Month: May 2025

The founder of the Kwik Fit garage chain, Sir Tom Farmer, has died at the age of 84.

The Edinburgh-born businessman died peacefully at his home in the city on Friday, his family said.

He built the company into the world’s biggest independent tyre and automotive chain, selling it to Ford for £1bn in 1999.

Sir Tom owned a majority stake in Hibernian FC for 28 years, selling his interest in the club in 2019.

Sir Tom was born in Leith in 1940 and first opened a tyre business in 1964.

He started Kwik Fit in 1971, eventually operating in more than 2,000 locations in 18 countries.

He was knighted in 1997 for his services to the automotive industry and was made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in 2009 for his charitable work.

A statement from his family said: “Sir Tom’s long and extensive career touched many aspects of Scottish and UK life.

“His business career is well documented, as was his commitment to philanthropy, his many public roles and his unwavering support and appreciation for the communities and people that he lived his life within.”

Sir Tom’s philanthropic work saw him awarded the Carnegie Medal and he became a Knight Commander with Star of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, an honour bestowed by the Pope, in 1997.

“Sir Tom’s Roman Catholic faith was present throughout all areas of his life. He attended mass weekly in Edinburgh and enjoyed the friendship and company of many people with the Catholic community both here in Scotland and further afield,” his family said.

“Sir Tom will be remembered by many for his deep commitment to his family, his work and his faith and for being at all times a proud Scotsman,” they added.

A statement from Hibernian on the social media platform X said:

“Hibernian FC are devastated to hear of the passing of former owner Sir Tom Farmer, aged 84.

“Thank you for everything, Tom. Rest in peace.”

First Minister John Swinney wrote: “Very sorry to hear of the death of Sir Tom Farmer, an outstanding entrepreneur and such a generous individual to so many causes in Scotland.

“My respect condolences to his family.”

The former Sky News presenter, 67, said he wouldn’t name names but it was clear which famous newsmen he was referring to – while he didn’t spare John Sergeant for his dodgy dance moves either

Dermot Murnaghan has launched an acerbic attack on his former newsreader colleagues who have taken money for appearing in adverts he says are ripping off customers.

The veteran broadcaster, who left Sky News in 2023 after 15 years at the helm, refused to name names when he slammed “former news people” who are flogging overpriced gold sovereigns. But he was clearly referring to former fellow colleagues Michael Buerk and Nicholas Owen, who have both appeared in commercials selling gold coins for Hattons of London.

Speaking to the Mirror, Dermot, 67, said: “When you’re a live newsreader you’re banned by Ofcom from advertising anything, because you have a degree of credibility. But once you stop, you can, and some of my former colleagues do. Some of the things they advertise, well, I’m going to leave it there, I wouldn’t”.

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But went on: “I may be cutting off a lucrative revenue stream for myself, but gold sovereigns at four times the price that they actually do cost, yeah, I wouldn’t do that.

“Let me say to anyone who sees this, you can get gold sovereigns, if you want them – I don’t have any, but just look up the price – cheaper than those being pumped towards you by some former news people.”

Hattons of London, a website which sells commemorative gold coins and sovereigns, proudly claims Michael Buerk is their “most recurring presenter” who has helped them sell products since 2020, including the 2020 VE Day 75th Anniversary Gold Sovereign Range and the 2022 Queen Elizabeth II Tribute Gold One Eighth Sovereign.

Buerk, whose reporting of the Ethiopian famine in in 1984 inspired Band Aid, was anchor of the BBC News at Ten until his retirement in 2024.

Nicholas Owen, who worked for ITV Evening News and BBC news role before retiring in 2019 after a career spanning over 50 years, has also worked for Hattons, advertising their St George and the Dragon Bi-Metallic Gold Sovereign Range in 2022.

Since his own retirement, Dermot has carved a different career path as the presenter of several popular true crime series on Crime+Investigation. He’s back on screens next week with the fifth run of Killer Britain with Dermot Murnaghan, which delves into some of Britain’s most chilling murder cases.

But the veteran newsman admitted it’s still “incredibly frustrating” to just be a normal TV viewer and not in the interviewer’s seat. I’m throwing soft shoes at the television screen and knocking the radio over when I hear it, because that’s my obsession, I can’t give it up.

“If I hear another politician say ‘nothing’s off the table’ or ‘we’re doing this for the national interest”, I’m just screaming, ‘Of course you are, but what are you doing?! What the heckity-heck does that mean?’”

And he didn’t spare another fellow newsreader, John Sergeant, famous after his retirement for his cringy dance moves on Strictly – something else Dermot said he won’t do.

Dermot revealed he once had secret tests for the BBC show. He said: “I had some meetings with the producers and I did one of the secret squirrel test dances, where you get to dance with one of the wonderful dancers in a blacked out rehearsal room in central London, four or five months before the production

“I did mine and I turned to the producers sitting at the edge of the floor and said to them, ‘You can see I have no rhythm, I can’t hold the tune, and I certainly can’t dance. And they chucked and went, ‘Exactly.’ They obviously want someone just like that.”

But he said he couldn’t bring himself to embarrass himself on live TV. He said: “I don’t think I could do it. Every season has an old guy, you know. Although no-one goes as far as John Sergeant. Who could ever forget that? Dragging his poor dancer around the room like a coat at a party.”

• The new series of Killer Britain, presented by Dermot Murnaghan starts Monday 12th May on the Crime + Investigation channel

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SALINAS, Calif. — Every year, farmers in this fertile valley dubbed the “salad bowl of the world” rely on tens of thousands of workers to harvest leafy greens and juicy strawberries. But with local farmworkers aging — and the Trump administration’s determined crackdown on the illegal workers who have long been the backbone of California’s agricultural workforce — more growers have been looking to legal channels to import foreign workers.

Under the federal H-2A visa program, agricultural employers can hire workers from other countries on a temporary basis, so long as they show that they were unable to hire sufficient numbers of domestic workers. Employers are required to provide the guest workers with housing, food and transportation.

But in Monterey County, one of the more expensive regions in the nation, the obligation to provide an exploding number of guest workers with suitable housing was exacerbating a regional affordable housing crisis. Growers and labor contractors were buying up single-family homes and motels — often the residence of last resort for people on the verge of homelessness — making housing even more scarce for low-wage workers living in the region year-round.

Migrant workers, hired through Fresh Harvest, pick romaine lettuce in King City.

For some large farming companies in the county, the solution has been to privately fund the construction of new housing facilities for H-2A workers. Since 2015, local growers have invested their own capital and often their own land to build at least eight housing complexes for thousands of guest workers.

These are not akin to the crude barracks used to house the Mexican guest workers known as braceros decades ago, nor are they the broken-down trailers associated with abuses of the H-2A program. Rather, many of the new housing developments here are built along the lines of modern multi-family townhomes, outfitted with recreational areas and laundry facilities. County leaders, eager to support the agricultural industry and increase the overall housing supply, have thrown their support behind the effort, expediting the permitting processes for such developments.

Some community members are skeptical of this approach. Neighbors have raised concerns about the impacts of building large housing developments primarily for single men. Some advocates say it is a grave injustice that growers are building housing for foreign guest workers, while farmworkers who settled in the region years ago often persist in substandard and overcrowded buildings.

Israel Francisco, with sons Gael and Elias, is among the longtime farmworkers in Monterey County who crowd into homes with extended family and roommates because of the lack of affordable housing.

“The growers are building housing for H-2A workers, because they have the power, because they have the land, and because they have the money,” said Nidia Soto, an organizer with Building Healthy Communities Monterey County.

Domestic farmworkers — many of whom emigrated decades ago, started families and put down roots — don’t directly benefit from that development, she said: “Even though they are breaking their backs every day to bring food to the table, they are not worthy of housing.”

County Supervisor Luis Alejo agreed there is a dire need for more affordable housing for local farmworkers, but called the grower-funded H-2A housing developments a “win-win for the community.”

“When we’re providing housing for H-2A workers, it is not exacerbating the housing crisis elsewhere in our community,” he said.

A key issue in the discussion is that many of the longtime farmworkers who live in Monterey County are in the U.S. without authorization, as is true across California. At least half of the estimated 255,700 farmworkers in California are undocumented, according to UC Merced research.

With the Trump administration’s focus on upending America’s immigration system and deporting undocumented immigrants, California growers are scrambling to stabilize their labor supply through legal avenues such as the H-2A visa program.

For years, farmworker advocates have voiced concerns about the H-2A program, saying it is ripe for exploitation because a worker’s permission to be in the country is tied to the employer. And, as long as their labor supply was sufficient, many growers were reluctant to scale up the program, because it requires them to invest in federally compliant housing and, in many cases, to pay higher wages to meet a federal requirement of nearly $20 an hour.

