows residents to elect a mayor and city council.

    Trump said last week that lawyers are examining how to overturn the law, a move that would likely require Congress to revoke it.

    ‘SPECIAL CONDITIONS’

    In taking over the Metropolitan Police Department, Trump invoked a section of the act that allows the president to use the force temporarily when “special conditions of an emergency nature” exist. Trump said he was declaring a “public safety emergency” in the city.

    Trump’s own Federal Emergency Management Agency is cutting security funding for the National Capital Region, an area that includes D.C. and nearby cities in Maryland and Virginia. The region will receive $20 million less this year from the federal urban security fund, amounting to a 44% year-on-year cut.

    The deployment of National Guard troops is a tactic the president used in Los Angeles, where he dispatched 5,000 troops in June in response to protests over his administration’s immigration raids. State and local officials objected to Trump’s decision as unnecessary and inflammatory.

    A federal trial was set to begin on Monday in San Francisco on whether the Trump administration violated U.S. law by deploying National Guard troops and U.S. Marines without the approval of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom.

    The president has broad authority over the 2,700 members of the D.C. National Guard, unlike in states where governors typically hold the power to activate troops. Guard troops have been dispatched to Washington many times, including in response to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.

    During his first term as president, Trump sent the National Guard into Washington in 2020 to help quash mostly peaceful demonstrations during nationwide protests over police brutality following the murder of George Floyd. Civil rights leaders denounced the deployment, which was opposed by Bowser.

    The U.S. military is generally prohibited under law from directly participating in domestic law enforcement activities.

    Since the 1980s, Trump has used crime, especially youth crime in cities, as a political tool. His 1989 call for the death penalty in the Central Park jogger case, involving five Black and Latino teens later exonerated of raping and beating a woman, remains among the controversial moments of his public life.

    The “Central Park Five” sued Trump for defamation after he falsely said during a presidential debate last year that they had pleaded guilty.

  • Paramount secures UFC rights in the US in $7.7 billion deal

    Paramount secures UFC rights in the US in $7.7 billion deal

    August 11, 2025: Skydance-owned Paramount will become the exclusive U.S. home of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) under a seven-year rights deal with TKO Group Holdings, starting in 2026, that is valued at around $7.7 billion, the companies said on Monday.

    Paramount shares were up 4.2% in premarket trading.

    UFC- News and Updates

    The company will carry the UFC’s full U.S. slate of 13 numbered events and 30 Fight Nights on its Paramount+ streaming service, with select numbered events simulcast on its CBS broadcast network. The media company also said it may pursue UFC rights in other markets as they become available.

    “Live sports continue to be a cornerstone of our broader strategy,” said David Ellison, chairman and CEO of Paramount, calling UFC a “global sports powerhouse”.

    Sports content, including rights to live events, has become the anchor of media strategy as cord-cutting accelerates. Rivals including Netflix and Disney have also struck similar deals to beef up their content with offerings from the likes of WWE.

    Paramount is paying an average of $1.1 billion annually to TKO Group for the rights. It will offer all the matches at no additional cost to consumers, in a shift from the sport’s pay-per-view model.

    Paramount Global and Skydance Media completed their $8.4 billion merger last week, capping a drawn-out deal process marked by political scrutiny and shareholder concerns.

    UFC stages about 43 live events a year and says it reaches roughly 100 million fans in the U.S. and nearly 950 million broadcast and digital households worldwide.

  • Colombian presidential hopeful Uribe dies two months after shooting

    Colombian presidential hopeful Uribe dies two months after shooting

    Colombian Senator and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe, who was shot in the head at a campaign event two months ago, died in the early hours of Monday, his family and the hospital treating him said. He was 39.

    Uribe, from the right-wing opposition, was shot in Bogota on June 7 as he was giving a speech at a rally, in an attack that shocked the nation.

    His wife, Maria Claudia Tarazona, announced his death on social media. “I ask God to show me the way to learn to live without you,” she wrote. “Rest in peace, love of my life, I will take care of our children.”

    The capital’s Santa Fe Foundation hospital – where supporters held regular vigils during his treatment – said over the weekend his condition had worsened because of a hemorrhage in his central nervous system.

    Former President Alvaro Uribe, the leader of the senator’s Democratic Center party and no relation to the deceased Colombian Senator, wrote on X that “evil destroys everything; they killed hope”.

    “May Miguel’s fight be a light that illuminates Colombia’s right path,” added the former president, who was sentenced by a judge earlier this month to 12 years of house arrest for abuse of process and bribery of a public official.

    US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X he was deeply saddened by the news. “The United States stands in solidarity with his family, the Colombian people, both in mourning and demanding justice for those responsible.”

