Michelle Obama has spoken out against rumours that her marriage to Barack Obama might be in trouble.

The former first lady has not accompanied her husband to several high-profile events – including Donald Trump’s inauguration and the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter – fuelling speculation that they might be separating.

Without explicitly mentioning these occasions, Ms Obama told the Work in Progress podcast hosted by actress Sophia Bush that she was now in a position to control her own calendar as a “grown woman”.

She said that people were not able to believe that she was “making a decision” for herself and instead “had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing”.

Ms Obama shared that she felt some guilt for stepping back from certain duties.

“That’s the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with like disappointing people,” she said.

“I mean, so much so that this year people couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.

“This couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself, right? But that’s what society does to us.”

Ms Obama also said in the podcast: “I chose to do what was best for me. Not what I had to do. Not what I thought other people wanted me to do.”

Her absence from President Trump’s inauguration was seen as a break from tradition.

Despite carving out more time for herself, the former first lady said she still finds time to “give speeches, to be out there in the world, to work on projects. I still care about girls’ education”.

The Obamas celebrated their 32nd anniversary last year in October.

Ms Obama has previously been open about the struggles she faced in her marriage due to Mr Obama’s political ambitions and time in the White House in her best-selling memoir, Becoming.

Source: BBC

France plans to recognize a Palestinian state within months and could make the move at a UN conference in New York in June on settling the Israel-Palestinian conflict, President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview broadcast Wednesday.

“We must move towards recognition, and we will do so in the coming months,” Macron, who this week visited Egypt, told France 5 television.

“Our aim is to chair this conference with Saudi Arabia in June, where we could finalise this movement of mutual recognition by several parties,” he added.

“I will do it because I believe that at some point it will be right and because I also want to participate in a collective dynamic, which must also allow all those who defend Palestine to recognise Israel in turn, which many of them do not do,” he added.

Such recognition would allow France “to be clear in our fight against those who deny Israel’s right to exist — which is the case with Iran — and to commit ourselves to collective security in the region,” he added.

France has long championed a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including after the October 7, 2023 attack by Palestinian militants Hamas on Israel.

But formal recognition by Paris of a Palestinian state would mark a major policy switch and risk antagonising Israel which insists such moves by foreign states are premature.

‘No one will invest a cent’

France’s recognition of Palestinian statehood “would be a step in the right direction in line with safeguarding the rights of the Palestinian people and the two state solution,” Palestinian minister of state for foreign affairs Varsen Aghabekian Shahin told AFP.

Nearly 150 countries recognise a Palestinian state. In May 2024, Ireland, Norway and Spain announced recognition, followed by Slovenia in June, in moves partly fuelled by condemnation of Israel’s bombing of Gaza that followed the October 7 attacks.

But France would be the most significant European power to recognise a Palestinian state, a move the United States has also long resisted.

In Egypt, Macron held summit talks with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II and also made clear he was strongly opposed to any displacement or annexation in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

US President Donald Trump has suggested turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” with the Palestinians moving elsewhere — a suggestion that has sparked bitter condemnation.

Macron responded that the Gaza Strip was “not a real estate project.”

“Simplistic thinking sometimes doesn’t help,” he added, and, in a message to Trump said: “Perhaps it would be wonderful if one day it developed in an extraordinary way, but our responsibility is to save lives, restore peace, and negotiate a political framework.”

“If all this doesn’t exist, no one will invest. Today, no one will invest a cent in Gaza,” he said.

Source: AFP

President Vladimir Putin has called up 160,000 men aged 18-30, Russia’s highest number of conscripts since 2011, as the country moves to expand the size of its military.

The spring call-up for a year’s military service came several months after Putin said Russia should increase the overall size of its military to almost 2.39 million and its number of active servicemen to 1.5 million.

That is a rise of 180,000 over the coming three years.

Vice Adm Vladimir Tsimlyansky said the new conscripts would not be sent to fight in Ukraine for what Russia calls its “special military operation”.

