US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban an exemption from sanctions to keep buying Russian oil on Friday, as the right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting.As Orban and Trump heaped praise on each other, the Hungarian nationalist said it would take a “miracle” for Ukraine to beat Moscow, underscoring the gulf between him and other European leaders on the war.Trump meanwhile wholeheartedly backed Orban on the touchstone issue of migration, saying that the Hungarian’s European Union counterparts should show him more respect.Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto hailed what he called the “major outcome” of the meeting, Orban’s first at the White House since Trump returned to power in January.”The United States has granted Hungary a full and unlimited exemption from sanctions on oil and gas. We are grateful for this decision, which guarantees Hungary’s energy security,” Szijjarto said on X.Trump had earlier said he would consider giving landlocked Hungary a pass because it has to rely on pipelines, leaving it heavily dependent on Russia despite EU efforts to wean it off.”As you know they don’t have the advantage of having sea,” Trump told reporters.- Canceled summit -Orban, who has often bucked the rest of the EU on pressuring Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, pressed his case that Russian energy was vital for his country.”Pipeline is not an ideological or political issue. It’s a physical reality because we don’t have port(s),” Orban said.Hungary — the closest ally in the European Union of both Trump and the Kremlin — has also offered to host a summit in Budapest between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.Trump called off the summit in October amid growing frustration with Putin’s refusal to end his invasion of Ukraine, and slapped Russia’s two biggest oil companies with sanctions.Washington has given firms who work with Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil one month to cut ties or face secondary sanctions, which would deny them access to US banks, traders, shippers and insurers.- ‘Respect this leader’ -Experts say the meeting with the US president was expected to give at least a “symbolic” win to Orban, who faces an unprecedented challenge to his 15-year rule ahead of elections next spring amid economic stagnation.Trump told European Union leaders to show more respect to Orban, who has thumbed his nose at them over migration.”I think they should respect Hungary and respect this leader very, very strongly because he’s been right on immigration,” Trump told reporters.Trump, who has carried out a sweeping crackdown on immigration at home, again alleged a link between migrants and crime, which is not backed up by statistics in the United States.Orban visited his “dear friend” Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida three times last year, but the US president’s return to power has had a mixed effect on Hungary.Washington has withdrawn sanctions against top Orban aide Antal Rogan and restored the country’s status in a visa waiver scheme.But Trump’s tariffs against the European Union have hit Hungary’s export-oriented car industry hard, contributing to an already weak economy.Daniel Hegedus, central Europe director at the German Marshall Fund (GMF), had predicted that Trump would show some flexibility on Orban’s request on the oil sanctions.”I expect Trump will give a victory to Orban that he can sell at home and strengthens his position, as the administration actively supports political forces that divide the EU,” he said.Orban — who has refused to send military aid to Ukraine and opposes Kyiv’s EU bid — has had frequent run-ins with Brussels on the rule of law and other issues.burs-dk/des

More than 1,000 flights were canceled across the United States on Friday after the Trump administration ordered reductions to ease strain on air traffic controllers working without pay amid a federal government shutdown.Forty airports were slated for the cuts, including major hubs in Atlanta, Newark, Denver, Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles.With Republicans and Democrats in a bitter standoff, particularly over health insurance subsidies, federal agencies have been grinding to halt since funding lapsed on October 1.Many government employees, including vital airport staff, are either working without pay or furloughed at home, waiting for the now nearly six-week crisis to end.The flight reductions are taking effect gradually, starting at four percent and rising to 10 percent next week if Congress still hasn’t reached a funding deal.More than 1,000 flights scheduled for Friday were canceled, according to tracking website FlightAware.The most affected airports late Friday were Reagan National in Washington, Denver International and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, according to data analyzed by AFP.According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), travelers at Reagan National were seeing average delays of four hours, with 90-minute waits in Phoenix and one hour delays in Chicago and San Francisco.”This is frustrating. We don’t need to be in this