But with the Trump administration vowing mass deportations — and a growing number of undocumented immigrants considering “self-deportation” — the sufficiency of the workforce is suddenly in question.

Steve Scaroni, right, founder of Fresh Harvest, speaks with foreman Javier Patron, as workers line up to wash their hands before going back to work harvesting lettuce in King City.

“If we get immigration enforcement, there’s going to be crops rotting in the field,” said Steve Scaroni, founder of Imperial County-based Fresh Harvest, one of the largest enterprises in the country for importing guest workers.

Could Monterey County offer a solution for the rest of the state?

In 2015, Tanimura & Antle, one of the region’s largest agricultural companies, recruited Avila Construction Co. to build housing for 800 H-2A workers in the community of Spreckels outside Salinas.

The grower wanted the project built within one year, which was “kind of unheard of,” because getting housing approved that quickly was nearly impossible, according to Mike Avila, the construction company owner. But Tanimura & Antle faced a dire situation: They couldn’t hire a stable domestic workforce, and risked having crops go unharvested if they didn’t invest in a plan to hire guest workers.

Some local residents opposed the proposed development, citing the dangers of having hundreds more men living in the area and raising concerns about road congestion. But the Board of Supervisors ultimately pushed the project forward.

“We’ve been very, very fortunate that these projects have been built and those fears don’t end up coming to fruition,” Avila said. He noted that employers are required to provide H-2A workers with transportation by bus or van, reducing the number of cars on the road.

After a day of work, migrant farmworkers return to a housing complex for H-2A guest workers in the city of Greenfield in Monterey County.

Tanimura & Antle’s complex pioneered a new model of guest worker housing in the region, and also gave the company an edge. Once Tanimura & Antle built the complex, it was able to recruit migrant farmworkers from other states, Avila said. It wasn’t until recently that the company began housing H-2A workers in the facility.

Avila, meanwhile, has become the go-to construction company for grower-funded employee housing. The company typically builds dormitory-style townhomes on land owned by growers. Today, the company averages a project a year.

Migrant workers relax in the community room at a converted H-2A housing site operated by Fresh Harvest in King City. The site features dormitory-style rooms that sleep up to 14 workers.

Fresh Harvest converted a tomato packaging plant in Monterey County into clean, livable housing for about 360 migrant farmworkers.

The number of H-2A visas certified for Monterey County has ballooned since that first grower-funded housing development went up.

The federal Labor Department certified more than 8,100 H-2A visas for the county in 2023, a nearly 60% increase from 2018, according to a report from the UC Davis Labor and Community Center of the Greater Capital Region. Compared with other California counties, Monterey had the highest number of visa certifications by several thousand.

Migrant workers, hired through Fresh Harvest, harvest and bag romaine lettuce in King City.

Some agricultural employers have had to get creative to meet the housing requirements.

Fresh Harvest houses anywhere between 5,000 and 6,000 guest workers across the U.S. But one of Scaroni’s favorite projects is in King City in a shuttered tomato packaging plant that sat empty until he asked officials about converting it into farmworker housing in 2016.

“The city thought we were crazy,” he recalled. “But there was something in me that said, ‘I think we can make it work.’”

Today, Fresh Harvest’s Meyer Farmworker Housing has space for about 360 workers. The company turned the so-called ripening rooms, where tomatoes once were stored, into dorm rooms that hold 14 workers each.

The dorm rooms are lined with lockers and bunk beds, which workers decorate with colorful blankets. The shared bathroom features a long row of stainless steel sinks and showers, and workers can relax in a community room lined with couches, laundry machines and a TV.

Company officials also tout their impact on King City’s downtown. Broadway Street had defunct storefronts when Fresh Harvest began leasing the property. Now, a La Plaza Bakery opens before sunrise and caters to workers headed to the fields, and restaurants line the streets.

Cristina Cruz Mendoza recently relocated her store, Cristina’s Clothing and More, to Broadway. She sells an array of clothing and gear worn by farmworkers, and says the workers who live nearby have made a big difference to her sales.

“We’re all co-workers, and we all respect each other,” Julio Cesar said of the guest workers taking part in the H-2A visa program through Fresh Harvest in King City.

Julio Cesar, who has worked with Fresh Harvest for six seasons, said he likes the Meyer facility because of its cleanliness and how cool it stays. He and the other workers who live there often head downtown after working in the broccoli fields.

“We’re all co-workers, and we all respect each other,” he said. “We sometimes go to the stores, do some shopping. Sometimes we go for a walk to relax.”

Even as Monterey County celebrates its successes in building model housing for H-2A guest workers, housing for the thousands of longtime farm laborers who are not part of the visa program continues to stagnate.

A 2018 report from the California Institute for Rural Studies found communities across the Salinas Valley in Monterey County and Pajaro Valley in neighboring Santa Cruz County needed more than 45,000 new units of housing to alleviate critical overcrowding in farmworker households. But building such developments without grower investment requires local governments to cobble together financing, which can be difficult for rural communities.

That’s left many farmworker families struggling to afford rent while earning minimum wage, $16.50 an hour. The situation is especially acute in Salinas, where the City Council recently voted to repeal a short-lived ordinance that capped annual rent increases on multi-family residences built before February 1995.

Amalia Francisco, a 32-year-old immigrant from southern Mexico, shares a three-bedroom house in Salinas with her three brothers and other roommates. It often takes at least three or four families to cover the monthly rent of $5,000, she said.

Francisco makes about $800 a week picking strawberries — that is, if she’s lucky to get a full 40 hours. Her last paycheck was just $200, she said. She feels like she never has enough money to cover her portion of the rent, along with food and other expenses.

Israel Francisco enters the Salinas home that he shares with his sister, Amalia, and other roommates to help cover the $5,000 monthly rent.

Farmworker Aquilino Vasquez pays $2,400 a month to live in a two-bedroom apartment with his wife, three daughters and father-in-law. They have lived there for a decade, but over the past two years Vasquez said he has grown frustrated with the way the property is managed.

When black mold appeared on the ceiling, he said, he was told he was responsible for cleaning it. He said he had to complain to the city to get smoke detectors installed, and that rats have chewed through walls in the bathroom and kitchen.

Vasquez, an immigrant from Oaxaca, said it is unjust that his family’s well-being is at risk, while guest workers are being provided with quality housing.

“They’re building, they’re always building, but for the contract workers,” he said.

This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.

Before the Chargers put diamonds in any Super Bowl rings, Jim Harbaugh is looking for diamonds on the practice field.

“Rare gems, they don’t just hop out of the ground and into your pocket,” the Chargers coach said as the team began rookie minicamp Friday. “You gotta dig.”

The Chargers are searching for their hidden gems through a unique rookie minicamp. Harbaugh is doing away with most 11-on-11 periods during the three-day tryout period. He will instead rely primarily on individual drills to evaluate which rookies would be best suited for a team hoping to end a six-year playoff win drought. The coaching staff will teach two drills that directly apply to the Chargers’ scheme on offense or defense and special teams and three drills by position, then evaluate each prospect compared to his counterparts.

The system, which Harbaugh admitted he has never tried before, is intended to provide a fair way for rookies to compete while also letting the staff see each player’s pure talent.

It’s the coach’s way of “mining for gold,” he said.

“Picture a 90-minute meeting to go over offense and defense, and then go out on the field. Then we’re judging who learned the system better,” Harbaugh said. “But we’re not seeing the capabilities, what they have talent wise.”

The Chargers already know what they have with their nine draft picks, including seven who signed rookie contracts Friday. Even before officially signing their deals, first-round pick Omarion Hampton and second-rounder Tre’ Harris still participated in Friday’s three-hour session. The three-day work weekend is primarily a show for the team’s 18 undrafted free agents and 23 tryout players.

Harbaugh said he would keep a close eye on undrafted free agent running back Raheim Sanders, whose 4.46-second 40-yard dash at the NFL scouting combine equaled Hampton’s despite the 230-pound Sanders being 10 pounds heavier. Kansas receiver Luke Grimm and tight end Stevo Klotz also stood out to Harbaugh on tape.

While unheralded players fight for opportunities, even the drafted players realize the importance of making a good first impression.

“A lot of the D-line guys, we were competing against each other,” said defensive lineman Jamaree Caldwell, the Chargers’ third-round draft pick. “Not everybody gets a job at the end of the day. Nobody has secured a job, even me. That’s how I look at it.”

Caldwell, a 6-foot-1, 340-pound defensive tackle out of Oregon, worked individually with defensive line coach Mike Elston and assistant defensive line coach Will Tukuafu while the majority of the rookies were working on special teams drills. Nearby, outside linebacker Kyle Kennard honed his pass-rushing technique with defensive assistant Dylan Roney.

