Portuguese soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and billionaire Elon Musk were among the guests at a lavish White House dinner hosted by US President Donald Trump for the visiting Saudi crown prince on Tuesday.Ronaldo plays for Saudi club Al Nassr, one of a number of aging players who have been attracted to the desert kingdom’s heavy spending on stars despite its rights record.The 40-year-old, whose contract with the Saudi club ends this summer, took his place near the head of Trump’s table a few seconds before the president and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman entered.”You know, my son is a big fan of Ronaldo,” Trump said in his pre-dinner speech, adding that his soccer-mad son Barron, 19, got to meet the legendary player. “I think he respects his father a little bit more now, just the fact that I introduced you.”Ronaldo was not the only soccer-related dinner guest, as FIFA chief Gianni Infantino made yet another appearance at the White House ahead of the 2026 World Cup, which the United States is co-hosting.Ronaldo says next year’s World Cup — for which Portugal booked their place on Sunday — will “definitely” be his last.Also at the black-tie dinner was Space X and Tesla tycoon Musk, in a sign that the rift between the president and the world’s richest man has healed after their fiery public divorce. South African-born Musk spent five months as head of the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and accompanied Trump on a trip to Saudi Arabia in May. But the relationship collapsed in July after Musk criticized Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful” spending bill and then said that the president was in investigatory files relating to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Trump responded by threatening Musk with deportation.Musk, wearing a tuxedo, was seen chatting to fellow guests at a candlelit table — although a different one from Trump’s.During the dinner Trump also praised the Saudi prince as a “man of leadership,” having earlier defended his royal visitor over the 2018 murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by “Kryptos.”The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far.Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. The sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging $50 for each response.In August, Sanborn announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4 as he no longer had the “physical, mental or financial resources” to maintain the code.In a sign of wide interest in Kryptos, which has inspired cultural figures including “The Da Vinci Code” author Dan Brown, the code’s solution is on course to fetch more than $240,000 in a sale due to end this Thursday. So when two friends announced in October they had uncovered the last message held by Kryptos (“hidden” in ancient Greek), it invoked fury and concern from the auction house and Sanborn.Jarett Kobek, a writer from Los Angeles, told AFP how the pair came across the code after he noticed a reference to Washington’s Smithsonian Institution, where Sanborn held his archives, in the auction catalog. He asked his friend Richard Byrne, who is based in the US capital, to take a look through the files.”I took images of all the coding stuff in the files,” said Richard Byrne, a journalist and playwright.A few hours later, Kobek called him and said “Hey, you might have found something interesting,” he recalled.Using Byrne’s photos and clues previously shared by Sanborn, Kobek unraveled the K4 message.- Legal threats -The two men decided to write to Sanborn to share their discovery — but instead of congratulations, they were met by alarm.Sanborn, the pair said, asked them to sign non-disclosure agreements in exchange for a share of the money raised in the auction.”The NDA is a total non-starter,” Kobek said. “You are running an auction where what you are selling is intellectual property exclusivity.””If I take money from that sale, I feel like this would almost certainly make me party to fraud.”They later went public with their discovery in a New York Times piece in October.Sanborn, explaining his communication with the men, wrote in a public letter: “I was trying to save K4 from disclosure by any means possible. I had succeeded for 35 years after all.”Kobek said the pair were keen to avoid disrupting the K4 auction. “The last thing anyone wants to do is take money from an 80-year-old artist,” he said.Even if they have no intention of revealing the code’s solution, the two men say the auction house has sent them cease-and-desist letters.Sanborn has acknowledged his error in archiving the crucial information — but he downplayed the discovery.He said the pair had “found and photographed five pieces of scrambled texts that I had accidentally placed in the archive boxes all those years ago.””The scrambled plain text was found, but without the coding method or the key. This is a very important distinction,” he separately told a news conference in November.And, he added, the discovery does not end the mystery of Kryptos.K5, with a “similar but not identical” coding system to K4, is also to be released after the current auction sale. 