position,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom told CNBC.The upheaval means ordinary Americans are now directly feeling the impacts of the Washington budget fight that has shut down much of the government.US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed Democrats for the shutdown, saying they should vote to reopen the government.”If Democrats are going to go home this weekend, and they’ve kept the government shut down, that’s shameful,” Duffy told reporters at Reagan National Airport.In a post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump on Friday also called on Senate lawmakers to remain in Washington until an agreement to end the shutdown.Republicans control Congress, but Democrats have said they will refuse to sign off on the majority party’s budget plans, including severe healthcare cuts.- ‘Hurting people’ -The flight reduction measures come as the country enters its busiest travel time of the year, with the Thanksgiving holiday just weeks away.”This will get serious if things drag on to Thanksgiving,” retiree Werner Buchi told AFP at New York’s LaGuardia airport as he waited for his daughter to arrive on a flight from Wilmington, North Carolina.Rhonda, 65 — who arrived at LaGuardia without a hitch from Portland, Maine — worried about holiday plans “that could be ruined because people won’t talk to each other. This is hurting a lot of people,” she said.American Airlines said in a statement that its scheduled reduction amounted to 220 flight cancellations each day.Delta Air Lines said it was cutting about 170 flights scheduled for Friday, while broadcaster CNN reported Southwest Airlines axed around 100 flights set for that day.More than 6,800 US flights were delayed Thursday with some 200 cancellations, FlightAware data showed, with passengers facing long lines at security checkpoints.- ‘Safe to fly’ -The Trump administration sought to reassure people that flying remains safe.”It’s safe to fly today, tomorrow, and the day after because of the proactive actions we are taking,” Duffy said on social media late Thursday.But many in high-stress aviation-related jobs are now calling in sick and potentially working second jobs to pay their bills.

James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose reputation was tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died aged 97.The eminent American biologist died Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, said the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson went down as among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 discovery of the double helix, a breakthrough made with research partner Francis Crick.Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, Watson shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for their momentous work that gave rise to modern biology and opened the door to insights including on genetic code and protein synthesis.That ushered in a new era of modern life, allowing for revolutionary technologies in medicine, forensics and genetics, like criminal DNA testing or genetically manipulated plants.Watson was just 25 when he joined in on one of science’s greatest discoveries. He later went on to do groundbreaking work in cancer research and mapping the human genome. His 1968 memoir “The Double Helix” was a best-seller praised for its breezy writing about fierce competition in the name of scientific advancement. But on a personal level Watson was known as at best cantankerous and frank, at worst mean and bigoted.He routinely disparaged female scientists, including Rosalind Franklin, whose work on X-ray diffraction images of DNA offered the clue that made Watson and Crick’s modeling possible.Franklin, who worked with Wilkins, did not receive the Nobel. She died in 1958, and the prestigious prize is neither shared by more than three people nor given posthumously. Watson faced few consequences for his behavior until 2007 when he told a newspaper he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.”He apologized — but was swiftly removed as his lab’s chancellor and his public image never recovered.- ‘Twisting ladder’ -Born on April 6, 1928 in Chicago, Illinois, at the aqe of 15 James Dewey Watson won a scholarship to the University of Chicago.He received a Ph.D. in zoology in 1950 from Indiana University Bloomington, and embarked on an academic path that took him to European universities including Cambridge, where he met Crick and began a historic partnership.Working with X-ray images obtained by Franklin and Wilkins, researchers at King’s College in London, Watson and Crick started parsing out the double helix.Their first serious effort came up short.But their second attempt — an image of Franklin’s proved key, and the duo had it without her knowledge — resulted in Watson and Crick presenting the double-helical configuration.The now iconic depiction resembles a twisting ladder.Their model also showed how the DNA molecule could duplicate itself,  answering a fundamental question in the field of genetics.Watson and Crick published their findings in the British journal “Nature” in 1953 to great acclaim.Watson taught at Harvard for 15 years before becoming director of what today