However, there have been reports of conscripts being killed in fighting in Russia’s border regions and they were sent to fight in Ukraine in the early months of the full-scale war.

The current draft, which takes place between April and July, comes despite US attempts to forge a ceasefire in the war.

There was no let-up in the violence on Tuesday, with Ukraine saying that a Russian attack on a power facility in the southern city of Kherson had left 45,000 people without electricity.

Although Russia has turned down a full US-brokered ceasefire with Ukraine, it says it did agree to stop attacking Ukraine’s energy facilities. In an apparent attempt to deny Moscow had broken the terms of that deal, Russian officials said they had told Putin that Ukrainian drones had carried out attacks with little sign of a break.

Russia calls up conscripts in the spring and autumn but the latest draft of 160,000 young men is 10,000 higher than the same period in 2024.

Since the start of last year, the pool of young men available for the draft has been increased by raising the maximum age from 27 to 30.

As well as call-up notices delivered by post, Russia’s young men will be receiving notifications on the state services website Gosuslugi.

In Moscow there were reports that call-ups had already been sent out on 1 April via the mos.ru city website.

Increasing numbers of Russians are trying to avoid the army by taking on “alternative civilian service”. But human rights lawyer Timofey Vaskin warned on independent Russian media that every new call-up since the start of the war had become a lottery: “Authorities are coming up with new forms of refilling the army.”

Quite apart from its twice-yearly draft, Russia has also called up large numbers of men as contract soldiers and recruited thousands of soldiers from North Korea.

Moscow has had to respond to extensive losses in Ukraine, with more than 100,000 verified by the BBC and Mediazona as soldiers killed in Ukraine.

The true number could be more than double.

Putin has scaled up the size of the military three times since he ordered troops to capture Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia’s defence ministry linked the December 2023 increase in the size of the military to “growing threats” from both the war in Ukraine and the “ongoing expansion of Nato”.

Nato has expanded to include Finland and Sweden, as a direct result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Finland has Nato’s longest border with Russia, at 1,343km (834 miles) and Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on Tuesday that his country would join other states neighbouring Russia in pulling out of the Ottawa convention banning anti-personnel mines.

Poland and the Baltic states made similar decisions two weeks ago because of the military threat from Russia.

Orpo said the decision to resume using anti-personnel mines was based on military advice, and that the people of Finland had nothing to worry about.

The government in Helsinki also said defence spending would be increased to 3% of economic output (GDP), up from 2.4% last year.

Source: BBC

The Israeli military has killed at least 412 Palestinians, mostly children and women, throughout the Gaza Strip’s entire expanse during a large-scale violation of Tel Aviv’s ceasefire agreement with the Gaza-based resistance movement Hamas.

Reports said those killed in included at least 77 people in Khan Younis in southern Gaza and at least 20 people in Gaza City in the north.

At least 500 other Palestinians were also injured during the bloodletting, Palestinian news agency Sama reported on Tuesday.

According to the agency, the raids did not spare any part of the already war-battered and mostly devastated coastal sliver, targeting residential structures, schools, and refugee centers.

Reporting on the fresh deadly escalation, Qatar’s Al Jazeera television network reported that explosions had rang out throughout Gaza’s northeastern areas, where the regime’s spy aircraft and warplanes have been engaging in extensive overflight.

The ceasefire took effect in January in the hope of ending the regime’s 15-month-plus war of genocide against Gaza that began after Hamas and its fellow resistance groups from the Palestinian territory launched a historic operation against the occupied Palestinian territories.

The operation saw the fighters venture deep inside the territories, encircling strategic Israeli bases and ensnaring 240 Zionists, including some American-Israelis.

Since initiation of the ceasefire deal, the regime has been routinely violating it besides blocking the entry of vital aid items into Gaza, including foodstuffs, medicine, and water, in an attempt to pressure Hamas into releasing those of the captives, who remained in the group’s captivity, in one batch.

Hamas has released 25 living captives and the remains of eight others in exchange for more than 2,000 Palestinian prisoners during the implementation of the first phase of the deal.

