Rapper A$AP Rocky was found not guilty of two counts of felony assault at the conclusion of a trial in Los Angeles on Tuesday.The musician, who has two children with singer Rihanna, had faced more than two decades in prison if he had been convicted of the alleged attack on a former friend in Hollywood in 2021.There was commotion in the courtroom as the jury’s verdict was read out, with the Grammy-nominated hip hop star, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, hugging people in relief as he was declared not guilty.During the weeks-long trial, prosecutors said Mayers had shot a nine-millimeter semi-automatic weapon during a confrontation with Terell Ephron, also known as A$AP Relli, on November 6, 2021, in the heart of Hollywood, grazing Ephron’s hand.Mayers, 36, had insisted he had been carrying only a harmless prop gun.The two had previously been friends, and had both been part of A$AP, a rap collective from New York, but had fallen out because other members of the group felt Mayers’ commercial success had made him arrogant.Ephron told the jury he had been lured to a parking garage for an encounter that was partially caught on grainy surveillance video.He claimed that after the two exchanged words, Mayers pulled a gun from his waistband, put it toward Relli’s stomach and said, “I’ll kill you right now.”Ephron said two bullets were fired, with one of them grazing his knuckles.Defending attorney Joe Tacopina said the weapon was “absolutely nothing more than a prop gun… a starter gun, a blank gun, a fake gun. It’s used in pop movies and music videos.”Describing Ephron as “a criminal and a perjurer,” Tacopina said seven police officers searched the scene of the shooting hours later but found neither shell casings nor a weapon. Yet, after officers left, Ephron returned to the scene and discovered a pair of nine-millimeter shell casings he said he had picked up from the street where he was shot at, Tacopina said.Neither side was able to produce the gun they said had been used on the night.- ‘Extortion’ -Tacopina said the whole story of a shooting had been manufactured to extort money from his wealthy and successful client.Speaking after the verdict, Tacopina told reporters the jury had seen through the “mirage of a case.””I’ve always said this was an extortion. The extortion played out live in court,” he said.”The district attorney should look long and hard at prosecuting Terell Ephron.”Tacopina paid tribute to Mayers and Rihanna, whom he described as “the greatest people.”There was no immediate reaction from either Mayers or Rihanna, who had been in court frequently during the trial. A$AP Rocky shot to fame in the first half of the last decade with two mega-selling albums: “Long. Live. A$AP” and “At. Long. Last. A$AP.” In 2019, he was given a suspended prison sentence in Sweden after a fight, in an affair that caused diplomatic tensions between Stockholm and Washington, pushing then-president Donald Trump to intervene.

An asteroid that could level a city now has a 3.1-percent chance of striking Earth in 2032, according to NASA data released Tuesday — making it the most threatening space rock ever recorded by modern forecasting. Despite the rising odds, experts say there is no need for alarm. The global astronomical community is closely monitoring the situation and the James Webb Space Telescope is set to fix its gaze on the object, known as 2024 YR4, next month.”I’m not panicking,” Bruce Betts, chief scientist for the nonprofit Planetary Society told AFP. “Naturally when you see the percentages go up, it doesn’t make you feel warm and fuzzy and good,” he added, but explained that as astronomers gather more data, the probability will likely edge up before rapidly dropping to zero.2024 YR4 was first detected on December 27 last year by the El Sauce Observatory in Chile.Astronomers estimate its size to be between 130 and 300 feet (40–90 meters) wide, based on its brightness. Analysis of its light signatures suggests it has a fairly typical composition, rather than being a rare metal-rich asteroid.The International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), a worldwide planetary defense collaboration, issued a warning memo on January 29 after the impact probability had crossed one percent. Since then, the figure has fluctuated but continues to trend upward.NASA’s latest calculations estimate the impact probability at 3.1 percent, with a potential Earth impact date of December 22, 2032.That translates to odds of one in 32 — roughly the same as correctly guessing the outcome of five consecutive coin tosses.The last time an asteroid of greater than 30 meters in size posed such a significant risk was Apophis in 2004, when it briefly had a 2.7 percent chance of striking Earth in 2029 — a possibility later ruled out by additional observations.Surpassing that threshold is “historic,” said Richard Moissl, head of the European Space Agency’s planetary defense office, which puts the risk slightly lower at 2.8 percent.