The transition to the NFL has already delivered several surreal moments for Kennard. The Southeastern Conference defensive player of the year heard his name called as a fourth-round pick, then soon got a text from Chargers star edge rusher Khalil Mack.

Mack, who Kennard praised as “one of the greatest to do it,” congratulated the 125th pick on his selection but advised Kennard to not celebrate for too long. The rookie listened.

“Khalil Mack told me not to celebrate, I’m going to stay in the house and go to sleep,” said Kennard, who met Mack briefly in the locker room Friday and shared a welcoming embrace.

The rookies who pass the three-day minicamp will join veterans during next week’s organized team activities. During the first portion of the voluntary workouts, the Chargers experimented on the offensive line with Zion Johnson at center. Harbaugh said the team has alternated between last year’s configuration that had Johnson at left guard next to center Bradley Bozeman and reversing the two offensive linemen to put Johnson at center for the first time in his NFL career. Bozeman hasn’t played guard in an NFL game since 2020.

Despite Johnson’s inexperience at the position, his technique is impeccable, Harbaugh gushed. The snaps are popping off his hand, and the 25-year-old is one of the team’s most athletic and intelligent offensive linemen.

The change comes at a critical time during Johnson’s career. The Chargers didn’t pick up the 2021 first-round pick’s fifth-year option, leaving him to potentially prove himself at a brand new position.

“He’s going to be starting at one of those two positions,” Harbaugh said. “It just adds versatility. … We’ll get our best five eventually, but I know he’s going to be one of them.”

When on March 2, we heard all crossings into Gaza were closed, we thought it would not last more than two weeks. We really wanted a normal Ramadan where we could invite our surviving relatives for iftar and not worry about what food we could find to break our fast.

But it did not turn out this way. We spent the holy month breaking our fast with canned food.

My family, like most families in Gaza, had not stocked up on food or essentials, as no one expected the crossings to close again, or the famine – or even the war – to return.

In the days after the closure, food and other basic goods disappeared from the markets, and prices skyrocketed. A kilogramme of any vegetable jumped to $8 or more, sugar $22 and baby formula $11. A sack of flour previously costing $8, went up to $50; within two months, it reached $300.

Most people in Gaza could not afford these prices. As a result, families, including my own, began reducing the number of meals they eat, limiting themselves to just breakfast and dinner, and shrinking each person’s portion – half a loaf of bread for breakfast a whole one for dinner. Men, women, elderly people and children would stand in front of bakeries and charity kitchens for hours, in shame and sorrow, just to get a few loaves of bread or a small plate of food. For some families, this would be their only food for the day.

All the residents of central Gaza, where I live, relied on only three bakeries: two in Nuseirat and one in Deir el-Balah.

The crowds at these bakeries were overwhelming, blocking roads and halting movement in the area. Every day, there were cases of fainting and suffocation due to the pushing and shoving. In the end, only a small number of those who waited since morning would get bread.

My father would go to the bakery before sunrise to line up, instead of using what’s left of our flour, because we did not know how long this situation would last. But he would find the line already long, dozens having slept outside the bakery. He would stay until noon, then send my brother to take his place in the line. In the end, they would return with nothing.

On March 31, the World Food Programme announced the closure of all of its bakeries, including the three we could access, due to the depletion of flour and the lack of gas needed to run the ovens. This marked the start of true famine.

Soon, charity kitchens started closing as well because they ran out of food stock. Dozens of them shuttered in the past week alone. People grew even more desperate, many taking to local groups on Facebook or Telegram to beg for anyone to sell them a bag of flour at a reasonable price.

We live in a “lucky” neighbourhood where the kitchen still functions.

My niece Dana, who is eight years old, lines up in front of it every day with her friends, waiting for her turn as if it were a game. If she receives a single scoop of food, she comes back running, feeling very proud of herself. And if her turn doesn’t come before the food runs out, she returns in tears, complaining about how unfair this world is.

One day during Ramadan, a boy, displaced with his family to the al-Mufti School near our home, was so desperately trying to get food that he fell into the pot of hot food the charity kitchen was cooking. He suffered severe burns and later died from them.

The signs of famine began becoming apparent everywhere about a month and a half after the closure of the crossings. We see them in every aspect of our lives – sleeping on an empty stomach, rapid weight loss within, pale faces, weak bodies. Climbing stairs now takes us twice the effort.

It has become easier to get sick and more difficult to recover. My nephews, 18-month-old Musab and two-year-old Mohammed, developed high fever and flu-like symptoms during Ramadan. It took them a whole month to get better because of the lack of food and medicine.

My mother has been suffering from severe vision loss due to complications after eye surgery she had in late February. The malnutrition and the lack of eye drops she needed to recover have made her condition much worse.

I myself have been unwell. I donated blood to al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat just days before the border was closed and this seriously affected my physical health. Now, I suffer from extreme weakness in my body, weight loss and difficulty focusing. When I went to the doctor, he told me to stop eating canned food and to eat more fruit and meat. He knew that what he was saying was impossible to do, but what else could he say?

Perhaps the most difficult part about this situation is having to explain famine to little children. My nieces and nephews cannot stop asking for things to eat that we simply cannot provide. We struggle to convince them that we are not punishing them by hiding food, but that we simply do not have it.

Five-year-old Khaled keeps asking for meat every day while looking at food pictures on his mother’s phone. He stares at the images and asks whether his martyred father gets to eat all this in heaven. Then he asks when his own turn will come, to join his father and eat with him.

We struggle to answer. We tell him to be patient and that his patience will be rewarded.

I feel helpless seeing daily scenes of famine and desperation. I ask myself, how can the world stay silent while seeing children’s bodies go thin and fragile and the sick and injured die slowly?

The occupation uses every method to kill us – by bombing, starvation, or disease. We have been reduced to begging for a piece of bread. The entire world watches and pretends that it cannot even give us that.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

On May 2, the New Taiwan Dollar (NTD) surged 3.3% against the U.S. dollar, marking the largest single-day gain in 23 years. As an export-driven economy, with exports accounting for 70% of GDP, this sharp currency appreciation is devastating to Taiwan’s economy.

Since April 2, when Trump proposed “reciprocal tariffs” on trading partners, Asian currencies, except China’s, have appreciated throughout April, particularly those of U.S. allies. The NTD rose 3.64%, the Japanese yen 4.44%, the South Korean won 3.6%, and other Asian currencies gained between 1.76% and 2.97%.

Including the first two days of May, the NTD’s appreciation reached 6.49%, far outpacing other Asian currencies. Why?

On May 2, Taiwanese market observers and exporters were puzzled by the rare single-day surge until May 3, when Taiwan’s trade negotiation team confirmed that the first round of talks with the U.S. began on May 1. This revealed the cause: U.S. pressure triggered the NTD’s surge.

Facing public skepticism, Taiwanese authorities denied any link between the currency surge and U.S.-Taiwan trade talks, attributing it to local market expectations of NTD appreciation and a rush of foreign investment into Taiwan’s stock market.

However, the authorities couldn’t explain why the NTD’s appreciation far exceeded that of other Asian currencies. Japan, for instance, held two rounds of trade talks with the U.S. and Japanese stocks continued to rise, but the yen depreciated in early May.

Perhaps the Taiwan authorities have not lied, but have only revealed part of the truth. Even so, the psychology of the local exchange market’s expectation of the appreciation of the Taiwan dollar fully reflects the pessimistic expectation of the Taiwan-US trade talks. Unlike Beijing’s hardline stance toward Washington, Taipei is eager to “pay tribute”.  Despite officials’ assurances of not yielding excessively to the U.S., the market’s reaction is the most honest.

Within a month, the NTD’s 6.49% rise is a trend the U.S. welcomes, as it narrows the U.S. trade deficit with Taiwan and pushes Taiwanese tech firms to set up factories in the U.S.

Currency appreciation shrinks exporters’ profits, drives industrial relocation, and directs firms to their main clients’ locations. High-margin tech firms have no choice but to establish U.S. factories to avoid tariffs and currency pressures. Low-margin traditional industries, like machinery and petrochemicals, rely on government subsidies to survive.

Of course, Taiwan’s traditional industries have another big market to choose from, namely the Chinese market. In other words, China has also benefited from the inward investment brought about by the U.S. tariff war.

Over the past four years, the trend is clear: Taiwanese tech firms serving U.S. clients have increasingly set up U.S. factories, but only larger firms—around a few hundred—have done so. Mid-sized tech firms, influenced by TSMC, may also invest in the U.S. during Trump’s current term, but their numbers won’t exceed 1,000 due to high U.S. production costs.

In comparison, there are tens of thousands of Taiwanese companies doing business in China, totaling 120,000 if we include companies that used to do business in China but withdrew due to various factors.

