Browsing: National
I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) Commanding General and US Marine Corps Lieutenant General Christian Wortman attaches the Balikatan patch to Philippine Exercise Director Francisco Lorenzo,…
US President Donald Trump yesterday dismissed his top energy official’s view that gas prices will not drop until 2027, saying Americans can expect lower costs as soon as the Iran war ends. On Sunday, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNN that while petrol below $3 a gallon “could happen later this year, that might not happen until next year.” “I think he’s wrong on that. Totally wrong,” Trump told a reporter from ‘The Hill’, adding that prices are expected to come down “as soon as this ends.” While Wright, also on CNN, agreed that “with the resolution of this conflict, you’ll see prices go down,” no clear end is in sight. A fragile ceasefire is set to expire shortly and the chances another round of peace talks succeeding are unclear. Trump and his fellow Republicans are under pressure ahead of November’s midterm elections after pledging to lower costs. With months left to go, US petrol prices remain high, inflation is rising and Trump’s approval ratings are down. The average price for a gallon of regular gas on Monday was $4.04, according to an estimate by AAA, compared to $3.15 a year ago. Source link
Tim Cook will step down as the California tech giant’s chief executive this year, handing the top job to a company veteran as it navigates a technology landscape being upended by AI. The 65-year-old Cook, who ran Apple for 15 years after taking the reins from its visionary co-founder Steve Jobs, will be succeeded by John Ternus, a senior vice president of hardware engineering. The announcement on Monday answered long-simmering questions about a successor for Cook, who said he will step down in September to become executive board chairman. “It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple and to have been trusted to lead such an extraordinary company,” Cook said in a statement. He joined Apple in 1998, rising through the ranks and helping drive its success as chief operating officer coordinating the iPhone maker’s complex supply chain. He became chief executive in 2011 after Jobs left because of health issues. Cook is credited with expanding Apple’s product line and ramping up the company’s value to around $4 trillion based on current share prices. He was the mastermind of the strategy that made China the primary manufacturing base for Apple devices, with the vast majority of iPhones assembled by Foxconn and other contract suppliers in Chinese factories. “Tim’s unprecedented and outstanding leadership has transformed Apple into the world’s best company,” outgoing board chairman Arthur Levinson said in the statement. “His integrity and values are infused into everything Apple does.”Ternus joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 and became a senior vice president of hardware engineering over the course of the following two decades. He is credited with playing roles in an array of products including iPhones, iPads, the Apple Watch and Mac computers. Source link
Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Fatih Birol warned on Tuesday that the ongoing conflict between Iran, the United States, and Israel is leading to one of the most severe energy crises the world has ever witnessed.”This is indeed the biggest crisis in history,” Dr Fatih Birol said an interview. “The crisis is already huge, if you combine the effects of the petrol crisis and the gas crisis with Russia.”He added that the war in the Middle East has disrupted shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies pass, further increasing pressure on energy markets.He pointed out that this crisis also come on top of the effects of Russia’s war with Ukraine, which had already severed Russian gas supplies to Europe.Earlier this month, Birol stated that he believes the current situation in global energy markets is worse than the crises of 1973, 1979, and 2022 combined.In March, the IEA agreed to release a record 400 million barrels of oil from strategic reserves to counter rising oil prices caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. Source link
US President Donald Trump said that the United States will not lift the blockade it has imposed on Iranian ports unless an agreement is reached with Iran.In remarks, Trump said the US blockade on Iranian ports will not be lifted until a deal is reached.He added that Iran is losing $500 million a day as a result of the maritime blockade, calling it “a figure that cannot be sustained even in the short term.”The US maritime blockade on Iranian ports came into effect on the evening of April 13. Source link
The 2026 conflict in the Middle East is adding further pressure on fragile agrifood systems and global supply chains, threatening the availability, accessibility, and affordability of food, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) QU Dongyu told the 38th Session of the FAO Regional Conference for the Near East (NERC38).The conference took place on Monday at the Organization’s headquarters in Rome during a “critical moment” for the region, underscoring the need to recognize “the immense importance of maintaining trade flows, and of ensuring access to adequate food for all, particularly in import-dependent countries,” Qu said in his opening statement.The Director-General warned that the significant disruptions to food production, trade, and distribution systems currently being experienced across the region were further compounded by global implications, “including rising energy prices and disruptions in fertilizer markets, which are increasing production costs and affecting agricultural productivity both within the region and beyond.”FAO Director-General said he had informed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that the impact of the crisis would have “long-term consequences for agriculture.” Source link