- Webb observations in March -“It’s a very, very rare event,” he told AFP, but added: “This is not a crisis at this point in time. This is not the dinosaur killer. This is not the planet killer. This is at most dangerous for a city.”Data from the Webb telescope — the most powerful space observatory — will be key in better understanding its trajectory, said the Planetary Society’s Betts.”Webb is able to see things that are very, very dim,” he said — which is key because the asteroid’s orbit is currently taking it out towards Jupiter, and its next close approach will not be until 2028.If the risk rises over 10 percent, IAWN would issue a formal warning, leading to a “recommendation for all UN members who have territories in potentially threatened areas to start terrestrial preparedness,” explained Moissl.Unlike the six-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, 2024 YR4 is classified as a “city killer” — not a global catastrophe, but still capable of causing significant destruction.Its potential devastation comes less from its size and more from its velocity, which could be nearly 40,000 miles per hour if it hits.If it enters Earth’s atmosphere, the most likely scenario is an airburst, meaning it would explode midair with a force of approximately eight megatons of TNT — more than 500 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb.But an impact crater cannot be ruled out if the size is closer to the higher end of estimates, said Betts.The potential impact corridor spans the eastern Pacific, northern South America, the Atlantic, Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and South Asia — though Moissl emphasized it is far too early for people to consider drastic decisions like relocation.The good news: there’s ample time to act. NASA’s 2022 DART mission proved that spacecraft can successfully alter an asteroid’s path, and scientists have theorized other methods, such as using lasers to create thrust by vaporizing part of the surface, pulling it off course with a spacecraft’s gravity, or even using nuclear explosions as a last resort.

Donald Trump’s threats of import tariffs have sent shockwaves through Canada, forcing businesses to question their dependence on the United States — a reassessment that is creating headaches for many sectors.”It was an absolute shock,” Matthew Holmes, vice president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, told AFP. “There’s an incredible anxiety that comes from the unpredictability and the uncertainty.””It got everybody talking in Canada about (how) we can’t trust this partnership anymore,” he added.Earlier this month US President Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports, then granted a 30-day reprieve.The pause, however, has done little to reassure Canadian businesses that send more than 75 percent of Canada’s exports to the United States, and who worry that a trade war would lead to a recession and hundreds of thousands of job losses.Canada must prepare for the tariffs by removing barriers to trade between provinces and diversify its export markets, Holmes said. “We need to be ready and have the infrastructure and relationships and start building those out now.”Otherwise, he said, Canadian businesses will be “really, really screwed.”- ‘No quick fix’ -According to a recent survey, nine out of 10 Canadians agree on the need to lessen Canada’s trade reliance on the United States.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently hosted a summit in Toronto that brought business leaders together to discuss ways of growing the Canadian economy, including removing internal trade barriers, diversifying export markets and boosting productivity.Provincial governments and business leaders, he told delegates, must “step up and push hard” to make Canada more competitive, while acknowledging that it has been easy to just sell to the country’s southern neighbor.But that may be easier said than done, according to Robert Gillezeau, an economics professor at the University of Toronto.”The two economies are extremely interconnected with over a trillion dollars in trade between the two countries,” he told AFP, pointing to their close proximity and “longstanding good relations” for how ties developed.”For some sectors, it’ll be a little bit easier” to disentangle from the United States, Gillezeau said.For others, “it’s going to be a mess,” he added. “You can’t just snap your fingers and take that integrated industry and have it work with someone else or have it become fully domestic… There is no quick fix.” The food industry is a case in point.”We’ve frozen our purchases of some American goods and we’re looking elsewhere for alternatives,” explains Mike Bono of Can-Am Food Services.But it is not possible for the company — which is one of the largest distributors of fruits and vegetables in Quebec and Ontario with nearly 3,000 customers including restaurants and hotels — to find substitutes for all of its American offerings.