In recent years, due to the U.S.-China trade war, rising wages, and the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwanese capital has noticeably withdrawn from China. Nevertheless, cross-strait trade (including Hong Kong) accounts for about 35% of Taiwan’s exports, making China the most critical market for Taiwanese businesses. Taiwanese companies that will set up factories in the U.S. are all large corporations with major customers in the U.S. and a sizable capitalization.

Thus, the NTD’s sharp appreciation severely impacts Taiwanese exporters targeting the Chinese market, particularly the electronic components sector, which accounts for over half of Taiwan’s exports to China. Mentioned in the previous article, TSMC’s overseas factories only achieve significant profits in China, and Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain maintains robust exports to China.

It is important to note that Taiwan is one of the very few economies in the world that maintains a trade surplus with China, mainly because Beijing looks the other way and doesn’t care if bilateral trade is reciprocal. Taiwan bans 2,509 Chinese import items, far exceeding China’s restrictions on Taiwanese goods.

In other words, excessive NTD appreciation not only accelerates Taiwanese capital’s shift to the U.S. but also to China and Southeast Asian economies, making it a catastrophic event for Taiwan’s economy.

With TSMC being asked by Trump to invest an additional $100 billion in the U.S., speculation that Taipei might be overly conciliatory to Washington is a common concern of the market and the public. Taiwan’s leading business media even speculated that Trump’s target is an NTD-to-USD exchange rate of 1:13.3 (currently 1:31).

The 1:13.3 rate is derived from the implied exchange rate of The Economist’s purchasing power parity index, the “Big Mac Index”. Given the index’s limitations, this speculative rate reflects Taiwan’s perception of U.S. dominance and Trump’s “big appetite.”

Forecasts based on exaggerated exchange rate calculations mean that there is very little confidence in the government’s ability to defend Taiwan’s interests, and few believe that the current administration can resist U.S. pressure. The NTD’s 3.3% single-day surge indirectly validates these concerns.

Thus, the NTD’s surge reflects the likely outcome of Taiwan-U.S. trade talks: sacrificing economic interests is inevitable, and the scale will be unprecedented. After all, Taiwan is already considered “guilty” and now everyone is just waiting for the US to announce the “sentence”.

The NTD’s appreciation isn’t the end but the beginning. Taipei will not resist and will likely concede more to the U.S. than any other economy worldwide.

MOHAMED SALAH has admitted that there was “tension” between himself and Sadio Mane at Liverpool.

Salah and Mane struck up a fearsome partnership for The Reds between 2017 and 2022, winning the Champions League, Premier League, FA Cup and League Cup with the club.

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The pair played together 223 times, combining for 35 goals as they enjoyed plenty of individual success under former Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp.

But despite their reputation and impressive record, there has always been speculation about a fractured relationship between the two wingers.

And Salah, 32, has now admitted that there was tension between them both, but claimed that things were always approached professionally.

In an interview with L’Equipe, Salah revealed: “Yes, there was tension with Sadio.

“Mind you, we were professional until the end, I don’t think it affected the team. It’s human to want more, I understand that, he’s a competitor.

“Off the pitch, we weren’t very close, but we always respected each other.”

Salah was also quizzed about claims that Mane felt he was “selfish” that emerged in a book published last year, but the Egyptian star was quick to play down the rumours.

He added: “I don’t care. People can think what they want, it’s their right.

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“But I invite everyone to note that the person who provided Mane with the most assists is me.

“We can look at the facts, but it’s obviously easier to throw out phrases like that; it makes the headlines, I know how it works.

“As long as it remains within the limits of respect, that’s fine with me.

“But that doesn’t mean that this opinion is true. At the end of the day, I know what I did, and my conscience is clear.”

Salah and Mane did have one very public disagreement when they broke into an argument on the pitch during a 3-0 win over Burnley in 2019.

At the time, Mane told Canal Plus: “He said to me ‘Sadio, why are you angry?’

“I told him ‘You needed to give me the ball, Mo’, to which he replied ‘I didn’t see you. You know I’ve got nothing against you’.

“I know that, but his reaction was a bit strange to me.”

Mane would ultimately leave Liverpool in 2022, swapping Anfield for the Allianz in a switch to German giants Bayern Munich.

But that move didn’t work out, with a poor first season for the Bavarians meaning Mane was moved on to Saudi Arabian side Al-Nassr the following summer – where he still plays today.

While Salah has remained on Merseyside, earning himself a new two-year deal with Liverpool after putting up an astonishing 46 goal contributions in 35 Premier League games this season.

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Waskom, Texas, is an old railroad town of about 2,000 nestled at the midway point between Dallas and Shreveport, La. According to the city’s website, Waskom became a significant player in America’s east-to-west trade during the 1880s because J.M. Waskom, a director of the Southern Pacific Railroad, “led the way in bringing the railroad to East Texas.” That’s largely how Waskom got the nickname “Gateway to Texas.”

In 2019 Waskom adopted a new nickname, “sanctuary city for the unborn,” after an all-male city council voted to make Waskom the first municipality in America to ban abortion since the Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973. Versions of Waskom’s “sanctuary city for the unborn” ordinance quickly spread to more than 70 municipalities in a handful of states as the Supreme Court was preparing to hear arguments on the case that would eventually lead to Roe’s overturning.

The railway was planned. The legal assault on reproductive care was planned. Both turned out to be part of tectonic shifts in society. So, while everything is bigger in Texas, don’t overlook the smaller things happening in the Lone Star State. Recent history suggests it’s the small things that are going to have the biggest impact.

Last month a driverless truck developed by an autonomous vehicle company out of Pittsburgh made its first delivery run — frozen pastries between Houston and Dallas. Round trip that’s about a hair under 500 miles or roughly an eight-hour workday for a truck driver. The company plans to expand freight operations to El Paso and Phoenix in time for the holidays. There are similar companies based in Texas planning to unveil driverless freight options to include San Antonio.

The future is now.

And just as one anti-abortion ordinance out of one small town in Texas became a much larger movement nationwide, one driverless truck dropping off frozen baked goods in Dallas is a sign of something far more significant for the rest of the country.

The administration’s tariff policies have reportedly ushered in a decline in port traffic, endangering trucking and dock jobs in the process. One recent study found a decline of 1% in cargo traffic in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach could threaten as many as 4,000 jobs. However, what’s going to eliminate those positions entirely is the kind of automation that quietly hit the Texas roads in late April.

Keep an eye on the small things. Without long-term planning about the consequences — or in these cases, even short-term planning — the effects can be catastrophic.

I wonder if the administration is discussing what new skills displaced workers in the logistics industry will need to be employable going forward. Or will local officials be forced to wing it as we did in the immediate aftermath of Roe being overturned? Remember some states started reaching back to ordinances from the 1800s to ban reproductive care without even passing new legislation.

Without designs and public funding to retrain America’s workers, the negative effects of tariffs and automation on employment are likely to quickly overtake the societal benefits (if there are any). It would be a small thing to make skills training a priority in certain communities at this moment in history, but the effects could be significant — preventing a disaster.

There’s danger in overlooking those opportunities. We saw one outcome in a recent election 250 miles south of Waskom, in the Houston suburb of Katy, one of the state’s fastest-growing cities. In the Katy Independent School District, leaders have their hands full just trying to keep up with growth and serve the rising number of students, projected to hit 100,000 by 2028.

However, during the recent campaign, the incumbent board president was focused on banning transgender athletes and other conservative talking points. His opponent, an educator and school administrator for three decades, focused on what teachers need in order to provide for the growing population. Wouldn’t you know it, the candidate who actually wanted to fix long-term problems in the district won. In fact, a number of pro-education candidates in Texas won seats in last week’s election on school boards previously held by folks responsible for banning books and the like.

It’s noteworthy that voters in conservative pockets of the state want leaders who are more focused on solutions than they are on slogans. I know it’s not significant nationally, but given the history of small things in Texas growing, this trend gives me hope.

@LZGranderson

DANNY Jones today looked like he was back on form and having the time of his life, as he returned to work.

The McFly star, 39, has been laying low following his “drunken kiss” with Maura Higgins, 34, at the Brit Awards.

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But Danny has now landed a new TV gig and is set to appear on the new series of ITV‘s You Bet!.

The 90s show made a comeback last year with Stephen Mulhern and Holly Willoughby.

The show involves everyday people being challenged to face their fears.

Although Holly will not be hosting the new series, Stephen will be back to present season two and he’s enlisted his celebrity friends to help him – and one of them is Danny.

The singer shared a video of himself with Greg Rutherford and Oti Mabuse who are also doing the show.

The trio were at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and were watching brave people take on one of the biggest rides.

During the short clip posted on his Instagram stories, Danny seemed happy to be back filming again, following a tough start to the year.

THE KISS FALL OUT

Danny and his wife Georgia are now trying to move on with their lives following the fall out.

