AFP USA

Hundreds of Voice of America contractors are expected to lose their jobs over the coming days, campaigners said, as the Trump administration moves to dismantle the US government-backed news service’s parent agency.Most of VOA’s roughly 1,300 staffers have been placed on administrative leave and its broadcasts suspended after a March 14 executive order gutted the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees US-funded international media.The Trump administration decided to terminate “hundreds of contractors over the following days,” advocacy group Save VOA wrote on social media on Thursday night. Some of the terminations affect J-1 visa holders who will have to leave the country within 30 days, it added in a statement.”Several of these journalists come from countries where they could be arrested or worse because of their reporting for VOA,” Save VOA wrote, adding that it was working with lawyers to try and reinstate the contractors. US President Donald Trump’s appointee to oversee USAGM, Kari Lake, told the Washington Post that 584 employees across the federal agency had been terminated, the majority from VOA. “In accordance with President Trump’s executive order dated March 14, we are in the process of rightsizing the agency and reducing the federal bureaucracy to meet administration priorities,” Lake told the Post.VOA director Michael Abramowitz said in a Facebook post that he was “heartbroken to learn about today’s mass terminations of personal service contractors.””Some of VOA’s most talented journalists have been [personal service contractors] — many of whom have escaped tyranny in their home countries to tell America’s story of freedom and democracy,” he wrote. VOA supervisory editor Fatima Tlis posted on social media on Thursday that her “entire team got terminated today, all of us granted political asylum by US administrations.” “How does throwing on the streets the journalists you brought in on a promise of liberty and security help the American people?” she wrote.Almost all of the networks affected by the March executive order — including VOA — have sued, accusing Trump of executive overreach. Created during the Second World War as an instrument of American soft power, USAGM is an independent agency tasked with promoting democracy and countering propaganda overseas through entities that include VOA, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. Before suspending service, Washington-based VOA broadcast in 49 languages to a weekly audience estimated at 354 million people. The White House has criticised the news service for its alleged leftist bias, dubbing it “Voice of Radical America” in official documents.

An American-Lebanese man will be sentenced on Friday for trying to kill novelist Salman Rushdie in a 2022 knife attack at a New York cultural center.Hadi Matar, 27, faces up to 25 years in prison after being convicted of attempted murder and assault charges in February this year.During the trial, Rushdie told jurors about Matar “stabbing and slashing” him during an event at the upscale cultural center.”It was a stab wound in my eye, intensely painful, after that I was screaming because of the pain,” Rushdie said, adding that he was left in a “lake of blood.”Matar — who shouted pro-Palestinian slogans on several occasions during the trial — stabbed Rushdie about 10 times with a six-inch blade.He previously told media he had only read two pages of Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses,” but believed the author had “attacked Islam.”Matar’s legal team had sought to prevent witnesses from characterizing Rushdie as a victim of persecution following Iran’s 1989 fatwa calling for his murder over supposed blasphemy in the novel.Iran has denied any link to the attacker and said only Rushdie was to blame for the incident.- Severe wounds -The optical nerve of Rushdie’s right eye was severed in the attack, and he told the court that “it was decided the eye would be stitched shut to allow it to moisturize. It was quite a painful operation — which I don’t recommend.”His Adam’s apple was also lacerated, his liver and small bowel penetrated, and he became paralyzed in one hand after suffering severe nerve damage to his arm.British-American Rushdie — now 77 — was rescued from Matar by bystanders. Last year, he published a memoir called “Knife” in which he recounted the near-death experience.His publisher announced in March that “The Eleventh Hour,” a collection of short stories examining themes and places of interest to Rushdie, will be released on November 4, 2025.Rushdie, who was born in Mumbai but moved to England as a boy, was propelled into the spotlight with his second novel “Midnight’s Children” (1981), which won Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize for its portrayal of post-independence India.But “The Satanic Verses” brought him far greater, mostly unwelcome, attention.Rushdie became the center of a fierce tug-of-war between free speech advocates and those who insisted that insulting religion, particularly Islam, was unacceptable under any circumstance.Books and bookshops were torched, his Japanese translator was murdered and his Norwegian publisher was shot several times.Rushdie lived in seclusion in London for a decade after the 1989 fatwa, but for the past 20 years — until the attack — he lived relatively normally in New York.