A US district court, in a setback for President Donald Trump, struck down a congressional map on Tuesday redrawn by Republicans in Texas that was intended to give the party five more likely seats in the House of Representatives.The court ruled that the new map, which weakened five Democratic districts, could not be used in the 2026 midterm elections, where Republicans are seeking to safeguard their slim majority in the House.Democrats are eyeing a big win that would allow them to challenge the Republican president for the rest of his term.The court said the redrawn map, which was challenged by Black and Hispanic voters, amounted to illegal racial gerrymandering.In a split 2-1 decision, the court ordered Republican-ruled Texas to use a 2021 map for next year’s congressional midterm vote.The decision, which Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott said he would appeal to the conservative-majority Supreme Court, is the latest development in a congressional redistricting battle between Republicans and Democrats playing out nationwide.Democratic-ruled California, in response to the move in Texas, voted earlier this month to redraw its own congressional districts to favor Democrats, potentially gaining up to five more House seats.That move has been challenged in court by the Republican Party of California in a lawsuit that has received the backing of the Trump administration.Republicans in Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have also moved to create more Republican-leaning congressional districts in their states.US electoral districts are traditionally drawn following the national census to reflect population numbers. The next census is not scheduled until 2030.But Republican-ruled Texas, under pressure from Trump, decided to redraw its congressional maps mid-decade to yield more Republican districts.Republicans currently hold a narrow five-seat majority in the House. They also have a majority in the Senate, preventing Democrats from mounting meaningful opposition to Trump.District Judge Jeffrey Brown, in the 160-page ruling striking down the Texas redistricting, said “the public perception of this case is that it’s about politics.””To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map,” Brown wrote. “But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”Partisan gerrymandering is allowed in the United States but crafting congressional districts on the basis of race is considered unlawful.- ‘Brazen’ -Brown, a Trump appointee, was joined in the opinion by a district judge appointed by Democratic president Barack Obama. A judge appointed by Republican president Ronald Reagan dissented.Gene Wu, the leader of the Democratic minority in the Texas state House of Representatives, welcomed the court ruling.”A federal court just stopped one of the most brazen attempts to steal our democracy that Texas has ever seen,” Wu said in a statement.”Greg Abbott and his Republican cronies tried to silence Texans’ voices to placate Donald Trump, but now have delivered him absolutely nothing.”The Texas governor said the state would “swiftly” lodge an appeal with the Supreme Court.”The Legislature redrew our congressional maps to better reflect Texans’ conservative voting preferences –- and for no other reason,” Abbott said in a statement. “Any claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd.”Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Trump administration expects Texas to triumph at the Supreme Court, where conservatives have a 6-3 majority.”We strongly disagree with today’s district court ruling on Texas’s redistricting map — Texas’s map was drawn the right way for the right reasons,” Bondi said on X.

Donald Trump ripped into a reporter from the US network ABC News on Tuesday, just days after calling another woman journalist “piggy” after she asked a question related to the convicted sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein.Trump threatened ABC’s broadcast license after reporter Mary Bruce posed questions during a White House visit by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.The earlier incident involving Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey happened a few days ago on Air Force One, but only came to light on social media on Tuesday.”Quiet. Quiet, piggy,” Trump said to Lucey on Friday, pointing his finger at her, after she asked him why he would not release material on disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein “if there’s nothing incriminating in the files.”CNN journalist Jake Tapper called Trump’s “piggy” comment “disgusting and completely unacceptable.”On Tuesday, Trump singled out ABC News’s Bruce after she asked a series of questions in the Oval Office as the US president hosted the de facto Saudi ruler in a high-profile event.Bruce first asked questions about whether dealings by Trump’s family business with the Saudis were a conflict of interest.She then quizzed Prince Mohammed over the 2018 murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying “US intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist, 9/11 families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office. Why should Americans trust you?”Trump cut in angrily, saying: “ABC fake news. One of the worst in the business.”- ‘No more questions’ -The president then said he has “nothing to do” with the Trump organization, which is currently run by his two eldest sons and which announced a deal with a Saudi developer for a resort in the Maldives on Monday.Trump also backed Prince Mohammed’s denial of involvement in the Khashoggi murder, despite US intelligence suggesting he approved the operation. “You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Trump snapped.Trump boiled over again when Bruce later asked about the flashpoint issue of Epstein. Congress voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to order the release of files about the financier, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.”It’s not the question that I mind. It’s your attitude. I think you are a terrible reporter,” Trump shot back at Bruce.Trump said he had “nothing to do” with Epstein and repeated his claim that the scandal is a “hoax.”And “your crappy company is one of the perpetrators,” he told her.Trump urged the head of the US broadcast regulator — who has previously threatened ABC over its content — to “look at” taking away its license.He then pointed at Bruce: “No more questions from you.”