Author: Press Room

Bloc members plan to raise €90 billion for Kiev through common debt after failing to agree on using frozen Russian assets as collateral EU taxpayers will have to pay €3 billion a year in borrowing costs to finance Kiev’s collapsing economy and military under a newly approved loan scheme, Politico reported on Friday, citing senior bloc officials.Kiev’s European backers this week failed to approve a ‘reparations loan’ that would have used about $210 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets as collateral to cover Ukraine’s huge budget shortfall. Instead, leaders chose to fund Kiev through common debt, planning to raise €90…

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned that Europe risks destroying the “shared culture” of the West and in turn weaken bonds with the United States. At a press briefing from the Department of State in Washington DC on Friday, Secretary of State Rubio doubled down on the assertions made in the White House’s National Security Strategy memo, which declared that Europe faces “civilizational erasure” if it continues globalist policies of mass migration and attacks on fundamental liberties such as freedom of speech. The memo has riled feathers in Europe, with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz saying that many aspects of the document…

Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead,” network medical analyst Jonathan Reiner said the “manic cadence” of President Donald Trump’s White House address raised medical concerns. Host Jake Tapper said, “Dr. Reiner, what specifically was it about President Trump that you found so concerning watching him last night? Especially in the context of, you know, he gives outrageous speeches and has been for years.” Reiner said, “Well, it wasn’t the content. I thought the content was just standard fare that we’ve become accustomed to. But it was the way it was delivered. It was delivered with a manic cadence, almost a frantic…

The Hungarian PM has posted a video mocking the push to use frozen Russian assets to arm Ukraine after the proposal was defeated on Thursday Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has cast himself and other opponents of the ‘reparations loan’ scheme for Ukraine as ‘EU Ghostbusters’ in a video posted on X on Friday.In the video, released a day after he and his allies blocked the loan scheme at a Brussels summit, the veteran politician mocked European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other backers of the plan as ‘ghosts’ that his team saved the EU from.On Thursday, EU…

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith told members of Congress in a private interview Wednesday that his team gathered sufficient evidence to support criminal charges against Donald Trump in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the retention of classified documents, even though both cases were later dropped following Trump’s return to the presidency. In a closed-door hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, former Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith defended his handling of two major federal investigations into President Donald Trump. According to excerpts from his opening remarks obtained by the Associated Press, Smith said his…

Washington says the strikes are an act of vengeance rather than a declaration of war The US has launched airstrikes against alleged Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) targets in Syria in what President Donald Trump described as “very serious retaliation” for the killing of American personnel earlier this month.In a statement on Friday, Trump said the strikes were ordered in response to a December 13 attack near Palmyra that left two US servicemen and a civilian interpreter dead.“Because of ISIS’s vicious killing of brave American patriots in Syria… I am hereby announcing that the United States is inflicting very serious…

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Eight people were killed and 27 wounded in a Russian missile strike on port infrastructure in Odesa, southern Ukraine, late on Friday, Ukraine’s Emergency Service said. Some of the wounded were on a bus at the epicenter of the strike, the service said in a Telegram post Saturday. Trucks caught fire in the parking lot and cars were also damaged. The port was struck with ballistic missiles, said Oleh Kiper, the head of the Odesa region. Moscow did not immediately acknowledge reports of the deadly attack. The Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday morning that over…

Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) is warning of the dangers to customers the Netflix acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery could pose, and he wants regulators to give the deal a “rigorous antitrust review.” The senator raised his concerns in a letter sent to the U.S. Antitrust Division, calling for close scrutiny of the deal, The Wrap adds. “Such a transaction raises the prospect of significant antitrust problems in streaming and for the movie industry more broadly,” Scott says in his letter. “The transactions warrants rigorous antitrust review under all applicable antitrust merger and monopolization laws, and to the extent appropriate, a…

President Trump announced plans for a “Patriot Games” event next year that will ask for two top high school athletes from each state (one male, one female) to compete in various sporting events. The president announced the Patriot Games events with the launch of Freedom 250, an organization that will plan and lead efforts to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary.  “One of the events that will be featured as part of the festivities will be what Trump called the ‘first-ever Patriot Games, an unprecedented four-day athletic event featuring the greatest high school athletes — one young man and one young…

Various Hollywood celebrities, from Joseph Gordon-Levitt to Natalie Portman, have launched the Creative Coalition on AI to advocate the rights of creators. Founded by 18 people, the group said it will fight against unethical business practices that aims to use AI as a means to disenfranchise creators. “We’re all frankly facing the same threat, not from generative AI as a technology, but from the unethical business practices a lot of the big AI companies are guilty of,” Joseph Gordon-Levitt said in a video posted on X. “The idea is that through public pressure, through collective action, through potentially litigation and eventually legislation,…