There are not many fans of Donald Trump’s dream to save Hollywood with tariffs among the dealmakers at the Cannes film festival — even among those who voted for him. Unlike Robert De Niro — a vocal critic who called Trump “America’s philistine president” at the festival’s opening ceremony — they told AFP they have no political or personal axes to grind with him.But they see his idea of 100-percent tariffs on movies produced “in foreign lands” as a “massive potential disaster” for an industry already shaken by streaming platforms.”I don’t see any benefit to what he is trying to do. If anything it could really hurt us,” Scott Jones, the head of Artist View Entertainment, told AFP.”A lot of people are out of work right now, and this is not going to make it better. There needs to be method to the madness,” said the producer, in Cannes with a Tennessee-shot Civil War epic “The Legend of Van Dorn”.Trump’s own “special ambassadors” to the industry, actors Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone, both signed a letter Tuesday thanking him for drawing attention to “runaway” US productions being shot overseas, but asking for tax breaks to keep them in the United States rather than tariffs.A wide coalition of Hollywood producers, writers and directors groups also put their names to the call.”More than 80 countries offer production tax incentives and as a result, numerous productions that could have been shot in America have instead located elsewhere,” they said.The biggest American film at Cannes is Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” — which was mostly shot in Britain and South Africa.- ‘Catastrophic’ -“Hollywood movies are made all over the world,” said Louise Lantagne, head of Quebecreatif, which supports the Canadian industry. And producers have been going north to make movies in Canada for decades “because we are cheaper and we have tax credits, great facilities and really top technical talent”, she added. “Of course it is going to be hell if (tariffs) happen,” she told AFP,  but “for the moment it is just a tweet — even if everyone is really stressed by these declarations”.Many, like American sales agent Monique White of California Pictures, think tariffs are “unfeasible” and Trump will quietly drop the idea. “Tariffs are legally and technically impossible without changing the law in Congress, which doesn’t look likely,” she told AFP.But others worry that the damage has already been done.One veteran producer who voted twice for Trump, and asked not be named, said the threat of them alone has already been “catastrophic for confidence”. “Investors, particularly foreign ones, don’t want to get burned down the line. He’s killing us,” he told AFP.- ‘Too expensive’ -Even if Trump manages to push tariffs through, Lantagne argued it would be a “bureaucratic nightmare to rule on what is a US film”, as financing and talent is now so international.Sylvain Bellemare, who won the Oscar for sound editing in 2017 for “Arrival”, gave two clear examples from his own recent work.He is in Cannes for the red carpet premiere of the US film “Splitsville” starring Dakota Johnson.”It was completely shot in Quebec,” he told AFP, but with American money.And last year he worked on the Paramount film “Novocaine”, which was set in San Diego but shot in South Africa with its post-production in Quebec.American producers “do not have the money anymore to shoot in the US like they used to in California, it is so expensive”, he told AFP.California’s governor Gavin Newsom has been struggling to push through plans to double tax breaks to $750 million (670 million euros) a year to stem the flight — a sum White said “is still way too small”.Meanwhile, Cannes’ bustling industry market is crammed with countries offering generous fiscal incentives to tempt US movie and TV makers their way.