is known as the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which he transformed into a global hub of molecular biology research.From 1988 to 1992, Watson was one of the directors of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health, where he oversaw the mapping of the genes in the human chromosomes.He shared two sons, Rufus and Duncan, with his wife Elizabeth.And he received honorary degrees from dozens of universities, wrote many books and was heavily decorated. Jeff Goldblum played him in a BBC-produced film about the double helix.On Friday his former lab commended his “extraordinary contributions.”But the institution had ultimately severed ties with the scientist, including stripping him of his emeritus status — in a PBS documentary that aired in 2019, Watson once again made “reprehensible” remarks.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Friday that Earth can no longer sustain humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels, and warned the climate fight could be lost without a rapid transition to cleaner energy.The leftist leader spoke at a summit in the Brazilian Amazon where heads of state and government implored nations to start weaning themselves off the coal, oil and gas responsible for most planet-warming emissions.Evidence of dangerous warming has never been clearer: the last decade has been the hottest on record, marked by intensifying hurricanes, heatwaves and wildfires.Lula said tackling the urgent question over the future of energy would determine “success or failure in the battle against climate change.””Earth can no longer sustain the development model based on the intensive use of fossil fuels that has prevailed over the past 200 years,” he said in Belem, where an annual UN climate conference dubbed COP 30 kicks off next week.It comes two years after the world’s nations agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels.”Brazil is hoping for a roadmap towards this goal, but has faced resistance.Mexico’s Environment Secretary Alicia Barcena told AFP that “setting a specific date for the elimination of fossil fuels is always problematic because there are still many oil-producing countries.”It is very difficult to get everyone to agree to eliminate them by 2030, for example. But it can be proposed as a long-term goal,” she said.Lula is presiding over the climate negotiations just weeks after his government approved new oil drilling in the Amazon region.Rwanda’s environment minister Bernadette Arakwiye stressed that countries face a stark choice.”We can continue with incremental progress while the planet burns, or we can rise to meet the scale of this crisis,” she said.- Luxury flight tax -A shadow has been cast over the talks by the absence of leaders of the world’s biggest polluters — including the United States, whose President Donald Trump has dismissed climate science as a “con job” — but it has also catalyzed calls for greater mobilization.France, Spain and Kenya are among a group of countries spearheading a drive for a new tax on luxury air travel, rooted in the idea that premium flyers should pay more for their outsized contribution to global warming.”It is only fair that those who have more and pollute more should pay their fair share,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told the summit. The initiative is sure to face headwinds from the aviation sector, responsible for about 2.5 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.- Roadmap support -Climate change has slipped down the agenda as nations grapple with economic pressures, trade disputes, wars, and the Trump administration’s aggressive push for more fossil fuels.Brazil has won support for a new fund to save the world’s forests, quickly raking in over $5 billion in pledges to reward tropical countries for not chopping down carbon-absorbing trees.The world remains off track to keep end-of-century global warming below 1.5C compared to pre-industrial levels. It is the primary target of the Paris Agreement struck in 2015, and deemed necessary to avert the worst catastrophes of climate destabilization.A coalition of hundreds of NGOs representing the interests of women, Indigenous peoples, workers, small-scale farmers and other disadvantaged communities was unimpressed by what world leaders brought to the two-day summit.”The national plans of rich countries are not talking at all about a commitment they made two years ago… to move away from this brutal and cannibalistic fossil fuel economy,” said Jacobo Ocharan of Climate Action Network International, an NGO network that is part of an alternative so-called People’s Summit.”Nor have we seen absolutely anything regarding climate financing, financing that reaches the populations suffering from this climate crisis,” he told reporters in Belem.UN climate chief Simon Stiell stressed that, 10 years on from the Paris deal, global cooperation was delivering results.”Without that act of collective courage, we would still be heading for an impossible future of unchecked heating, of up to five degrees,” he said. “Because of it, the curve has bent below 3C — still perilous, but proof that climate cooperation works.”burs-np/ia/des/mlr/des