Rare N Korean propaganda exhibit in Seoul
An exhibit of North Korean propaganda posters is on display in Seoul, giving a new view of the isolated country. Sharon Reich reports.
An exhibit of North Korean propaganda posters is on display in Seoul, giving a new view of the isolated country. Sharon Reich reports.
French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi and struggling US rival Novavax announced Friday an alliance to sell a Covid vaccine and develop another that combines with a flu shot.The French group will be able to develop a combination flu-Covid vaccine using its own flu shots with the US company's Covid jab.
Dwindling food and fuel stocks could force aid operations to grind to a halt within days in Gaza as vital crossings remain shut, forcing hospitals to close down and leading to more malnutrition, United Nations aid agencies warned on Friday. Humanitarian workers have sounded the alarm this week over the closure of the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings for aid and people as part of Israel's military operation in Rafah, where around 1 million uprooted people have been sheltering. The Israeli military said a limited operation in Rafah was meant to kill fighters and dismantle infrastructure used by Hamas, which governs the besieged Palestinian territory.
Britain's main opposition Labour party on Friday pledged to scrap the Conservative government's flagship Rwanda scheme if it comes to power, replacing it with a tougher more joined-up approach to tackling irregular migration."We will replace the Rwanda policy permanently," he said, promising a new approach to securing UK borders by tackling the issue "upstream" to smash the people-smuggling gangs behind the crossings.
Wall Street indexes were back in sight of record highs following a selloff last month, as a slew of economic data pointed to cooling labor market momentum, raising expectations that the Fed will cut borrowing costs more than once this year. Expectations of U.S. monetary policy easing, along with a much better-than-expected earnings season put the benchmark S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite on track for their third consecutive week of gains. While most Fed policymakers have reiterated that the next policy move will be a rate cut, doubt still remains about when the easing will begin.
Georgia's ambassador to France, who has resigned over a bill criticised for mirroring repressive Russian legislation, called for the draft law to be dropped on Friday.Critics say the bill, a similar version of which was scrapped last year following protests, mimics repressive Russian legislation that the Kremlin uses to crack down on opponents and could block Georgia's path to joining the European Union.
European stock markets climbed to fresh record highs Friday on growing hopes that central banks are close to cutting interest rates.The European Central Bank is expected to cut its rates in June.
A cryptocurrency nonprofit has launched a new political action committee (PAC) to raise money from its 440,000 members for crypto-friendly politicians, and is endorsing a bipartisan slate of candidates running in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Stand With Crypto's PAC joins a deep-pocketed effort from the cryptocurrency industry to put political candidates in office who are committed to supporting crypto and blockchain. Crypto super PACs Fairshake, Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress have so far raised more than $110 million this election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission records.
In the three tumultuous weeks since protests broke out at U.S. universities, police have descended on dozens of campuses to sweep up students in mass arrests, adhering to an approach many criminologists have found to be outdated and counterproductive. New York police arrested nearly 300 people at Columbia University and City College of New York on April 30 during protests over the war in Gaza, setting off flash bangs to stun and disorient demonstrators. But an early examination of the approach to campus protests suggests police, in many cases, have yet to shed outdated ways of handling large demonstrations, they said.
The U.S. central bank likely remains on track to cut interest rates this year even if the timing and extent of the policy easing is uncertain and further declines in inflation come only slowly, Atlanta Federal Reserve President Raphael Bostic said in an interview with Reuters. "I still have that belief" that interest rates can be lowered this year despite a first quarter in which the pace of price increases seemed to stall well above the Fed's 2% target, Bostic said in his first public comments since the central bank's policy meeting last week. Conversations with businesses in his U.S. Southeast Fed district indicate that wage and job growth will likely slow, Bostic said, and that most firms feel their pricing power is in decline after the fast price hikes that pushed inflation to 40-year highs in 2022.
Donald Trump is set to return to court Friday after porn star Stormy Daniels' lurid testimony about her alleged sexual encounter with him, as prosecutors prepare to call their final witnesses in the first-ever criminal trial of a sitting or former U.S. President. In seven hours of testimony this week over two days in New York state criminal court in Manhattan, Daniels spared few details. Trump, 77, has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up his former lawyer Michael Cohen's $130,000 payment to Daniels, 45, for her silence ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election about the alleged encounter.
Police early Friday have begun dismantling a pro-Palestinian tent encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. People were being detained and video showed police roaming through the encampment. Organizers said only about 10 people were inside the camp, but a crowd outside the camp began gathering and chanting pro-Palestinian slogans.
Elon Musk's decision to gut Tesla's electric-vehicle charging team is scrambling plans for rolling out new fast-charging stations and may delay President Joe Biden's efforts to electrify U.S. highways. Last year, the Biden administration announced rules for an ambitious plan to expand the country's charging infrastructure and jump-start EV adoption. Under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, the government is doling out $5 billion to states over five years to build 500,000 EV chargers.
A tax refund is typically the “biggest extra windfall of the year," said Courtney Alev, consumer financial advocate at Credit Karma. “While this behavior is completely understandable, given how hard up people are — with the rising cost of living, and high interest rates, the best thing you can do is use it as an opportunity to advance your financial goals.” Emily Garcia, 30, who works in marketing for a medical imaging software company in Toledo, Ohio, said she and her husband, with whom she filed jointly, were refunded about $1,000 and spent the money on patio furniture.
India's Supreme Court granted interim bail to a top opposition leader Friday who was arrested nearly seven weeks ago, in a bribery case that opposition parties called a political move by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government against his rivals during a national election. Arvind Kejriwal, the leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, or Common Man’s Party, is the chief elected official in the city of New Delhi and one of the country’s most consequential politicians of the past decade.
For some women, Mother's Day can be fraught or even painful. After their own difficult journeys, moms reflect on what Mother's Day now means to them.
A trend can represent the beginning of making a ton of money and a changing world. It can also represent the disappointing beginning of a fad.
Police used tear gas to disperse pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Arizona Tucson campus after they refused to leave their encampment, according to numerous reports.
Croatian conservative leader Andrej Plenkovic was formally appointed prime minister-designate on Friday for a third consecutive term after he forged an alliance with an extreme right party following an inconclusive election. Plenkovic's ruling Croatian Democratic Union won the most votes at last month's parliamentary vote in the European Union nation, but not enough to stay in power on their own. The party this week agreed to form a coalition with far-right Homeland Movement for a parliamentary majority.
South Korea vowed Friday to protect its companies operating in other markets after Japanese regulators told LY Corp., which runs the popular chat app Line, to reduce its dependence on Naver, the Korean partner in the venture. The Japanese side instructed LY to improve its governance and rely less on Naver after the leak of more than 300,000 records, including information of Line users.
Israeli tanks captured the main road dividing the eastern and western halves of Rafah on Friday, effectively encircling the entire eastern side of the city in the southern Gaza Strip. Residents described almost constant explosions and gunfire east and northeast of the city on Friday, with intense fighting between Israeli forces and militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Hamas said it ambushed Israeli tanks near a mosque in the east of the city, a sign the Israelis had penetrated several kilometres from the east to the outskirts of the built-up area.