The movement has denounced Tel Aviv’s efforts at sabotaging the agreement, urging that release of the remaining captives is conditioned upon implementation of a second phase.

Earlier, the regime’s Ma’ariv newspaper reported, citing its sources, that Tel Aviv had turned down a proposal for, what it called, “selective release” of the American captives.

The sources said the regime has told the United States that diplomatic efforts towards enabling release of the remaining captives had ended.

They also said the regime’s so-called “security cabinet” had allowed its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and minister for military affairs Israel Katz to determine the time for resumption of the genocide.

Netanyahu’s office, meanwhile, alleged that the regime had resumed its military attacks on Gaza after, what it termed as, Hamas’ turning down Washington’s proposals for extension of the ceasefire.

This is while Hamas has been constantly engaging with Qatari and Egyptian mediators towards keeping up the ceasefire, despite the disruptive Israeli efforts.

Source: Presstv

Chinese state media has welcomed Donald Trump’s move to cut public funding for news outlets Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, which have long reported on authoritarian regimes.

The decison affects thousands of employees – some 1,300 staff have been put on paid leave at Voice Of America (VOA) alone since Friday’s executive order.

Critics have called the move a setback for democracy but Beijing’s state newspaper Global Times denounced VOA for its “appalling track record” in reporting on China and said it has “now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag”.

The White House defended the move, saying it will “ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda”.

Trump’s cuts target the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which is supported by Congress and funds the affected news outlets, such as VOA, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Radio Free Europe.

They have won acclaim and international recognition for their reporting in places where press freedom is severely curtailed or non-existent, from China and Cambodia to Russia and North Korea.

Although authorities in some of these countries block the broadcasts – VOA, for instance, is banned in China – people can listen to them on shortwave radio, or get around the restrictions via VPNs.

RFA has often reported on the crackdown on human rights in Cambodia, whose former authoritarian ruler Hun Sen has hailed the cuts as a “big contribution to eliminating fake news”.

It was also among the first news outlets to report on China’s network of detention centres in Xinjiang, where the authorities are accused of locking up hundreds of thousands of Uyghur Muslims without trial. Beijing denies the claims, saying people willingly attend “re-education camps” which combat “terrorism and religious extremism”. VOA’s reporting on North Korean defectors and the Chinese Communist Party’s alleged cover-up of Covid fatalities has won awards.

VOA, primarily a radio outlet, which also broadcasts in Mandarin, was recognised last year for its podcast on rare protests in 2022 in China against Covid lockdowns.

But China’s Global Times welcomed the cuts, calling VOA a “lie factory”.

“As more Americans begin to break through their information cocoons and see a real world and a multi-dimensional China, the demonising narratives propagated by VOA will ultimately become a laughing stock,” it said in an editorial published on Monday.

Hu Xijin, who was the Global Times’ former editor-in-chief, wrote: “Voice of America has been paralysed! And so has Radio Free Asia, which has been as vicious to China. This is such great news.”

Such responses “would have been easy to predict”, said Valdya Baraputri, a VOA journalist who lost her job over the weekend. She was previously employed by BBC World Service.

“Eliminating VOA, of course, allows channels that are the opposite of accurate and balanced reporting to thrive,” she told the BBC.

The National Press Club, a leading representative group for US journalists, said the order “undermines America’s long-standing commitment to a free and independent press”.

Founded during World War Two in part to counter Nazi propaganda, VOA reaches some 360 million people a week in nearly 50 languages. Over the years it has broadcast in China, North Korea, communist Cuba and the former Soviet Union. It’s also been a helpful tool for many Chinese people to learn English.

VOA’s director Michael Abramowitz said Trump’s order has hobbled VOA while “America’s adversaries, like Iran, China, and Russia, are sinking billions of dollars into creating false narratives to discredit the United States”.

Ms Baraputri, who is from Indonesia but based in Washington DC, first joined VOA in 2018, but her visa was terminated at the end of Trump’s first administration.