- Interprovincial trade barriers -The removal of interprovincial trade barriers was flagged in a report as a way to boost Canada’s economy as far back as 1940.Ottawa led efforts to dismantle them in 2017 but hundreds of exceptions were kept in an agreement signed by the provinces.Removing these barriers would improve productivity and increase Canadian GDP, but “would take a level of effort and coordination that we rarely see in the federation,” Gillezeau said.Internal Trade Minister Anita Anand, who wants to see these barriers abolished as soon as possible, believes that “in the face of Donald Trump’s repeated threats, we must choose Canada.”She explained that removing the barriers — such as alcohol sales restrictions, different labelling rules, varying professional licensing certifications, and independent dairy marketing boards in each province — could lower prices by 15 percent, boost productivity and inject up to Can$200 billion into the economy.Some are also calling for east-west oil and gas pipeline projects to be revived in order to lessen dependency on US infrastructure. Oil from western Alberta, for example, is currently shipped via a pipeline that dips into the United States before emerging in Ontario.

A US judge on Tuesday declined a request to temporarily block Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from firing federal employees and accessing agency data, a victory for President Donald Trump in his bid to shrink the government workforce.Fourteen Democratic-ruled states had filed suit last week contesting Musk’s legal authority but District Judge Tanya Chutkan denied their emergency request to pause his actions.”Plaintiffs have not carried their burden of showing that they will suffer imminent, irreparable harm absent a temporary restraining order,” Chutkan said.DOGE is a free-ranging entity run by Musk, the world’s richest person and Trump’s biggest donor. The billionaire has taken an assertive role in the new administration, with his agency aiming to cut hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending.His plans have effectively shuttered some federal agencies, sent thousands of staff members home and sparked legal battles across the country.In their suit, the 14 states claimed that Musk and DOGE lacked statutory authority for their actions because he had not been formally nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.”(Musk) exercises virtually unchecked power across the Executive Branch, making decisions about expenditures, contracts, government property, regulations, and the very existence of federal agencies,” they said.In addition, Musk and DOGE have gained access to “sensitive data, information, systems, and technological and financial infrastructure across the federal government,” they added.The 14 states had sought to block DOGE from accessing the data systems of the Office of Personnel Management and the Departments of Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, Energy, Transportation and Commerce, and from terminating any of their employees.- ‘Considerable uncertainty’ -Chutkan, in her ruling, said “the court is aware that DOGE’s unpredictable actions have resulted in considerable uncertainty and confusion for Plaintiffs and many of their agencies and residents.”But the ‘possibility’ that Defendants may take actions that irreparably harm Plaintiffs ‘is not enough,'” she said.Musk’s cost-cutting spree has been met with legal pushback on a number of fronts and a mixed bag of rulings.A different federal judge last week lifted a freeze he had temporarily imposed on a mass buyout plan offered by the Trump administration to federal workers.In the mass buyout case, labor unions representing federal employees had filed suit to block the scheme masterminded by Musk to slash the size of government by encouraging federal workers to quit.In an email titled “Fork in the Road,” the more than two million US government employees were given an offer to leave with eight months’ pay or risk being fired in future culls.According to the White House, more than 75,000 federal employees signed on to the buyout offer from the Office of Personnel Management.Trump’s executive actions have been challenged in dozens of court cases and the White House has accused “judges in liberal districts” of “abusing their power” to block the president’s moves.The decisions have come from judges nominated by both Republican and Democratic presidents, including Trump himself during his first term.Chutkan, an appointee of Democratic former president Barack Obama, presided over the now-abandoned case against Trump on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.