On This Day, April 26: Syrian ends 29-year military presence in Lebanon
In 1607, the first British colonists to establish a permanent settlement in America landed at Cape Henry, Va.
In 1933, Nazi Germany's secret police, better known as the Gestapo, is formed by Hermann Goering. The Allies declared the Gestapo a criminal organization during the Nuremberg trials and sentenced Goering to die.
In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, German-made planes destroyed the Basque town of Guernica, Spain.
In 1964, Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged, forming the country of Tanzania.
In 1982, Argentina surrendered to British forces on South Georgia Island amid a dispute over the Falkland Islands.
In 1986, a fire and explosion at the Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear reactor north of Kiev, Ukraine, resulted in the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster. About 30 deaths were reported in the days following the accident. It is believed that hundreds of people eventually died from high doses of radiation from the plant and that thousands of cases of cancer could be linked to the crisis.
In 1993, Indian Airlines Flight 491 slammed into a parked truck during takeoff and crashed minutes later near the western Indian city of Aurangabad, killing 56 people.
In 1994, South Africans began going to the polls in the country's first election that was open to all. Four days of voting would elect Nelson Mandela president.
In 2002, a German youth who had been expelled from the Gutenberg school in Erfurt, Germany, returned to the school and shot 16 people to death.
In 2005, the last of Syria's troops left Lebanon, ending a 29-year military presence.
In 2010, longtime Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, sought by the International Criminal Court in connection with reputed crimes against humanity in the Darfur section of western Sudan, was re-elected president in a controversial vote.
In 2012, a U.N.-backed court convicted former Liberian President Charles Taylor of war crimes, including murder, acts of terrorism, rape, sexual slavery and use of child soldiers, for aiding rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
In 2018, a Pennsylvania jury found actor Bill Cosby guilty on charges he drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand in 2004. He was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison.
In 2020, the 23rd victim of the Aug. 3, 2019, shooting at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart died from his injuries.
In 2021, Kanye West's Nike Air Yeezy 1 Prototype shoes sold for a record-breaking $1.8 million through a private sale facilitated by Sotheby's. It was the first recorded sneaker sale for more than $1 million.
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Miami Herald
2 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Russia warns against targeting North Korea
July 12 (UPI) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov traveled to North Korea on Friday to meet with his North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and others during a three-day visit. He said Moscow respects North Korea's efforts to develop nuclear arms by using its own scientists amid recent military exercises involving the U.S., South Korean and Japanese forces, according to CNN. The U.S. and its South Korean and Japanese allies conducted a joint aerial training operation on the Korean Peninsula on Friday. Lavrov warned the United States and its regional allies against targeting North Korea and Russia, Newsweek reported on Saturday. "No one is considering using force against North Korea despite the military buildup around the country by the United States, South Korea and Japan," Lavrov said of the joint military exercise. "We respect North Korea's aspirations and understand the reasons why it is pursuing a nuclear development," Lavrov said. He said Moscow is aware that President Donald Trump recently expressed support for resuming talks with North Korea at the highest level. "We exchanged views on the situation surrounding the Ukrainian crisis," Lavrov told Russian state media outlet TASS. "Our Korean friends confirmed their firm support of all the objectives of the special military operation," he said of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. North Korea's Foreign Ministry earlier this week invitedLavrov to visit Pyongyang, which is preparing to deploy between 25,000 and 30,000 soldiers for Russia's continued invasion of Ukraine. North Korea last year deployed 11,000 soldiers to Russia to help repel a Ukrainian incursion in the Kursk region of Russia. Copyright 2025 UPI News Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
3 hours ago
Humanitarian system struggles to fill US void in Sudan, where the world's most dire crisis rages
Humanitarians in Sudan, where a two-year civil war has given rise to the world's most acute needs and made assistance increasingly difficult, warn that a vacuum left by cuts to U.S. funding for aid programs cannot be filled. The civil war between the country's army and a paramilitary group has displaced 11 million people internally and 4 million more are refugees in other countries. It's the only place [country?] in the world where famine conditions have been confirmed in multiple locations, and the United Nations says 30 million Sudanese require assistance -- or 60% of the country's population. The U.S. last week shuttered its arm for foreign assistance, formerly the U.S. Agency for International Development, folding it under the State Department in a move Secretary of State Marco Rubio said marked the end of an 'era of government-sanctioned inefficiency.' 'Moving forward, our assistance will be targeted and time limited,' Rubio wrote on Substack, adding the U.S. 'will favor those nations that have demonstrated both the ability and willingness to help themselves and will target our resources to areas where they can have a multiplier effect.' The months-long drawdown of USAID reduced its staff by 83% -- down from 10,000 employees to a few hundred -- and resulted in stop-work orders for grantees of its funds, including in Sudan. The State Department says the life-saving work of the agency, which distributes grants to aid implementers, is continuing, and said its new 'America First' foreign assistance policy would be accountable to policymakers in Washington instead of global entities like the United Nations. A senior State Department official last week called the end of USAID and the institution of a new overarching office at State 'a milestone for American engagement in the world,' saying U.S. assistance abroad would be 'linked up diplomatically' with U.S. interests. The British medical journal Lancet found that in the absence of USAID's funds and works, 14 million more people would die in the next five years, a third of those children under senior State Department official downplayed the study. 