She rejoined in 2023 because she wanted to be part of an organisation that “upholds unbiased, factual reporting that is free from government influence”.

Source: BBC

King Charles gave a warm welcome to the new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney when he visited Buckingham Palace.

It was another symbolic gesture of support for Canada from a King, wearing a red tie, who has to send coded signals rather than spell things out in words, as Canada faces threats from US President Donald Trump.

But the King has sought to make clear his commitment to Canada – and if it had not been for his cancer diagnosis, the BBC understands he would have travelled there for an intended visit in 2024.

There are also suggestions that once Canada’s election is out the way, a visit to Canada will be a priority, where he can further demonstrate his support.

King’s pivotal role in Trump and Ukraine balancing act

The new Canadian prime minister told the King that his Order of Canada pin had broken this morning. The King joked: “Do you want another one?”

“There’s much to catch up on,” said the King, ushering Carney to a seat, and perhaps hoping that the broken pin was not a symbol of a Commonwealth relationship under strain.

“These are important matters,” said the King, ahead of a 30-minute conversation with no one else in attendance.

Carney later went on to meet UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer at Downing Street.

Sir Keir hailed the relationship between the two countries and said they had “so much in common – shared history, shared values, shared King.”

Carney said he was “grateful for the welcomes and the constructive discussions” with Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron – whom he had met earlier in the day.

At a news conference, he was asked if he felt let down by the lack of public support for Canada from other allies, given Trump’s trade war with Canada, and his remarks about making Canada the 51st state of the US.

“We don’t need another country to validate our sovereignty, we are sovereign, we don’t need praise from another country, we are proud in and of ourselves,” he said, adding that Sir Keir had made a point of referring to Canada’s sovereignty and to “our shared sovereign in King Charles III.”

Source: BBC

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that he was seeking to dismiss the head of Israel’s internal security agency, who swiftly called the move political and said the premier expected “personal loyalty”.

Netanyahu and Shin Bet head Ronen Bar have been engaged in a public spat in recent weeks over reforms to the agency, which has been accused of failing to prevent the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that triggered war in Gaza.

At the same time, the Shin Bet has been conducting an investigation into some of Netanyahu’s aides for allegedly receiving payments from Qatar even as the Gaza war raged, according to Israeli media reports.

“Due to ongoing lack of trust, I have decided to bring a proposal to the government to end the tenure of the Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar,” Netanyahu said in a video statement.

Attorney general Gali Baharav Miara, a critic of Netanyahu, said the prime minister’s move is “unprecedented” and its legality needs to be assessed.

In a letter to Netanyahu she said he cannot initiate the process “until the factual and legal foundation of your decision is fully clarified, and until the possibility of addressing the issue at this time is determined.”

Netanyahu, in his statement, said that “there must be complete trust between the prime minister and the head of the Shin Bet,” given that Israel is at war.

“I have had a persistent lack of confidence in the head of the Shin Bet, a distrust that has only grown over time,” he said.

Netanyahu said Bar’s dismissal “is necessary to restore the organisation, achieve all our war objectives, and prevent the next disaster.”

Previously, he has accused Bar of being behind what he called “part of an ongoing campaign of threats and media leaks” aimed at preventing him “from making the necessary decisions to restore the Shin Bet after its devastating failure on October 7”.

‘Personal loyalty’

Following Netanyahu’s announcement, Bar said he did not believe Netanyahu’s decision was related to the failures on October 7, suggesting instead that the motive was political.

“I took responsibility for the agency’s part (in failing to prevent the attack) … it is clear that the intent behind my dismissal is not related to October 7,” said Bar, whose term is due to expire in October 2026.

“The prime minister’s expectation of a personal loyalty that contradicts the public interest is an entirely improper expectation” that goes against the agency’s ethics, he said.

Bar has led the Shin Bet since 2021, but his relations with Netanyahu were strained even before the Hamas attack, notably over proposed judicial reforms that had split the country.

Relations worsened after the March 4 release of the internal Shin Bet report on the Hamas attack.