Everything kicked off at the beginning of the month when Danny was caught on camera sharing a kiss with his I’m A Celeb co-star Maura.

They were spotted having a brief smooch at a Brit Awards after party at the beginning of the month.

Danny issued a public apology to Georgia and his family, saying: “I love them so much.”

In an Instagram Stories post, he wrote: “Sorry it’s taken me a while to post this but I’ve taken some time out to be with those closest to me.

“I want to deeply apologise to my wife and family for putting them in this situation.

“I love them so much and we’ll continue to deal with this privately.”

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May 9 (UPI) — Russian President Vladimir Putin led celebrations marking 80th anniversary of the end of World War II with a parade Friday in Moscow’s Red Square of more than 11,000 troops, war-era T-34 tanks, light and heavy armored vehicles and advanced military hardware.

Putin was flanked by Chinese President Xi Jinping and 26 other world leaders who flew in specially to witness the proceedings, which featured a People’s Liberation Army unit and 12 other contingents from former Soviet republics, non-aligned countries and communist Vietnam and Laos.

However, the state-run TASS news agency stressed that veterans from the United States and Israel who fought in World War II would also be taking part.

The events started with the Preobrazhensky Regiment Honor Guard carrying the Russian national flag and the Victory Banner hoisted over the Reichstag in Berlin by soldiers of the 150th Idritskaya Rifle Division in May 1945.

Around 1,500 troops serving in Russia’s war in Ukraine were among the forces on parade.

In his address, Putin tried to link the tragedy that befell Russia and the 80% of the world drawn into what he called the “fiery orbit of World War II,” to the war on Ukraine saying Russia had, and would always be, an “indestructible obstacle to Nazism, Russophobia and anti-Semitism” sworn to stop violence “perpetrated by the champions of these aggressive and destructive ideas.”

“Truth and justice are on our side. The whole of Russia, our society and all people support the participants in the special military operation,” he said.

A three-day truce announced by Putin last month for the celebrations that was supposed to go into force Thursday appeared to have fallen by the wayside with Ukraine’s General Staff reporting Friday morning its forces had come under Russian attack almost 200 times in the past 24 hours on 10 of 13 fronts, as well as in Russia’s Kursk region.

In a post on social media, the General Staff claimed Ukrainian forces repelled all the attacks, but acknowledged fighting had been particularly fierce on the Kharkiv front where Russian forces mounted four assaults near Vovchansk close to the border.

“In total, Russian forces lost 1,300 people. Also Ukrainian soldiers damaged four tanks, four combat armored vehicles, 36 artillery systems, 39 Kh-BPLA drone-launched missiles and 120 other vehicles,” said the General Staff.

Civilian targets were also attacked in several front-line regions, injuring three people.

Zaporizhzhia Gov. Ivan Federov said in an update on his Telegram account Friday that a 45-year-old man has been injured in a drone attack on the village of Bilenke on the right bank of the Dnieper River.

The Kherson province Military Administration said on social media that a 60-year-old resident of Kherson was in the hospital in serious condition after sustaining blast injuries and shrapnel wounds to his legs from a drone strike early Friday.

An 83-year-old man was injured in the Nikopol area of Dnipropetrovsk but would be treated as an outpatient, the province’s governor, Serhii Lysak, wrote in a post on Telegram.

Ukrainian Air Force Command told the Pravda Ukrainska news agency Friday that border areas of the eastern Sumy province had been targeted with more 150 guided aerial bombs since the cease-fire came into effect and that attacks by Russian Su-34 warplanes, escorted by Su-35 fighter jets, were ongoing.

Iraq replaces Jesus Casas as head coach with former Australia boss Graham Arnold ahead of crunch World Cup qualifiers.

Former Australia manager Graham Arnold has been confirmed as the new head coach of Iraq by the country’s football federation ahead of next month’s World Cup qualifiers against South Korea and Jordan.

Arnold’s appointment was announced on social media by the Iraq Football Association, which published photographs of the 61-year-old being welcomed in Baghdad by officials from the national body.

“We are delighted to announce Graham Arnold as the new head coach of the Iraq national team,” the federation said in a post on Instagram. “Welcome to the Lions of Mesopotamia!”

Arnold replaces Jesus Casas at the helm after the Spaniard’s departure in the wake of a 2-1 loss to Palestine in March during the third round of Asia’s qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup.

That result left the Iraqis in third place in the standings in Group B, four points adrift of leaders South Korea and one behind the Jordanians.

Welcome to Baghdad ✔️

Our new Australian head coach Graham Arnold has arrived in the Iraqi capital! 🛬 pic.twitter.com/AH1IybroHv

— Iraq National Team (@IraqNT_EN) May 9, 2025

The top two finishers in each of Asia’s three qualifying groups advance automatically to the World Cup, while the teams in third and fourth place progress to another round of preliminaries.

Arnold’s first game in charge will be in Basra on June 5 against the South Koreans before he takes his new team to Amman to face Jordan five days later. Iraq are attempting to qualify for the World Cup for the first time since 1986.

The appointment sees Arnold return to international management more than seven months after standing down as Australia’s head coach.

Arnold, who led the Australians to the knockout rounds of the 2022 World Cup during a six-year spell in charge, quit after an uninspired start to the current phase of qualifying when his side lost to Bahrain and drew with Indonesia in September.

He was replaced by Tony Popovic, the former Western Sydney Wanderers coach who has taken the Socceroos to second place in Group C of Asia’s qualifiers ahead of games against already qualified Japan and Saudi Arabia in June.

Osvaldo Golijov’s beauteously strange “Ainadamar” has reached Los Angeles. The opera, one of this century’s most gratifying, portrays the 1936 political execution of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca during the Spanish Civil War through the final minutes of actress Margarita Xirgu’s life. She dies as she is about to go onstage in the Lorca play “Mariana Pineda,” about the heroine of an earlier Spanish revolution.

Margarita’s final minute on Earth lasts 90 flamenco-filled minutes in Golijov’s one-act opera. Lorca’s life — his spirit and loves and lust — is revealed in flashbacks, which L.A. Opera makes the most of in a flamboyant, dance-drenched production. But it is Margarita’s pain we feel, her death we experience and her life we mourn.

Lorca’s death, then, becomes a borrowed experience. He is a spirit of history. Margarita’s last act is to pass on that spirit to a young actress, Nuria, and in the process, to us. The saddest of operas, “Ainadamar” is not a tragic opera, not an opera of open-and-shut endings, but one of open-ended endings.

Life goes on. But what comes next?

A movie-length production without intermission can feel about right for a modern audience. “Ainadamar” satisfies on its own but nevertheless suggests there is something more to consider. The sheer force of Margarita’s being asks to remain in our consciousness longer.

She did remain a little longer. Following the Sunday matinee of “Ainadamar” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Los Angeles Master Chorale gave the U.S. premiere of Rufus Wainwright’s new “Dream Requiem,” which proved an ideal companion to “Ainadamar.”

Although Golijov is an introspective Argentine American composer who comes out of the classical music world, his works are infused with folk song and dance from Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Wainwright is an introspective pop star with a noted folk song pedigree who also is an opera enthusiast and composer. At the pre-concert talk Sunday, Wainwright said hearing Verdi’s Requiem as a 13-year-old changed his life.

“Ainadamar” and the 80-minute “Dream Requiem” have poets at their core. Just as Lorca embodies Lorca, Wainwright threads recitations of Lord Byron’s 1816 “Darkness,” throughout a score otherwise based on the traditional Latin requiem text.

Each work is its own fountain of tears. Ainadamar is, in fact, the Arabic term for the Fountain of Tears, the site in Granada where Lorca was shot by a firing squad, presumably for political reasons as well as for being gay. In “Dream Requiem,” we cry over the environment. Byron wrote “Darkness” as a response to the 1815 Mt. Tambora volcano eruption in Indonesia, which clouded sunlight around the world for more than a year.

The so-called 1816 “year without a summer” was also a time of revolt in Spain. Fifteen years later, the Spanish liberalist Mariana Pineda was executed. The three parts of “Ainadamar” begin with the chorus singing a ballad to her.

The magnificent performance of “Dream Requiem” — conducted by Grant Gershon and featuring, along with the Master Chorale, the impressive Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, an excellent large orchestra, the spectacular soprano Liv Redpath and a vehement Jane Fonda as the gripping narrator — proved a necessary complement to a more problematic performance of “Ainadamar.”

The opera has deep L.A. roots. A Los Angeles Philharmonic co-commission, the theatrically tentative first version of “Ainadamar” survived on its instances of musical brilliance. Under the supervision of Peter Sellars, Golijov and librettist David Henry Hwang completely rewrote “Ainadamar” for Santa Fe Opera in a sublimely moving production with gloriously grafitti-fied sets by L.A. artist Gronk.