Rat poison was found inside a jar of HiPP baby food, Austrian police said late on Saturday after the product was recalled from 1,500 SPAR supermarkets in the country over safety fears. A statement from police in Burgenland said that a sample from one of the 190-gram jars of carrot with potato baby food reported by a customer in the Eisenstadt-Umgebung district had tested positive for rat poison. HiPP had said on Saturday that it could not be ruled out that a dangerous substance was introduced into the product and that its HiPP Vegetable Carrot with Potato jars may have been tampered with.Consuming the contents could be life-threatening, HiPP said. The police statement said the affected jars had a sticker with a red circle on the bottom of the jar and a lid that had already been opened or damaged or missing a safety seal, or had an unusual smell.They said initial lab tests on similar jars seized by police in the Czech Republic and Slovakia showed the presence of a toxic substance. The statement gave no further details. HiPP confirmed to Reuters on Sunday that the jars did contain rat poison and that affected retail partners in both countries immediately removed all HiPP baby food jars from sale as a precautionary measure.The police also said that authorities in Austria were warned about the risk after investigations in Germany. They provided no further details. “Products and distribution channels in Germany or other European countries that are not part of the investigations are not affected,” HiPP said.HiPP said on Saturday: “According to our current knowledge, this critical situation involves an external criminal interference that affects the SPAR Austria distribution channel.” SPAR Austria said on Sunday that it had removed the HiPP products in all countries where it runs businesses, including Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia and Northern Italy. SPAR stores in other countries are not part of SPAR Austria, it added. SPAR and HiPP advised customers not to consume the contents of the jars bought from SPAR Austria. They said customers would receive a full refund on returned products. Police advised customers to wash hands thoroughly if they came into contact with a jar. The Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety said that medical help must be sought immediately if babies consumed the contaminated baby food. Source link
US President Donald Trump said yesterday that a US destroyer ship fired on and seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman that tried to evade a US naval blockade. Trump posted on Truth Social that after the Iranian vessel, Touska, ignored warnings to stop, the guided missile destroyer USS Spruance “stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engine room.”“Right now, US Marines have custody of the vessel,” the US president added, “and are seeing what’s on board!” The incident comes with tensions high in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital conduit for the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas, which has been virtually closed since the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran seven weeks ago. Iran briefly reopened the strait on Friday in recognition of an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire in Lebanon, but closed it again the following day in response to the US maintaining its blockade on ships travelling to and from Iranian ports. Trump said the Touska is under US Treasury sanctions “because of prior history of illegal activity.” The Touska is listed on the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control website as an Iranian-flagged container under US sanctions. According to the latest data available from the Marine Traffic website, about six hours before Trump’s announcement the Touska was about 45 kilometres (28 miles) off the southern coast of Iran, near the city of Chabahar. Another ship monitoring site, Tanker Tracker, said the Touska had sailed from Malaysia. Source link
Hoardings are mounted on lamp posts as Pakistan prepared Monday to host the US and Iran for a possible second phase of peace talks in Islamabad.…
US space company Blue Origin announced that its heavy rocket ‘New Glenn’ launched a satellite and placed it in an unplanned orbit during its third launch, indicating that the circumstances are still under investigation.The company said that it is currently evaluating the situation and will provide more information when additional details become available, stressing that work is continuing to analyze flight data.The rocket launched as planned from Cape Canaveral Station in Florida, marking the first time that a former flight booster has been reused, as the booster was able to successfully land on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean after separation, but the BlueBird 7 satellite was placed in orbit lower than Target orbit.The ‘New Glenn’ arrived in space on its first flight in Jan. 2025, and while on its second mission about 10 months later, it carried two vehicles belonging to the US Space and Aviation Agency (NASA). Source link