The senior European official added that Europe was extremely reluctant to agree to Russia’s demand to block deliveries of weapons to Ukraine by its allies during any truce. That outcome would risk a situation where Russia was able to rearm during a cessation of hostilities, while Ukraine was prevented from doing so, the official said.

Putin has said he supports the US proposal for a pause to the conflict in principle but insists that a number of conditions need to be met before Russia can agree to halt its invasion. The Russian leader will probably agree to a truce, though he wants to make sure his terms are included first, Bloomberg reported on March 12.

The Trump administration has effectively already conceded Russian demands to keep control of occupied Ukrainian territory and for Kyiv to abandon its ambition to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. That has fueled European concerns that any deal the US president strikes with Putin will leave Ukraine weakened and vulnerable to Russia in the future.

The US is also likely to want Ukraine to accept effective neutral status and some limits on its army and weapons, in line with Russian demands, said Cliff Kupchan, a former senior State Department official who’s chairman of the New York-based Eurasia Group.

The new requirements were to work for a news organization, have a local address, show up at least once every six months, and have "Accreditation by a press gallery in either the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, or Supreme Court." Details in paragraph 7-8 of that article. So Trump is using nontransparent criteria of their own, while Biden had a non political published standard.

Ruling party was deeply unpopular but threat of US tariffs combined with prospect of new leader spurs rise in polls

A Leger poll released on Tuesday put the Conservatives on 38% public support with the Liberals on 35%, compared with 43% and 21% respectively in December. And an Ekos poll, also released on Tuesday, put the Liberals on 38% and the Conservatives on 37%.

We investigate whether firm-level political connections affect the allocation of exemptions from tariffs imposed on $US 550 billion of Chinese goods imported to the United States annually beginning in 2018. Evidence points to politicians not only rewarding supporters but also punishing opponents: Past campaign contributions to the party controlling (in opposition to) the executive branch increase (decrease) approval likelihood. Our findings point to quid pro quo arrangements between politicians and firms, as opposed to the “information” channel linking political access to regulatory outcomes.

a 1-standard-deviation increase in contributions to Republican (Democrat) candidates increases the probability of approval by 3.94 (decreases the probability of approval by 3.40) percentage points

Was US President Donald Trump a secret Russian spy in 1987? A former officer of Russia's spy agency Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) has claimed that US president Donald Trump was groomed 37 years ago as a "potential Soviet asset'. According to him, the Soviet administration recruited Trump, who was then a 40-year-old businessmen, under a pseudonym ‘Krasnov.

“When we said safer borders, I thought he was thinking ‘let’s stop the drugs from coming into the country,’” she said. “I didn’t know he was going to start raiding places.” She said she didn’t believe he would actually follow through on some of the more hard-line policies he touted during the campaign.

“Now I’m like: ‘Dang, why didn’t I just pick Kamala?’”

"You should have never started it," he said. The Kremlin has previously accused Ukraine of starting the war against Russia.

"It was they who started the war in 2014. Our goal is to stop this war. And we did not start this war in 2022," Russian President Vladimir Putin told US talk show host Tucker Carlson in February 2024.

In slashing staff and disabling entire agencies the administration is lacerating the structures of US democracy

The newly released House GOP resolution proposes a $4 trillion debt ceiling increase while allocating $4.5 trillion in new deficits for the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. This move aims to extend tax cuts that many Republicans argue are crucial for economic growth.

The proposal includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, $1.5 trillion in spending reductions, $300 billion for immigration and military efforts, and a debt limit increase. If approved, these measures would help Republicans push significant legislation through Congress along party lines.

After years railing against immigrants coming to America, Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday to prioritize the U.S. resettlement of white South African “refugees” suffering from what he called “government-sponsored race-based discrimination.”

Trump raged in his order that South Africa’s government is seizing “ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation” and enacting “countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity” in employment, education and business.”

Donald Trump has securing Canada’s resource wealth on his mind, and “one of the easiest ways of doing that is absorbing our country. And it is a real thing.”

Trump and Israeli officials have not said how they would respond if Palestinians refuse to leave. But Human Rights Watch and other groups say the plan, if implemented, would amount to “ethnic cleansing,” the forcible relocation of the civilian population of an ethnic group from a geographic area.

Why Democrats and the media are struggling to capture the insanity—and danger—of the new Trump administration.

Elon Musk has vowed to unilaterally cancel hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of government grants after apparently gaining access to review the US Treasury’s vast payments system, a move that prompted the sudden resignation of one of the department’s most senior officials.
The world’s richest man, who bankrolled Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and was tasked by the president with running the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, boasted on his social media site X that he was “rapidly shutting down . . . illegal payments” after a list of grants to Lutheran organisations was posted online.
The threat came after Musk appeared to confirm on Saturday that DOGE had access to the Treasury system, which disperses trillions of dollars each year, including social security payments.

Trump claimed that he had changed Obama’s criteria for hiring air traffic controllers with greater diversity — when in fact he left it unchanged. Moreover, he decried the fact that FAA hired controllers with a range of disabilities that he listed at the news conference. But that program was launched during his first term.
The June 2019 webpage for the Aviation Development Program (ADP) — also now removed but still visible on the Wayback Machine — said the program “provides an opportunity for Persons with Targeted Disabilities (PWTD) to gain aviation knowledge and experience as an air traffic control student trainee.” The announcement said the program was conceived when an air traffic manager met a quadriplegic student who had assumed he would never qualify to be a controller because of his condition. The FAA stressed that participants must meet the same qualifications as any other air traffic controller student.

Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.

"“Had we not done that [stopped Houston from sending out ballots], Donald Trump would’ve lost the election”"

"The crucial statistic is that not everyone’s ballot gets disqualified. One study done for the United States Civil Rights Commission found that a Black person, such as Maj. Turner, will be 900% more likely to have their mail-in or in-person ballot disqualified than a white voter."

when breaking the law is so common, we don't even bother

"That he broke the law is obvious. He didn’t give 30 days’ notice. He didn’t provide any “substantive rationale.” He didn’t provide any reason at all. He just did it. And he told reporters Saturday that it was all fine. “It’s a very common thing to do,” he said. Once he says that, we know that basically every Republican, and Fox News and Sinclair and the rest of the propaganda chamber, are going to say the same thing. Lindsey Graham on Sunday hilariously admitted that “technically, yeah,” Trump broke the law but Graham wasn’t losing any sleep over it."