A musically promising but uncertain opera instantly turned into an essential classic for a new century. Long Beach Opera’s tenuous local premiere of that version was followed by a powerful concert performance at the Ojai Music Festival with the Atlanta Symphony conducted by Robert Spano and starring Dawn Upshaw, the forces who made the work’s celebrated recording.

The L.A. Opera revival is a new production that has been making the rounds at Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera, Detroit Opera and, last fall, New York’s Metropolitan Opera. It’s the work of Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker, best known for creating the Cirque du Soleil touring show “Ovo.”

Colker treats “Ainadamar” as another drama spectacle with dazzling imagery. The flamenco dancing, choreographed by Antonio Najarro, is exciting and the dancing terrific. Resplendent video projections by Tal Rosner appear on beaded curtains that surround a circular space in the middle of the stage where most of the action takes place.

Ana Maria Martinez as Margarita Xirgu, left, and Daniela Mack as Federico Garcia Lorca in “Ainadamar.”

(Cory Weaver / LA Opera)

But all of this avoids the challenges of a magical realism where questions about the purpose of poetry, theater, political resistance, life and legacy are answerable only by dying. Golijov’s score is also unanswerable, full of electronic effects, where the sound of gunshots beat out intricate dance rhythms.

The three main characters are played by women: Margarita (Ana María Martínez), Nuria (Vanessa Becerra) and Lorca (Daniela Mack). All prove believable and their trio at the end is exquisite, even if with amplification and the dramatic limitations of the production they have limited presence. Alfredo Tejada makes a startling company debut as a ferociously frightening Ramón Ruiz Alonso, who arrests Lorca. The company’s resident conductor, Lina González-Granados, thrives on forcefully emphasized dance rhythms.

Less prominent were the opera’s wondrous lyric moments or a sense of Golijov’s inventive, multifaceted musical sources. Where the company makes up for that, though, is in its series of informative podcasts and program notes adding whatever context is lost in the staging.

Like Golijov (and like Leonard Bernstein and Mahler), Wainwright is at heart a songwriter, and he had the advantage of Gershon conveying the luxuriant lyricism in “Dream Requiem,” a work that at its heart also is operatic. He harks back to Verdi and the late 19th century but with his own unexpected turns of phrase.

Like Golijov in “Ainadamar,” Wainwright starts very quietly and slow-builds his musical architecture out of an array of materials and colors. He goes in for big effects, lots of percussion, huge climaxes and sweet melodies of which you can never, if so inclined, get enough.

Wainwright bangs out the “Dies Irae” (Day of Wrath) as almost all composers do in requiem masses, but he can be restrained where others tend to be loud and enthusiastic (Sanctus) and visa versa. He shows no mercy for the solo soprano part, but Redpath astounded as she scaled the heights.

Jane Fonda recites Byron’s “Darkness” in Rufus Wainwright’s “Dream Requiem” at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Sunday.

(Jamie Pham / Los Angeles Master Chorale)

In the end, Wainwright has created a latter-day bardo, the spiritual journey that follows death. The interruptions from Byron’s poem brought chills in Fonda’s mesmerizing reading, as the text follows the breakdown of humanity in the aftermath of environmental catastrophe. She made it feel like a requiem warning for us all.

Once is not enough for “Dream Requiem.” A recording of the premiere in Paris last year has been released, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the live performance by the Master Chorale in Disney. “Dream Requiem” will be presented by several co-commissioners in Europe, as well as for the Royal Ballet in London.

Who will dare to dream big and be the first to stage “Dream Requiem” as a double bill with “Ainadamar”?

The search and rescue group has found the remains of three unidentified bodies so far, according to anonymous sources.

A Qatari mission has begun searching for the remains of United States hostages killed by the ISIL (ISIS) armed group in Syria about 10 years ago, according to the Reuters news agency, citing two sources briefed on the mission.

Qatar’s International Search and Rescue Group began the search on Wednesday, with the help of several US nationals who wished to remain anonymous, the news agency reported.

So far, three unidentified bodies have been found by the group, according to the sources. The mission’s focus was on locating the body of aid worker Peter Kassig, who was beheaded by ISIL in 2014 in Dabiq, northern Syria, a Syrian security source told Reuters.

US aid worker Kayla Mueller as well as US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were among other Western hostages killed by ISIL. Foley and Sotloff were confirmed killed in 2014. Mueller’s killing was confirmed in 2015.

“We’re grateful for anyone taking on this task and risking their lives in some circumstances to try and find the bodies of Jim and the other hostages,” said Diane Foley, James Foley’s mother. “We thank all those involved in this effort.”

The Qatari mission is getting under way as US President Donald Trump prepares to visit Doha and other Gulf Arab capitals next week and as Syria’s new government seeks relief from sanctions imposed by the US.

Washington, along with some other Western governments, has said it will wait to see how the new authorities exercise their power and ensure human rights before lifting any sanctions.

The United Kingdom last month removed its sanctions on 12 Syrian government entities, including the Ministries of Defence and Interior and the General Intelligence Directorate.

Longstanding commitment

ISIL once controlled vast swaths of Syria and Iraq, ruling over millions of people. At the peak of its power from 2014-2017, it beheaded numerous people in captivity, including Western hostages, and released videos of the killings.

A coalition of more than 80 countries, led by the US, was formed to fight ISIL in September 2014.

The war against the group officially ended in March 2019, when US-backed and Kurdish-led fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces captured the eastern Syrian town of Baghouz, the last sliver of land ISIL controlled.

Plans for the Qatari mission were discussed during a visit to Washington in April by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani and State Minister Mohammed Al Khulaifi – a trip also designed to prepare for Trump’s visit to Qatar, one of the sources told Reuters.

Another person familiar with the issue said there had been a longstanding commitment by successive US administrations to find the remains of the murdered US nationals, and that there had been multiple previous “efforts with US government officials on the ground in Syria to search very specific areas”.

The person did not elaborate, the report said. But the US has had hundreds of soldiers deployed in northeastern Syria that have continued pursuing ISIL’s remnants.

The person said the remains of Kassig, Sotloff and Foley were most likely located in this part of the country. Mueller’s case was different as she was in the custody of ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the person added.

Two ISIL members, both former UK citizens who were part of a cell dubbed the “Beatles” that beheaded US hostages, are serving life prison sentences in the US.

Three Democratic U.S. representatives for California visited the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on Friday to voice their concerns after President Trump told reporters that the slowdown of activity at the ports was “a good thing.”

Trump has argued that tariffs are needed to boost manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and that the slowdown in port activity “means we lose less money.”

But steep duties on imports from key trade partners have resulted in fewer cargo containers moving through the two ports, which are the busiest in the nation.

U.S. Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) tours the Port of LA post-tariffs as normally bustling berths sit empty behind him on May 9, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. “Unfortunately, Trump engaged in a trade war without understanding the repercussions of his actions,” Gomez said. “This is going to cost them a lot.”

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

With a 145% tariff on China, a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico, and 10% tariffs on dozens of other countries, the flow of goods into the U.S. is expected to slow drastically.

The drop off in activity means fewer jobs for longshoremen and truckers, and down the line, higher prices for consumers, the representatives said.

“Unfortunately, Trump engaged in a trade war without understanding the repercussions of his actions,” U.S. Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) told The Times. “This is going to cost them a lot.”

Gomez, who toured the port of Los Angeles via boat Friday, where towering cranes loaded cargo onto waiting ships, said in an interview that port workers and small business owners would be hit hardest by the tariffs.

The scene was less bustling than usual, port officials said. Seventeen ships have already canceled their planned trips to the Port of Los Angeles in May, port officials said, an occurrence known as a “blank sailing” that means less cargo being processed.

Cargo containers are stacked near the shore as normally bustling berths sit empty as Trump’s tariff’s are plunging volume as much as 35% as ships from China cancel their trips to the Port of Los Angeles on May 9, 2025 in Los Angeles.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka predicted in late April that activity at the ports would plunge by 35% over the next 14 days. The 17 confirmed blank sailings in May alone are equivalent to 225,000 fewer 20-foot equivalent units of cargo, or TEUs.

Roughly four TEUs represent one job at the port, according to Rep. Nanette Barragan (D-San Pedro). The ripple effects of the tariffs could result in significant job loss, she said, which could harm the communities of Long Beach and San Pedro, which she represents.

“It was really concerning to hear the president, when he was asked about the slowdown, say it was a good thing,” Barragan said. “It’s insulting to people at the ports and American families who are going to start to see prices going up.”

The Port of Los Angeles, which covers 7,500 acres on San Pedro Bay, processed more than 10 million TEUs in 2024. A 2023 report found that the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach contributed $21.8 billion in direct revenue to local service providers, generating $2.7 billion in state and local taxes and creating 165,462 jobs, directly and indirectly.

