Trump | Pakistan

The spending bill passed by the US House increases a tax the richest private universities pay on their endowment investment gains, a move proponents say reins in “woke” schools but that critics say will wind up hurting the poorest students the most. Tucked within US President Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending bill the House narrowly passed on Thursday is a proposal to increase a tax that some universities pay on the investment returns of their endowments from 1.4 per cent to as high as 21pc for some of the most elite colleges in the country. The measure, part of the bill headed to the Republican-controlled Senate, is considered another front in Trump’s attack on elite colleges that he says are overrun by left-wing extremist thought and are cradles of anti-American and antisemitic movements. On Thursday, the Trump administration revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students, a move the university said was illegal. Representative Jason Smith, a Republican of Missouri and chairman of the ...

U.S. President Donald Trump threatened on Friday to ratchet up his trade war once again, pushing for a 50% tariff on European Union goods starting June 1 and warning Apple he may slap a 25% levy on all iPhones bought by U.S. consumers. The twin threats, delivered via social media, roiled global markets after weeks […]

US President Donald Trump threatened on Friday to ratchet up his trade war once again, pushing for a 50 per cent tariff on European Union goods starting June 1 and warning Apple AAPL.O he may slap a 25pc levy on all iPhones bought by US consumers. The twin threats, delivered via social media, roiled global markets after weeks of de-escalation had provided some reprieve. The S&P 500 fell 1pc in early trading, the Nasdaq fell 1.2pc, and European shares fell 1.5pc. Trump’s broadside against the EU was prompted by the White House’s belief that negotiations with the bloc are not progressing fast enough. But his saber-rattling also marked a return to Washington’s stop-and-start trade war that has shaken markets, businesses and consumers and raised fears of a global economic downturn. The president’s attack on Apple, meanwhile, is his latest attempt to pressure a specific company to move production to the United States, following automakers, pharmaceutical companies and chipmakers. However, the United States does no...

Harvard University sued the Trump administration on Friday over its decision to revoke the Ivy League school’s ability to enrol foreign students, ratcheting up White House efforts to conform practices in academia to President Donald Trump’s policies. In a complaint filed in Boston federal court, Harvard called the revocation a “blatant violation” of the US Constitution and other federal laws and had an “immediate and devastating effect” on the university and more than 7,000 visa holders. “With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission,” Harvard said. “Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” the 389-year-old school added. Harvard asked a federal judge to block the revocation, citing “the immediate and irreparable harm inflicted by this lawless action.” The case was assigned to US District Judge Allison Burroughs. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson d...

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that his administration’s cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and its aid programs worldwide have been “devastating.” Speaking beside South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during a White House visit, Trump was asked about his cutting most foreign aid by a reporter who said the […]

President Donald Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday by playing him a video that he claimed proved genocide is being committed against white people, driving farmers to flee to the United States. The unexpected stunt turned the usually staid diplomatic setting of the Oval Office into a stage for Trump’s contention that white South Africans are being persecuted. With the media standing by and Ramaphosa at times unable to get a word in, Trump had staff put the video on a large screen, saying it showed black South Africans discussing genocide. “They’re white farmers, and they’re fleeing South Africa, and it’s a very sad thing to see. But I hope we can have an explanation of that, because I know you don’t want that,” Trump said. Ramaphosa repeatedly tried to speak but was drowned out. At one point, he pleaded that they “talk about it very calmly”. “We were taught by Nelson Mandela that whenever there are problems, people need to sit down around the table and talk about them. And thi...

The European Union and Britain announced new sanctions against Russia on Tuesday without waiting for the United States to join them, a day after President Donald Trump spoke to Vladimir Putin without winning a promise for a ceasefire in Ukraine. London and Brussels said their new measures would zero in on Moscow’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers and financial companies that have helped it avoid the impact of other sanctions imposed over the war. “Sanctions matter, and I am grateful to everyone who makes them more tangible for the perpetrators of the war,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram. But the new measures were unveiled without an immediate announcement of corresponding steps from Washington, despite intense public lobbying from leaders of European countries for the Trump administration to join them. “We have repeatedly made it clear that we expect one thing from Russia — an immediate ceasefire without preconditions,” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said on the sidelines of a ...