It acknowledged the agency’s own failure in preventing the attack, but also said “a policy of quiet had enabled Hamas to undergo massive military buildup”.

The attack resulted in 1,218 deaths on the Israeli side, mostly civilians. Israel’s retaliatory response in Gaza has killed at least 48,572 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from both sides.

In his statement on Sunday, Bar repeated previous comments that a broader probe is necessary to understand the failure to stop the attack.

Bar emphasised the need to “investigate all parties, including the government’s policy and the prime minister, not just the IDF (military) and the Shin Bet”.

Bar’s responsibilities appear to have been curtailed already.

Media reports say he was excluded from a recent security cabinet meeting and also the Israeli negotiating delegation for Gaza truce talks in Qatar. The talks are being led by Bar’s deputy, known only as ‘M’.

Bar had been involved in previous sessions of indirect negotiations with Hamas, including those that led to the current fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s main opposition leader and former prime minister Yair Lapid, who’s government appointed Bar, said his political party, Yesh Atid, would file a legal petition with the Supreme Court to appeal Netanyahu’s decision.

Lapid said on X that the move to remove Bar was to “sabotage a serious criminal investigation into the Prime Minister’s Office”.

Source: AFP

Donald Trump says Ukraine is ready to begin peace negotiations “as soon as possible”, with strong signals Russia is also ready for a deal

During an address to Congress, the US president read aloud a letter he said he’d received from Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, which was similar to a message posted on X earlier in the day

“I appreciate that he sent this letter,” Trump said

The tone offered a hint of a possible cooling of the acrimony between the two leaders, our North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher writes

Meanwhile, the UK defence secretary is flying to Washington for a meeting with his US counterpart on Thursday – Ukraine is expected to be top of the agenda.

Source: BBC

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky faced pressure on Friday to sign a deal to hand the United States preferential access to Ukraine’s mineral deposits following harsh criticism from US President Donald Trump.

Trump wants Ukraine to give US companies access as compensation for the tens of billions of dollars of aid delivered under his predecessor Joe Biden.

But Ukraine is seeking security guarantees from the United States in exchange for signing away precious rights to vast amounts of its natural resources and critical minerals.

Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, on Friday predicted that Zelensky would sign the deal soon.

“Look, here’s the bottom line, President Zelensky is going to sign that deal, and you will see that in the very short term, and that is good for Ukraine,” Waltz told a conference on the outskirts of Washington.

Forbes Ukraine in April 2023 estimated that Ukraine’s mineral resources amounted to 111 billion tonnes, worth $14.8 trillion – mostly coal and iron ore.

But more than 70 percent of these resources were in Donetsk and Luhansk – regions partly controlled by Russia – and Dnipropetrovsk, where Moscow’s forces are approaching.

Trump’s top advisers have doubled down on their attacks on Zelensky in recent days, after Trump branded him a “dictator” and falsely claimed Ukraine had “started” the war with Russia.

Elections have been suspended in Ukraine since Zelensky declared martial law following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The war of words has stunned Kyiv and European capitals, a sign of just how rapidly Trump is overhauling Washington’s long-standing support for Ukraine as he opens talks with Moscow on a settlement to the conflict.

Trump told a gathering of US governors at the White House he had “very good talks” with his Russian counterpart, while adding Ukrainian leaders “don’t have any cards, but they play it tough”.

A senior Ukrainian official earlier Friday told AFP that despite the tensions between Zelensky and Trump, talks on a possible agreement were “ongoing”.

“There is a constant exchange of drafts, we sent another one yesterday,” the Kyiv source said, adding that Ukraine was now waiting for a US response.

Kyiv had rejected a first attempt by Trump’s team to strike a deal for Ukraine’s natural resources, saying the proposal did not include security guarantees for Kyiv – a move that infuriated Trump.

Three-year war

Ukraine is pressing for NATO membership or for the deployment of Western troops and masses of advanced equipment as part of any wider ceasefire agreement with Russia.

Zelensky said earlier this week he would not “sell” Ukraine in any deal with the United States.