A decline of just 1% in cargo to the ports would wipe away 2,769 jobs and endanger as many as 4,000 others, the study found.

Normally bustling berths sit empty as Trump’s tariff’s are plunging volume as much as 35% as ships from China cancel their trips to the Port of Los Angeles on May 9, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

A spike of activity at the ports preceded the drop-off as importers front-loaded goods before the tariffs took effect. While large corporations such as Amazon and Walmart had this option, smaller businesses likely did not, Gomez said.

“The mom and pop stores, the medium size and small folks, they don’t have warehouses where they can just store stuff,” Gomez said. “I don’t want them to go through unnecessary pain.”

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) also visited the twin ports on Friday.

“The reality is that no communities are going to be impacted by these tariffs more than Long Beach, San Pedro and south Los Angeles,” Garcia said. “The dockworkers and warehouse workers, they are the fabric of the harbor.”

PHOENIX — One pitch. One swing. One pure, unmistakable sound.

On a night the roof was open, the air was hot and the Dodgers were engaged in a Chase Field classic against the Arizona Diamondbacks, that’s what the craziest game of their season came down to.

The crack of Shohei Ohtani’s bat — punctuating a riveting contest in early May with another indelible moment of on-demand magic.

“You guys have heard me say how many times?” teammate Max Muncy marveled. “Sho keeps getting put in these spots that you expect the incredible — and he rarely disappoints.”

Indeed, with two on and one out and the score tied in the ninth, Ohtani completed a wild six-run rally with a go-ahead three-run home run deep to right field.

It lifted the Dodgers to a 14-11 win, one that felt impossible after they squandered a five-run lead earlier in the game. It left Ohtani seemingly trying to lift off himself, stretching his arms and flapping his hands after chucking his bat and gliding up the first-base line.

Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani hits a three-run home run in the ninth inning against the Diamondbacks on Friday.

Up to that point, Friday’s intradivision shootout already featured everything else.

Wild lead changes and sudden momentum shifts. Line-drive rockets and towering home runs. Even the ejection of Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior, when a bad ball-strike call contributed to his team’s mid-game collapse.

Most of all, however, there was Ohtani — meeting yet another moment, rising once again to the occasion.

“For us to score a lot, for them to come back, for us to come back again,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton, “it was a game with a lot of passion.”

Added manager Dave Roberts: “He sees his teammates fighting and guys trying to keep us in the ballgame, so that was kind of the climax of that moment. It’s good to see him show emotion like that. It was great.”

Ohtani was having a big night before the ninth, doubling twice during an early offensive onslaught that gave the Dodgers (26-13) an 8-3 lead.

The Diamondbacks (20-19) responded, scoring eight unanswered runs over the next five innings to flip the score in their favor, 11-8.

Four batters into the ninth, however, the Dodgers had tilted the seesaw again.

Shohei Ohtani, right, celebrates after hitting a three-run home run in the ninth inning against Arizona on Friday.

(Darryl Webb / Associated Press)

A leadoff infield single from Freddie Freeman was followed by consecutive run-scoring doubles from Andy Pages and Kiké Hernández, trimming what was an 11-8 deficit to 11-10. Muncy knotted the score by knocking a single to right. Then, when Michael Conforto was hit with a pitch with one out, the Diamondbacks faced a decision.

Arizona could have pitched to Ohtani carefully, and risked a walk that would have loaded the bases but also set up a force out at every bag. Instead, they replaced closer Kevin Ginkel with sidearm right-hander Ryan Thompson, letting him attack the reigning National League MVP in hopes his funky delivery could keep Ohtani off balance.

He couldn’t. In a 1-and-2 count, Thompson threw a splitter that stayed up over the middle. Ohtani clobbered it 426 feet to the right-field bleachers. The sound off the bat alone left little doubt about where it would land.

“Between him and Barry Bonds, they’re the two best players I’ve ever seen,” Roberts said, when asked if Ohtani’s heroics ever cease to amaze. “I played with Barry. But what Shohei does in the clutch — I’ve never seen anything like what he does in the clutch.”

Shouting across the room in the Dodgers’ postgame clubhouse, backup catcher Austin Barnes summed it up even more succinctly.

“The monster,” he yelled, “comes through again!”

Even before first pitch, Friday had the makings of a high-scoring affair.

Eduardo Rodríguez, the veteran left-hander who two seasons ago blocked an agreed-upon deadline day trade from Detroit to the Dodgers, entered the night with a 5.92 ERA and was facing a right-handed-heavy Dodgers lineup, with slumping lefty sluggers Muncy and Conforto dropped to the bench.

Roki Sasaki, meanwhile, was pitching on five days of rest (as opposed to six) for the first time in his career. He was throwing in a dry Arizona climate that can often influence the execution of breaking pitches. And, as a result, there was added importance on a fastball that has disappointed so far this season, averaging well below the triple-digit readings he was hoping to rediscover.

Right from the jump, the Diamondbacks took advantage.

While Rodríguez gave up one run in the first inning after a leadoff double from Ohtani, Sasaki was ambushed for three. Ketel Marte hit a solo home run around the right-field foul pole. Eugenio Suárez belted a two-run blast.

The homers were the fifth and sixth that Sasaki has given up in his last five outings. And all of them have come against his fastball, a pitch that has yielded a lot of hard contact while getting very little swing-and-miss — including no whiffs Friday.

“Just really still in this process of finding out what the root cause [is],” said the 23-year-old right-hander, who finished giving up five runs in four-plus innings to raise his ERA to 4.72.

The Dodgers had an answer of their own in the second, tying the game on Hernández’s sixth home run of the season and Ohtani’s second double in as many innings.

Then, in the third, the Dodgers seemingly took control of the game, exploding for five runs on four hits and three walks while sending 11 batters to the plate — in an inning where the three outs were recorded by Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freeman no less.

In his first at-bat of the inning, Freeman roped a double down the line to put two runners in scoring position. Pages followed with a two-run single to left. Hernández and Miguel Rojas loaded the bases with a single and a walk. Still with no one out, James Outman hit the ground ball Arizona was looking for, but an errant throw to the plate allowed two more runs to score. Betts later tacked on a sacrifice fly.

That should’ve been enough for the Dodgers, carrying the ensuing 8-3 lead into the fourth.

But on this night, no lead was ever safe.

Sasaki was pulled after issuing a leadoff walk in the fifth, the lead having been trimmed to 8-4 by that point. His replacement, Anthony Banda, failed to stem a turning tide.

Within three batters, the Diamondbacks had the bases loaded. With two outs, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. swung big at a down-and-in sinker. Banda turned to watch it fly for a tying grand slam, evening the score at 8-8.

Arizona’s Lourdes Gurriel Jr., left, pumps is fist after hitting a grand slam off Dodgers reliever Anthony Banda, right, during the fifth inning Friday.

(Darryl Webb / Associated Press)

“I just felt that the offense did enough to win the game at that point in time, and to not pitch well, it’s frustrating,” Roberts said. “I just feel that we’re better than we’ve pitched.”

The Diamondbacks’ go-ahead run scored amid more contentious circumstances, as right-hander Luis García tried to escape another bases-loaded, two-out jam he inherited from Banda in the sixth.

In a full count with Suarez, he threw a high sweeper that appeared to catch the top of the strike zone. Home plate umpire Jeremie Rehak, however, ruled it a ball that walked in a run.

After the inning, Prior barked at Rehak from the dugout, triggering his ejection. Roberts then ran toward Rehak for an animated talk.

“There were some pitches that swung counts, and certainly that Luis García at-bat to Suárez, that changed that inning, the scoreboard,” Roberts said. “It gets emotional, always. And so obviously, it’s nothing personal. You can’t argue balls and strikes.”

In the eighth, it was the Diamondbacks’ turn to seemingly put the game out of reach, hitting back-to-back home runs off Alex Vesia for an 11-8 lead.

But, once again, no lead on this night ever proved to be secure.

Especially not once the Dodgers got Ohtani back up to the plate.

The trip marks the first time the leaders of four European nations have made a joint visit to Ukraine. 

The leaders of France, Britain, Germany and Poland have arrived in Ukraine for talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and have put pressure on Russia to agree to a 30-day ceasefire as a step to end the three-year conflict.

French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived together by train from neighbouring Poland on Saturday. Later, they were joined by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

“There is a lot of work to do, a lot of topics to discuss. We must end this war with a just peace. We must force Moscow to agree to a ceasefire,” said Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, posting photographs welcoming the leaders off the train.

It is the first time the leaders of the four European nations have made a joint visit to Ukraine.

More than three years into Russia’s invasion, the hugely symbolic show of European unity comes a day after President Vladimir Putin struck a defiant tone at a Moscow parade marking 80 years since victory in World War II.