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that Russia and Ukraine “will immediately start negotiations” toward a ceasefire and an end to their three-year-old war, speaking after he held a call with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. “Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately,” Trump said in a Truth Social post following his call with […]

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that Russia and Ukraine “will immediately start negotiations” toward a ceasefire and an end to their three-year-old war, speaking after he held a call with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. “Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately,” Trump said in a Truth Social post following his call with Putin, which lasted two hours. After the call, Putin said efforts to end the war were “generally on the right track” and that Moscow was ready to work with Ukraine on a potential peace deal. “We have agreed with the president of the United States that Russia will propose and is ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace accord,” Putin told reporters near the Black Sea resort of Sochi. There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on the statement that talks would begin immediately. A source familiar with the matter earlier said Zelenskiy spoke “for a few minutes” with Trump before the US leade...

ISTANBUL: U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he would speak to the presidents of Russia and Ukraine on Monday following talks between the two sides at which a Ukrainian official said Moscow’s negotiators voiced new demands before a ceasefire could be agreed. In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies preparations were […]

US President Donald Trump said on Saturday he would speak to the presidents of Russia and Ukraine on Monday following talks between the two sides at which a Ukrainian official said Moscow’s negotiators voiced new demands before a ceasefire could be agreed. In Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies preparations were underway for a conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump. The talks in Turkiye on Friday were the first time the sides had held face-to-face talks since March 2022, weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour. A senior Ukrainian official familiar with the talks said Russian negotiators demanded Ukraine pull its troops out of all Ukrainian regions claimed by Moscow before they would agree to a ceasefire. Trump, writing on Truth Social, said he would speak with Putin to discuss stopping the war at 10am on Monday. “The subjects of the call will be, stopping the ‘bloodbath’ that is killing, on average, more than 5000 Russian and...

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused Donald Trump on Saturday of lying when the US president said during his Gulf tour this week that he wanted peace in the region. On the contrary, said Khamenei, the United States uses its power to give “10-ton bombs to the Zionist (Israeli) regime to drop on the heads of Gaza’s children”. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One after departing the United Arab Emirates on Friday that Iran had to move quickly on a US proposal for its nuclear programme or “something bad’s going to happen”. Earlier on Saturday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Trump speaks about peace while simultaneously making threats. “Which should we believe?” Pezeshkian said at a naval event in Tehran. “On the one hand, he speaks of peace and on the other, he threatens with the most advanced tools of mass killing.” Tehran would continue Iran-US nuclear talks but is not afraid of threats. “We are not seeking war,” Pezeshkian said. His remarks, said Khamenei, “aren’t even worth resp...

NEW DELHI: BJP Member of Parliament and Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut got herself involved in controversy after she posted a tweet doing a comparison between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump. The erased post mentioned that Trump was jealous of the Indian Prime Minister’s global popularity, calling Modi the “father of […]

President Donald Trump on Thursday pledged to strengthen US ties to the United Arab Emirates on a visit to the Gulf state that is expected to deepen cooperation on artificial intelligence. Trump began a visit to the UAE on the latest stage of a tour of wealthy Gulf states after hailing plans by Doha to invest $10 billion in a US military facility during a trip to Qatar. “I have absolutely no doubt that the relationship will only get bigger and better,” Trump said in a meeting with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. “Your wonderful brother came to Washington a few weeks ago and he told us about your generous statement as to the 1.4 trillion,” Trump said, referring to a UAE pledge to invest $1.4tn in the US over 10 years. Trump was referring to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Sheikh Mohamed’s brother and the UAE’s national security adviser and chairman of two of Abu Dhabi’s deep-pocketed sovereign wealth funds. “And all I can say is thank you very much,” Trump added. “We will work very hard t...

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he spoke with Apple CEO Tim Cook and told him not to expand his production facilities in India, but to do so in America. “I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said during his visit to Qatar. “I said to him, Tim, you’re my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now you’re building all over India,” he said, referring to Apple’s plan announced in February to invest $500bn in the US over the next four years. View this post on Instagram Trump said he informed Cook that he does not want him to build production facilities in India, and that Apple will be “upping their production in the United States”. The US president claimed that selling American goods in the world’s most populous country is “very difficult” because India has one of the highest tariff barriers in the world. However, he noted that while the Asian country looks for a deal on import duties, India has offered them a “no-tariff” deal. Trump’s remarks ca...

