Trump opens golf course in Scotland before heading home
Trump, wrapping up a five-day visit to Scotland, was joined by former football players, golfers and business leaders for a first round of golf at his new second 18-hole course at Trump International near Aberdeen, Scotland.
Initially billed as a private visit, the trip quickly morphed into a diplomatic mission, including a trade agreement sealed with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, bilateral meetings with British officials and phone calls aimed at ending a nascent war between Cambodia and Thailand.
During a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday, Trump raised pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a worsening hunger crisis in the war-torn Palestinian enclave of Gaza.
Asked at Tuesday's event what he would say to Netanyahu, Trump said he was trying to get things "straightened out".
During his talks with Starmer, Trump said he disagreed with Netanyahu's assessment there was no starvation in Gaza, while giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a much tighter deadline to make progress towards ending the war in Ukraine.
Flanked by his two sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr, with several grandchildren nearby, Trump raved about the beauty of the new golf course in the dunes of northeastern Scotland, before teeing off.
"I look forward to playing it today. We're going to play it very quickly, and then I go back to (Washington) DC and we put out fires all over the world," he said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new course, alluding in part to a ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia.
"We stopped a war - we've stopped about five wars. So that's much more important than playing golf."
Several nations have nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, a message endorsed by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a social media post in recent days.
Golfers Paul McGinley and Rich Beem teed off with Trump and his son Eric, and an eclectic mix of notable figures followed.
Former Chelsea and AC Milan striker and top Ukraine goal-scorer Andriy Shevchenko, who is now the president of his country's football association, was a guest, as were fellow ex-football players Robbie Fowler, Gianfranco Zola and Jim Leighton.
Scottish First Minister John Swinney, who met with Trump earlier on Tuesday, also attended, along with Adrian Mardell, the chief executive of Jaguar Land Rover, and Alastair King, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, who represents Britain's finance industry.
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Perth Now
21 minutes ago
- Perth Now
Sydney prepares for bridge march
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ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Did Donald Trump just give China a major advantage on AI?
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According to Jason Van Der Schyff, a fellow at Australian Strategic Policy Institute's technology and security program, this backflip may be in response to the booming black market demand for high-powered US chips in China. "Over a billion dollars worth of restricted chips were smuggled into China in just a few months," he said. "The reversal may be a pivot by the administration, recognising if you don't offer a legal channel for the slightly degraded chips, buyers will simply go around you." Professor Shahriar Akter, who specialises in the study of advanced analytics and AI at the University of Wollongong said this move seems to follow "a philosophy in Silicon Valley that if you sell more" it will pour more back into "your research and development". Associate Professor in Information Systems at Curtin University, Mohammad Hossain, suggested the Trump administration is trying to kill two birds with one stone. 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The Age
an hour ago
- The Age
In 30 years at The Age, I never wrote on Israel-Palestine. Now, I must
I began writing for The Age in 1981, and worked there for more than 30 years, the last 12 as religion editor. Among the 3 million or so words of mine the then-Fairfax papers published, none were about Israel/Palestine. That is partly because the conflict is not primarily religious. But more importantly, as a wise philosopher advised me, when it comes to such controversial and deeply divisive issues, unless you can include every necessary nuance it is better not to write at all. You are more likely to inflame. So I begin this article with a trigger warning: it is certain to offend almost everyone who is wedded to one side or the other. If for years I thought, 'how can I write about Israel/Palestine', today I think, 'how can I not?' On October 8, 2023, after the bestial Hamas attack on Israelis, I and millions of others believed Israel had a right to defend itself. Israel's increasingly callous response is steadily eroding that support. How do we cope with the realisation that the nation that we long saw as a beacon of hope in the Middle East has carried out calculated and unconscionable cruelty? What do we do when our side are the bad guys (or as bad as the other side)? For decades, Israel was the David facing the Goliath of the Arab world, fighting wars simply to survive in 1948, 1967 and 1973. Today Israel is the Goliath, mercilessly hammering a people who simply cannot resist. I am half-Jewish (my father's side). Our wider Dutch family was virtually extinguished in World War II: our family book has scores of entries that end 'died: Auschwitz' or Treblinka or Sobibor. I do not claim this gives me an atom of extra moral authority, but it exacerbates my horror. I ardently support Israel's right to exist. If that makes me a Zionist, then I suggest every decent human being should be. But I simply cannot equate that with today's Israeli government. Both Israel and Hamas are firing out propaganda as fast as they can, and one has to be wary about accepting claims. Yet the systematic destruction of Gaza and its starving children are clearly not invented, while it is simply unfathomable that Israeli troops are shooting desperate Palestinians as they line up for scarce aid or endorsing awful settler violence on the West Bank. There are claims and counter-claims on these issues, but it is the fact the violence exists that matters.