United States President Donald Trump has proposed a 30-day unconditional ceasefire as a step to end the conflict. But Putin has resisted so far.

Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi said the quartet’s visit was “symbolic”, practical meetings were also expected to take place.

“Those practical meetings are expected to discuss the 30-day ceasefire, but crucially how to keep the US on side moving forward with any sort of talks,” he said.

After meeting Zelenskyy in the morning, the leaders are to host a virtual meeting to update other European leaders on moves to create a European force that could provide Ukraine with security after the war.

‘Just and lasting peace’

“Alongside the US, we call on Russia to agree a full and unconditional 30-day ceasefire to create the space for talks on a just and lasting peace,” the leaders said in a statement ahead of the visit.

“We are ready to support peace talks as soon as possible, to discuss technical implementation of the ceasefire, and prepare for a full peace deal,” they added.

The statement said “the bloodshed must end, Russia must stop its illegal invasion, and Ukraine must be able to prosper as a safe, secure and sovereign nation within its internationally recognised borders for generations to come”.

The leaders promised to continue to increase their support for Ukraine, saying “until Russia agrees to an enduring ceasefire, we will ratchet up pressure on Russia’s war machine”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with the ABC news channel on Saturday that arms deliveries from Ukraine’s allies must stop before Russia would agree to a ceasefire.

A truce would otherwise be an “advantage for Ukraine” at a time when “Russian troops are advancing … in quite a confident way” on the front, Peskov said, adding that Ukraine was “not ready for immediate negotiations”.

Russia has occupied about a fifth of Ukrainian territory and has yet to respond to the pressure for an enduring ceasefire.

Trump has also said Ukraine will have to consider giving up territory, such as the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula, but has expressed growing impatience with Russia’s refusal to halt the fighting.

These are the key events on day 1,171 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Saturday, May 10:

Fighting

• Russia and Ukraine accused one another of violating a May 8-10 ceasefire that had been unilaterally declared by Russian President Vladimir Putin to coincide with commemorative events marking the 80th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
• The Russian Defence Ministry said on Friday that Ukrainian troops had made four attempts to smash through the border into the Kursk and Belgorod regions in the past week. It claimed that Kyiv’s troops attacked Russian forces 15 times during the ceasefire.
• In Belgorod, the local governor said a Ukrainian drone had attacked a government building on Friday. Pro-Russian war bloggers said Ukraine attacked multiple villages in the region, with further “high-intensity fighting” near Tetkino, a village in the Kursk region.
• Ukraine, which has called the ceasefire “a farce” and did not commit to abide by it, said late on Friday that 162 armed clashes had been recorded over the previous 24 hours, along with 22 air strikes and 956 drone attacks.
• Ukraine’s military said Russian forces had attempted to break through Ukrainian lines 51 times, with heavy fighting near Pokrovsk, a logistics hub in eastern Ukraine targeted by Moscow’s troops for months.
• The military administration of Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region said Russia killed three civilians in armed clashes on Thursday and Friday.
• The governor of Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhia region said Russia had hit eight Ukrainian front-line villages 220 times since the ceasefire went into effect on Thursday.
• Further attacks were reported in Ukraine’s southern city of Kherson and the central Dnipropetrovsk region, with two people wounded.

Politics and diplomacy

• Putin hosted 20 foreign dignitaries, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, at a Red Square military parade on Friday to mark the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

• United States President Donald Trump said on Friday he would like Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “get this stupid war finished” after calling for a “30-day unconditional ceasefire” the previous day.
• Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said a group of 10 northern European nations in the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) coalition had agreed to support the 30-day ceasefire proposed by the US, noting that a “concerted approach” was now being taken.
• Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said he spoke by telephone on Friday with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials about the 30-day ceasefire proposal.
• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated Russia’s position on Friday that it supports the implementation of a 30-day ceasefire in the conflict, but only with due consideration of “nuances”.
• Foreign ministers from almost 20 European nations met in Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, backing the establishment of a special tribunal to prosecute Putin and his officials for crimes of aggression.
• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted by Interfax as saying Russia and the US plan another round of talks aimed at getting their respective diplomatic missions fully operational.
• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said North Korea’s involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war was “just”, calling it an exercise of sovereign rights in defence of a “brother nation”, state media KCNA reported on Saturday.
• Ukraine and Hungary, whose relations have deteriorated amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are expelling two diplomats each after each side accused the other of engaging in espionage.

The Eurovision Song Contest 2025 is being held in Basel and Miriana Conte – who is representing Malta with the song Serving, once known as Kant – is among the acts taking part

Miriana Conte has revealed how she now feels about the lyric change to her Eurovision Song Contest entry. The singer spoke about the decision in an exclusive interview with the Mirror ahead of representing Malta next week.

There was controversy earlier this year after Miriana, 24, was chosen to represent her country with the song Kant – which shared its title with a Maltese word for ‘singing’. The track attracted much attention after she won Malta’s national final in February, which included a jury and a public vote.

The majority of the song – now called Serving – is performed in English, but the original chorus included the title. Miriana’s pronounciation drew comparisons to the word “c***” and the lyric “serving kant” was perceived to be a reference to the phrase “serving c***,” which can be used to represent someone expressing themselves in a bold or powerful way.

She sang: “Why should we let other people decide when we could be having the time of our lives? Let down your walls come and dance to my vibe. I do it all the time, yeah, I do it all the time. Serving kant. Do, re, mi, fa, s-s-serving kant.”

Although fans embraced the song, other listeners weren’t impressed by the lyrics, which proved controversial. As reported at the time, Scott Mills suggested that he couldn’t air the entry on his BBC Radio 2 show. He said at the time: “We definitely can’t play a clip of it … ever, on the BBC.”

Amid the controversy over Kant, Miriana told fans in March that she had been notified that the European Broadcasting Union – which organises Eurovision – had “decided against” the use of ‘kant’ in the song. The news came just days before the deadline for acts to formally submit their entries.

Miriana later unveiled the new version of the song, Serving, which no longer features ‘kant’ in the chorus. And despite speculation that she would replace the word with another, she instead opted to leave a space where it had once been.

Ahead of competing in the second semi-final next Thursday, Miriana recently opened up to us about the situation and preparations for this year’s Eurovision. She also teased what to expect from her upcoming performance in the contest.

During the interview, it was mentioned that she’s now had time to process the lyric change and the controversy surrounding the song. Asked how she feels about it now and the end product of the change, Miriana told us: “Honestly, I quite love it! So I love both the versions [of the song].”

Miriana – who was a co-writer on the song – added: “If you had to tell me like to choose one from the other, I wouldn’t because I love them both so much.” She teased: “I mean, one leaves space for people to shout whatever they want to shout. The other, people are serving kant, they’re singing.”

She told us last week: “I didn’t have time to process back then when I found out, however then when I actually sat down, like even during the tours and everything, and I saw people singing out loud to it, they know word by word which is crazy, I was like ‘it had to happen’. And thank God it did!”

Explaining why she feels that way, she said: “It got much more popularity and got much more people watching it. People were on the tips of their toes to find out what the word change was, when there wasn’t [one].”

Miriana continued: “It was all very exciting.” And then sharing that she wouldn’t change how everything has unfolded, she said: “So if I had like relive the process and choose what to happen, I would still choose for this to happen.”

Asked if she had considered replacing ‘kant’ in the chorus, she revealed: “I never wanted to replace the word because that is what made the song gain its popularity. It is what means so much to me, so the only way that the word could be replaced is without it being replaced basically.”

The singer-songwriter went on to share that she was not concerned about the message of the song being lost in the controversy. She said in our interview: “When it boils down to people listening to it, everyone got the gist that it is about being bold and unapologetically yourself. With or without the word, it will still be what it is. That is why it really does not affect me. I love both versions so much.”

Miriana – who had competed four times before to represent Malta at Eurovision – also gave us an insight into the inspiration for the song. She said: “I’m such a bubbly ball of energy. I’m all over the place. I’m the clown of the group. I’m the loudest person in the room and I wanted to write exactly about that. How growing up I always felt like I needed to wind myself down to match other people’s energies.”

In the interview – which was prior to Miriana arriving in Basel, Switzerland, for the contest – she said that rehearsals were in “full swing”. She said: “Vocal lessons. We’re trying it out in a big space. Trying out the outfits to see how everything is going to work. So yeah, preparations are at full swing.”

And teasing what to expect from her performance, she told us last week: “It’s gonna be shocking!” After some laughter, she went on to share: “It’s gonna be exactly what I am like bold and loud and fun and beautiful. I love absolutely everything that’s gonna be happening on stage.”

The Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in Basel opens with its first semi-final on Tuesday from 8pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. The second semi-final will be on Thursday before the grand final is broadcast next Satuday.

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