    Read more: Colombia’s potential presidential contender Miguel Uribe shot, suspect arrested

    Six people are under arrest over the Colombian Senator shooting, including two men that the attorney general’s office says met in Medellin to plan the assassination.

    A 15-year-old accused of carrying out the shooting was arrested within hours of the crime, but police have said they are pursuing the “intellectual authors” of the attack.

    In a video of the boy’s June arrest, independently verified by Reuters, he can be heard shouting that he had been hired by a local drug dealer.

    FRAUGHT FAMILY HISTORY

    There is reward of up to 3 billion pesos (about $740,000) for information leading to the identification and capture of those responsible, the defense minister has said. The United States, Britain and the United Arab Emirates are helping with the investigation.

    The death of Senator Miguel Uribe, a father and stepfather, adds further tragedy to his family’s fraught history.

    His mother, journalist Diana Turbay, was killed in 1991 during a botched rescue mission after she was kidnapped by the Medellin Cartel, headed by drug lord Pablo Escobar.

    Miguel Uribe himself enjoyed a rapid political rise, becoming a recognized lawmaker for the right-wing Democratic Center party and presidential hopeful known for his sharp criticism of leftist President Gustavo Petro’s administration.

    At 25, he was elected to Bogota’s city council, where he was a prominent opponent of Petro, then the capital’s mayor, criticizing his handling of waste management and social programs.

    In the 2022 legislative elections, Uribe led the Senate slate for the Democratic Center party with the slogan “Colombia First,” winning a seat in the chamber.

    His maternal grandfather, Julio Cesar Turbay, was Colombia’s president from 1978 to 1982, while his paternal grandfather, Rodrigo Uribe Echavarria, headed the Liberal Party and supported Virgilio Barco’s successful 1986 presidential campaign.

    Besides his wife, son and stepdaughters, Miguel Uribe is also survived by his father and sister.

  • Zelenskiy seeks a place at the table with Trump and Putin

    Zelenskiy seeks a place at the table with Trump and Putin

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy won diplomatic backing from Europe and the NATO alliance on Sunday ahead of a Russia-U.S. summit this week where Kyiv fears President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump may try to dictate terms for ending the 3-1/2-year war.

    Trump, who for weeks had been threatening new sanctions against Russia for failing to halt the war, announced instead on Friday that he would meet Putin on August 15 in Alaska.

    A White House official has said Trump is open to Zelenskiy attending but preparations are underway for only a bilateral meeting.

    Russian strikes injured at least 12 in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, the country’s foreign affairs ministry said on Sunday.

    Zelenskiy, responding to the strike, said, “That is why sanctions are needed, pressure is needed.”

    The Kremlin leader last week ruled out meeting Zelenskiy, saying conditions for such an encounter were “unfortunately still far” from being met.

    Trump said a potential deal would involve “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both (sides)”, compounding Ukrainian fears that it may face pressure to surrender land.

    Zelenskiy says any decisions taken without Ukraine will be “stillborn” and unworkable. On Saturday the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Finland and the European Commission said any diplomatic solution must protect the security interests of Ukraine and Europe.

    “The U.S. has the power to force Russia to negotiate seriously,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Sunday. “Any deal between the U.S. and Russia must have Ukraine and the EU included, for it is a matter of Ukraine’s and the whole of Europe’s security.”

    EU foreign ministers will meet on Monday to discuss next steps, she said.

    NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told U.S. network ABC News that Friday’s summit “will be about testing Putin, how serious he is on bringing this terrible war to an end”.

    He added: “It will be, of course, about security guarantees, but also about the absolute need to acknowledge that Ukraine decides on its own future, that Ukraine has to be a sovereign nation, deciding on its own geopolitical future.”

    Russia holds nearly a fifth of the country.

    Rutte said a deal could not include legal recognition of Russian control over Ukrainian land, although it might include de facto recognition. He compared it to the situation after World War Two when Washington accepted that the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were de facto controlled by the Soviet Union but did not legally recognise their annexation.

    Zelenskiy said on Sunday: “The end of the war must be fair, and I am grateful to everyone who stands with Ukraine and our people today.”

    A European official said Europe had come up with a counter-proposal to Trump’s, but declined to provide details. Russian officials accused Europe of trying to thwart Trump’s efforts to end the war.

    A serviceman of the 115th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces attends a training between combat missions at a training ground, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine August 9, 2025. REUTERS/Sofiia Gatilova Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

    “The Euro-imbeciles are trying to prevent American efforts to help resolve the Ukrainian conflict,” former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev posted on social media on Sunday.

    Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a vituperative statement that the relationship between Ukraine and the European Union resembled “necrophilia”.

    Roman Alekhin, a Russian war blogger, said Europe had been reduced to the role of a spectator.

    “If Putin and Trump reach an agreement directly, Europe will be faced with a fait accompli. Kyiv – even more so,” he said.

    CAPTURED TERRITORY

    In addition to Crimea, which it seized in 2014, Russia has formally claimed the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as its own, although it controls only about 70% of the last three. It holds smaller pieces of territory in three other regions, while Ukraine says it holds a sliver of Russia’s Kursk region.

    Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst, said a swap could entail Russia handing over 1,500 sq km to Ukraine and obtaining 7,000 sq km, which he said Russia would capture anyway within about six months.

    He provided no evidence to back any of those figures. Russia took about 500 sq km of territory in July, according to Western military analysts who say its grinding advances have come at the cost of very high casualties.

    Ukraine and its European allies have been haunted for months by the fear that Trump, keen to claim credit for making peace and hoping to seal lucrative joint business deals between the U.S. and Russia, could align with Putin to cut a deal that would be deeply disadvantageous to Kyiv.

    They had drawn some encouragement lately as Trump, having piled heavy pressure on Zelenskiy and berated him publicly in the Oval Office in February, began criticising Putin as Russia pounded Kyiv and other cities with its heaviest air attacks of the war.

    But the impending Putin-Trump summit has revived fears that Kyiv and Europe could be sidelined.

    “What we will see emerge from Alaska will almost certainly be a catastrophe for Ukraine and Europe,” wrote Phillips P. O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

    “And Ukraine will face the most terrible dilemma. Do they accept this humiliating and destructive deal? Or do they go it alone, unsure of the backing of European states?”

    Ukrainian political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko said on Sunday that Kyiv’s partnership with its European allies was critical to countering any attempts to keep it away from the table.

    “For us right now, a joint position with the Europeans is our main resource,” he said on Ukrainian radio.

    U.S. Vice President JD Vance said a negotiated settlement was unlikely to satisfy either side. “Both the Russians and the Ukrainians, probably, at the end of the day, are going to be unhappy with it,” he said on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.

  • Nvidia, AMD to pay 15% of China chip sale revenues to US

    Nvidia, AMD to pay 15% of China chip sale revenues to US

    Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the US government 15% of revenue from sales to China of advanced computer chips like Nvidia’s H20 that are used for artificial intelligence applications, a US official told Reuters on Sunday.

    US President Donald Trump’s administration halted sales of H20 chips to China in April, but Nvidia last month announced the US said that it would allow the company to resume sales and it hoped to start deliveries soon.

    Another US official said on Friday that the Commerce Department had begun issuing licenses for the sale of H20 chips to China.

    When asked if Nvidia had agreed to pay 15% of revenues to the US, a Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement, “We follow rules the US government sets for our participation in worldwide markets.”

    The spokesperson added: “While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide.”

    AMD did not respond to a request for comment on the news, which was first reported by the Financial Times earlier on Sunday. The US Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
    China represents a significant market for both companies.

    Nvidia generated $17 billion in revenue from China in the fiscal year ending January 26, representing 13% of total sales. AMD reported $6.2 billion in China revenue for 2024, accounting for 24% of total revenue.

    Read more: Nvidia says it will resume sales of ‘H20’ AI chips to China

    The Financial Times said the chipmakers agreed to the arrangement as a condition for obtaining the export licences for their semiconductors, including AMD’s MI308 chips.

    The report said the Trump administration had yet to determine how to use the money.

    “It’s wild,” said Geoff Gertz, a senior fellow at Center for New American Security, an independent think tank in Washington, D.C.

    “Either selling H20 chips to China is a national security risk, in which case we shouldn’t be doing it to begin with, or it’s not a national security risk, in which case, why are we putting this extra penalty on the sale?”

    US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said last month the planned resumption of sales of the AI chips was part of U.S. negotiations with China to get rare earths and described the H20 as Nvidia’s “fourth-best chip” in an interview with CNBC.

    Lutnick said it was in US interests to have Chinese companies using American technology, even if the most advanced was prohibited from export, so they continued to use an American “tech stack.”

    The U.S. official said the Trump administration did not feel the sale of H20 and equivalent chips was compromising US national security. The official did not know when the agreement would be implemented or exactly how, but said the administration would be in compliance with the law.

    Alasdair Phillips-Robins, who served as an adviser at the Commerce Department during former President Joe Biden’s administration, criticized the move.

    “If this reporting is accurate, it suggests the administration is trading away national security protections for revenue for the Treasury,” Phillips-Robins said.