'You can go back and relitigate all these little decisions. That's not our focus. That's not the secretary's focus,' the official said. 'We are excited about what sort of the America First foreign assistance agenda is going to look like, and how much impact we can have moving forward.' Meanwhile, in the world's most dire humanitarian crisis, where access for emergency food and medical workers has been made increasingly difficult by warring parties, people are fleeing violence on foot, children are malnourished, and Sudanese are dying from treatable conditions. Pietro Curtaz, an emergency logistics coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders, or MSF) said children he sees crossing Sudan's border are malnourished at a rate of 29%. The cuts to USAID -- and the chaos that followed -- have 'come with a body count' in Sudan said Tom Perriello, the U.S. special envoy to Sudan in the last year of the Biden administration from 2024 to 2025. There were 29 USAID employees in Sudan in 2023, at the outset of the war, according to then-administrator Samantha Powers. The July 1 reprogramming of USAID into the State Department cut two additional U.S. staffers dedicated to Sudan, leaving just nine remaining in the region, said Andrea Tracy, a former USAID Sudan official who now runs her own humanitarian funding mechanism for the country. Tracy saw colleagues lose their jobs on a daily basis as USAID wound down the programs it funded in the country, she told ABC News in a June phone call. 'I was talking to one of the regional directors the other day, and just that morning, she got an email saying another 40 programs are going to be cut,' she said. 'So we haven't found the floor yet.' The dramatic reorientation of U.S. aid abroad comes as the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Germany have announced a scaling down of their own foreign assistance budgets and as humanitarian crises in places like Sudan -- where the civil war has stretched into a third year -- deepen. According to data from the U.N., USAID provided 44% of the world's humanitarian funding in 2024 for Sudan. A U.N. spokesman told ABC News that 'food aid, nutrition support and essential health services' have been cut back as the U.N.'s annual fund for Sudan is funded at only 14%. 'Without urgent additional support, the risk of famine and further deterioration remains high,' said Dan Teng'o, a spokesperson for the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The State Department did not respond to requests by ABC News for the current data on its assistance commitments to Sudan after foreign aid freezes and layoffs. But it said in a statement that 'foreign assistance continues to arrive in Sudan,' citing a $56 million donation to the World Food Programme and a wheat grain delivery under USAID that would feed 'as many as 3.2 million people for an entire month.' It also said emergency assistance continues for refugees of Sudan who have been displaced to 'seven neighboring countries due to the conflict.' Important dollars for refugee assistance are in jeopardy, too, as humanitarians brace for the impacts of a proposed $1.7 billion cut to U.S. refugee assistance. As a part of Rubio's reorganization, the State Department proposed a 50% reduction for aid to the world's refugees in its 2026 budget request to Congress. Chain reactions and health care at the brink Humanitarians, who are legally protected under international law, have not been spared from the violence of the civil war, which has deprived people of the chance to stave off starvation and made access increasingly difficult. Five humanitarians in June died when a U.N. convoy came under attack, the U.N. said. In the void, small, grassroots organizations began to sprout when war broke out two years ago. A coalition known as Mutual Aid stood up emergency clinics and soup kitchens that became 'a lifeline' for Sudanese, Tracy said. The coalition was backed by nearly 80% funding from USAID, organizers have the White House on President Donald Trump's first day in office froze all U.S. assistance abroad, Tracy said, some 1,500 of the kitchens in Sudan closed almost immediately. Perriello, whose role as the special envoy in Sudan has been left vacant by the Trump administration, said the Mutual Aid coalition was among a group of 'edgy efforts … redefining approaches to aid.' These programs suffered the first and 'deepest' cuts, he said. Tracy said the pain from the cuts has been felt most acutely in the health sector, where medicine is not moving the way it used to and a 'chain' of 'different components that rely on each other' are not in place. 'Once you break one of those components, it all breaks,' she said. MSF, which provides emergency medical care in Sudan, is operating in a country where the World Health Organization estimates only 20 to 30% of health facilities are operational. 'Wherever we look in Sudan, you will find humanitarian and medical needs. All those needs are overwhelming, urgent, and unfortunately, unmet,' Claire San Filippo, MSF's emergency coordinator for Sudan, said. A 'case study' for impact of cuts At the Tine border point in Chad, east of the violence-plunged Darfur region of Sudan, Curtaz, the emergency coordinator for MSF, told ABC News the cuts are impossible to miss. 'Clinically … we tend to see people that are in much worse condition than before because of all of that,' he said. MSF is independent and donor-funded, taking no dollars from the U.S. government and therefore not directly affected by the cuts and shutdown of USAID. Sudan has become a 'case study' for the 'impact of those cuts,' Curtaz said. 'One of the examples you can touch first,' he said, is the lack of shelter for refugees under a 110-degree sun. People arrive by foot in Chad having spent the day with no form of shelter, he said. The 18,000 people hosted in Tine should have had at least 350 toilets, meeting a standard in acute situations of one toilet for every 50 people, Curtaz said. But for a group surging toward 20,000 people, it had only nine toilets. Asked whether the large, interconnected humanitarian system is neglecting Sudan, Curtaz agreed. 'A majority of the weight is lying on us, on the host community and on grassroots organizations that are doing their best to support the population,' he said. 'So, yes.' 'For the first time in my life,' Tracy said, MSF doctors and administrators told her, ''We really need the USAID money…to come back online, because we're carrying way more of a load than we can handle. We're falling apart here.''