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that India had offered a trade deal that proposed “no tariffs” for American goods, while expressing his dissatisfaction with Apple’s (AAPL.O) plans to invest in India. New Delhi is seeking to clinch a trade deal with the US within the 90-day pause announced by Trump on April 9 on tariff hikes for major trading partners. “It is very hard to sell in India, and they are offering us a deal where basically they are willing to literally charge us no tariffs,” Trump said in a meeting with executives in the Qatari capital Doha. Reuters has reported that New Delhi has offered to reduce duties to zero on 60 per cent of tariff lines in a first phase of the deal under negotiation with Washington, while offering preferential access to nearly 90pc of the merchandise India imports from the US. India’s equity benchmarks jumped to a seven-month high after Trump’s comment on the deal with India. The Indian trade ministry did not reply to a mail seeking comments on the proposed deal. T...

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the United States was getting very close to securing a nuclear deal with Iran, and Tehran had “sort of” agreed to the terms. “We’re in very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace,” Trump said on a tour of the Gulf, according to a shared pool report by AFP. “We’re getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to do this … there [are] two steps to doing this, there is a very, very nice step and there is the violent step, but I don’t want to do it the second way,” he said. An Iranian source familiar with the negotiations said there were still gaps to bridge in the talks with the United States. Fresh talks between Iranian and US negotiators to resolve disputes over Tehran’s nuclear programme ended in Oman on Sunday with further negotiations planned, officials said, as Tehran publicly insisted on continuing its uranium enrichment. Though Tehran and Washington have both said they prefer diplomacy to resolve the decades-long nuclear dispute, they remai...

United States President Donald Trump met with Syria’s president in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, after a surprise US announcement it would lift all sanctions on the Islamist-led government, and said Washington was exploring the possibility of normalising ties with Damascus. He made the comments during a summit between the US and Gulf Arab countries. Trump met Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa before the summit. Photos posted on Saudi state television showed them shaking hands in the presence of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince. Trump also urged Sharaa to normalise ties with Israel, a White House spokesperson said. Despite concerns within sectors of his administration over Syria’s leaders’ former ties to Al Qaeda, Trump said on Tuesday during a speech in Riyadh he would lift sanctions on Syria in a major policy shift. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan joined Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MbS, virtually in the meeting, Anadolu News Agency reported. MbS told the summit Saudi Arabia commends Trumps...

Saudi Arabia on Tuesday promised billions of dollars in deals with the United States, from defence to artificial intelligence, as it threw a lavish welcome for President Donald Trump on the first state visit of his second term. The Saudis escorted Air Force One into the kingdom with fighter jets before bringing out long-stretching guards of honour and sending flag-waving cavalry to accompany Trump’s motorcade to the palace. Under imposing chandeliers, Trump welcomed a promise by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, for $600 billion in investment and quipped that it should be $1 trillion. “We have the biggest business leaders in the world here today, and they’re going to walk away with a lot of cheques,” Trump told the prince. For “the United States, it’s probably two million jobs that we’re talking about”, Trump said. The White House said that Saudi Arabia would buy nearly $142bn in weapons in what it described as the largest-ever weapons deal, although Trump in his first term trum...

• Offers trade boost if both nations continue to engage in dialogue • Modi warns New Delhi will not tolerate ‘nuclear blackmail’ • Khawaja Asif says future talks to focus on Kashmir, terrorism and water • Asserts any attempt to deprive Pakistan of its water rights will never be allowed WASHINGTON: Amid easing tensions following a ceasefire bet­ween India and Pakistan, Presi­dent Donald Trump has claimed that US intervention prevented a “bad nuclear war” between the two nations, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a televised address to the nation asserted that New Delhi would not tolerate “nuclear blackmail” in the event of further conflict with Islamabad. Trump’s comments, made during a press interaction at the White House, signal a rare moment of US diplomatic mediation bet­ween the two South Asian nuclear powers and suggest a broader Ameri­can strategy that ties peace to economic engagement. “We stopped a nuclear conflict. I think it could have been a bad nuclear war. Millions of people could have been k...