The spat risks undermining Western support for Kyiv at a critical juncture in the conflict, ahead of the three-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion on Sunday.

Russia’s army on Friday said it had captured two more villages in eastern Ukraine.

Europe has also been left scrambling to respond, though Zelensky has held a flurry of calls in recent days with European leaders reiterating their support for Ukraine, including French President Emmanuel Macron and the leaders of Finland and Denmark.

Macron will travel to Washington next week where he will tell Trump: “You can’t be weak with President Putin,” he said in an address on Thursday.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will also visit Trump, as Paris and London seek to marshal Europe’s response to the Republican’s first month in office.

‘Despised’

Zelensky met this week in Kyiv with Trump’s envoy Keith Kellogg whose description of meetings with Ukrainian officials came in stark contrast with rhetoric from his counterparts in Washington.

In a social media post Kellogg called Zelensky “the embattled and courageous leader of a nation at war”.

Trump told Fox News on Friday that “I don’t think he’s very important to be in meetings”, referring to Zelensky, adding “he makes it very hard to make deals”.

Tech tycoon and Trump backer Elon Musk weighed in on Thursday, saying Ukrainians “despised” their president and that the US leader was right to leave him out of talks with Russia.

“Some of the rhetoric coming out of Kyiv, frankly, and insults to President Trump were unacceptable,” Waltz said during a briefing at the White House.

In his most pointed criticism yet, Zelensky earlier this week said Trump had succumbed to Russian “disinformation” over the US president’s repetition of debunked Kremlin talking points on the conflict.

Source:  AFP

Programmes to tackle HIV, polio, mpox and bird flu have been affected by the freeze on tens of billions of dollars of overseas aid from the US, says the head of the World Health Organization (WHO).

US President Donald Trump has taken steps to close the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), arguing that its spending is “totally unexplainable”.

However, WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has urged the Trump administration to consider resuming aid funding until other solutions can be found.

HIV treatments and other services have been disrupted in 50 countries, he said at a briefing on Wednesday.

Speaking publicly for the first time about the freeze on US aid funding, at a virtual press conference in Geneva, Dr Tedros said: “There are actions that the US government is taking… which we’re concerned are having a serious impact on global health.”

In particular he pointed to the suspension of PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, which he said had halted HIV treatment, testing and prevention services in 50 countries.

He added that a reprieve for life-saving services had not stopped the disruption.

“Clinics are shuttered and health workers have been put on leave,” Dr Tedros said.

Experts in global health have warned of the spread of disease, as well as delays to the development of vaccines and new treatments as a result of the cuts.

Trump has argued that USAID is “incompetent and corrupt”.

He recently announced huge cuts to the agency’s 10,000-strong workforce and the immediate suspension of almost all of its aid programmes.

The agency spends about $40bn (£32bn) – about 0.6% of total US yearly government spending – on humanitarian aid, much of which goes towards health programmes.

The vast majority of USAID money is spent in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Europe, where it is primarily used for humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.

Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who is working on the White House’s effort to shrink the size of the federal government, has previously claimed that the aid agency is “a criminal organisation”.

Neither Trump nor Musk have provided clear evidence to support their claims.

As well as the freeze on USAID, President Trump has taken steps to withdraw the United States from the WHO.

Under the Biden administration the US was the largest funder of the UN’s health agency and in 2023 it contributed almost one-fifth of the agency’s budget.

Dr Tedros said Trump’s decision was affecting collaboration between countries on global health threats. He also said the US had reduced its reporting of bird flu cases in humans.

The WHO says it has employed emergency measures similar to those used during the Covid pandemic to fill the gaps where there are shortages – in life-saving antiretroviral medication, for example, which is used to treat people living with HIV.

Meg Doherty, director of global HIV, hepatitis and sexually-transmitted infection (STI) programmes at the WHO, said efforts were being made to co-ordinate the sharing of vital supplies of medicines between countries.

However, she said a better, long-term solution was needed: “We have been seeking support from country to country for sharing, but this is a short-term approach.”

Source: BBC