Newsweek
6 hours ago
- Newsweek
Donald Trump Wins Praise from 'Prince of Darkness'
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. British ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson, known at home as the "Prince of Darkness," once said President Donald Trump was a "danger to the world... little short of a white nationalist and racist." Now, after successfully closing one trade deal with the U.S. president, he has drastically changed his tune. In a newly published interview with The Sunday Times, Lord Mandelson described Trump as "a unique politician" and a "phenomenon," showing that the British politician might have earned a new understanding of the U.S. president over several encounters in the last few months. "I've never been in a town or a political system that is so dominated by one individual. Usually, you're entering an ecosystem rather than the world of one personality. But he is a phenomenon. A unique politician," Mandelson told the British newspaper. An Exchange Of Pleasantries Across The Atlantic Mandelson, a Labour Party member, became Britain's ambassador to the U.S. in February of this year, right after Trump's inauguration. In his home country, he is a very well-known figure—and someone who many would recognize as fit to take on such a difficult role, as the U.K. tries to maintain the "special relationship" with the U.S. at a time of growing uncertainty. During his early career in the late 80s and early 90s, Mandelson became the communications guru behind Labour's rise to power under Tony Blair and one of the first figures to be recognised as a "spin doctor" in the U.K. His expertise in the "dark arts" of backroom political strategy and tactics earned him the nickname Prince of Darkness on the Left of the Party, and it stuck. At the age of 71, the politician now has a long career behind him which survived some notable downfalls. His political enemies likely thought he was done for after his second resignation from the government in January 2011, when he was accused of using his position to influence the passport applications of a businessman. The politician went on to become European Commissioner for Trade from 2004 to 2008 and first secretary of state under Gordon Brown's government between 2009 and 2010. In December, he was chosen by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to replace Dame Karen Pierce as ambassador to the U.S. U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with British ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson after making a trade announcement in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on May 8, 2025.... U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with British ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson after making a trade announcement in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on May 8, 2025. More JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images If his political background as a political operator rather than an experienced diplomat and previous statements made it seem Mandelson an odd choice, the facts have proved skeptics wrong. In May, when the two met at the Oval Office, Trump greeted Mandelson with a very friendly: "God, you're a good-looking fellow, aren't you?" In a show of appreciation, Mandelson later described Trump as a "people person" who takes people at "face value." The comment cleared the air after Mandelson had been called by Trump-aligned strategist Chris LaCivita an "absolute moron," in what appeared as a reaction to Mandelson's previously disparaging comment about the president. The British politician had already tried to make amends for those comments, going to Fox News in late January to say those have been "ill-judged and wrong" and claiming he had "fresh respect" for the president. Trump's 'Kernel Of Truth' In the interview with The Sunday Times, the British politician reiterated this point, saying that there is often "truth" in what the president says, even when what he says sounds like an exaggeration made to infuriate Americans. "He's not only a unique politician—he's also going to be one of the most consequential presidents in American history," he said. "He has this sense of history, this grasp of power which I think perhaps recent inhabitants of the White House haven't quite seen. He is not a man for endless seminars and thinking," he added. "He's not a victim of analysis paralysis. He has a very quick, easy way of grasping the core points about an issue. And let's be honest: more often than not, there's a kernel of truth in everything he says." Mandelson brought the Trump administration's aggressive anti-immigration agenda as an example of this, saying that while ICE mass deportations have been portrayed negatively in the media, the U.S. president's goal is well-intended. "If you take immigration, for example, people feel that the work of ICE and the policy of deportation is extreme. But what he's trying to roll back was an extreme opening up of the Mexican border," he said. "Allowing anyone from anywhere in the world to fly in and simply pass into the United States—and fan out across the country without any control or management! The public wouldn't stand it." In the U.K, Starmer has also been pushing for stricter measures against immigration, warning that Britain risked becoming an "island of strangers"—a term that sparked harsh criticism among Labour voters and some members of parliament.