A 62-year-old man known as the “Cross-Country Killer” was executed by lethal injection in the southern US state of Florida on Thursday.Glen Rogers was put to death at 6:16 pm (2216 GMT) at the Florida State Prison in Raiford for the November 1995 murder of Tina Marie Cribbs.The Tampa Bay Times reported his last words, wherein he cryptically referred to how his victims’ families’ questions would be answered “in the near future… and I hope in some way will bring you closure.”Then, Rogers addressed US President Donald Trump.”Keep making America great,” he said. “I’m ready to go.”Cribbs, a 34-year-old mother of two children, was stabbed to death and her body was found in a hotel bathtub.Rogers was also convicted of the murder in that same year of Sandra Gallagher, 33, in California and was a suspect in the murders of at least two other women, one in Mississippi and another in Louisiana.There have now been 16 executions in the United States this year: 12 by lethal injection; two by firing squad; and two using nitrogen gas.The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and, on his first day in office, called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”

Motown legend Smokey Robinson is under criminal investigation, law enforcement in Los Angeles said Thursday, just days after he was sued by four former housekeepers who allege the soul singer repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted them.”The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Special Victims Bureau is actively investigating criminal allegations involving William Robinson AKA ‘Smokey Robinson,'” said a statement sent to AFP.”The investigation is in the early stages, and we have no further comment,” it added.The development comes after a multimillion dollar lawsuit was filed in a Los Angeles court claiming the 85-year-old forced himself on female employees multiple times over a number of years, often when his wife was not at home.The sheriff’s department would not confirm the substance of their investigation, but lawyers for the women in the suit told AFP their clients were cooperating with the probe.”We are pleased to learn that the LA County Sheriff’s Dept has opened a criminal investigation into our clients’ claims of sexual assault against Smokey Robinson,” John Harris and Herbert Hayden told AFP in a joint statement.”Our clients intend to fully cooperate with LASD’s ongoing investigation in the pursuit of seeking justice for themselves and others that may have been similarly assaulted by him.”In the suit filed this month, one plaintiff alleges the “Tracks of My Tears” singer would summon her to his bedroom in his Los Angeles area home, and greet her wearing only his underwear.He would then sexually assault her, despite her protestations, with the suit claiming there were seven such attacks between March 2023 and when she felt compelled to resign in February 2024.Another former housekeeper alleges Robinson assaulted her more than 20 times over a four-year period, while a third says in the suit that she was “sexually harassed, sexually assaulted and raped” throughout her 12-year employment until 2024.The fourth woman says the singer began assaulting her in 2007 when she traveled with him to his Las Vegas home.None of the women are named in the suit, which is common in cases involving claims of sexual assault.The suit, which is seeking at least $50 million in damages, says none of the women reported the assaults at the time because they were intimidated by Robinson’s celebrity, and feared attacks on their character.Robinson was one of the founding members of The Miracles, a Detroit-based outfit that came together in the 1950s.The group had dozens of chart hits, including the smash “The Tears of a Clown” in 1967.

Attorneys for Sean “Diddy” Combs on Thursday tried to chip away at the credibility of Casandra Ventura, the music mogul’s former girlfriend, after two days of her grueling testimony in his trial on sex trafficking charges.Ventura, the singer widely known as Cassie, told jurors that Combs raped, beat and forced her into drug-fueled sex parties during their more than 10 years together — excruciating accounts that opened her up to scrutiny from Combs’s legal team.Defense attorney Anna Estevao’s line of questioning Thursday sought to imply that drug addiction played a key role in Combs’s violent outbursts, along with a pattern of toxic jealousy that both Ventura and the rapper were party to.Ventura said she and Combs both suffered from addiction to opioid drugs, and individually dealt with intense withdrawal symptoms.In her final question of the day, Estevao asked if the MDMA drugs taken prior to one of the “freak-off” sex performances that led to a 2016 assault at a Los Angeles-area hotel were a “bad batch” — Ventura replied she had no idea.Much of the day consisted of a relatively calm, meticulous focus on a ream of texts between the couple.The defense highlighted tender moments, pointing out messages in which Combs and Ventura expressed love for each other. Other messages were sexually explicit.When asked why she would look forward to seeing Combs, 38-year-old Ventura replied: “Because I had fallen in love with him and cared about him very much.”One of the messages from Ventura to Combs, dated 2009, read: “I’m always ready to freak off lolol.””Freak-offs” were elaborate sexual performances that involved Combs, Ventura and male escorts — sessions directed by the music mogul that sometimes lasted days, according to Ventura.In her third day on the witness stand in Manhattan’s federal court, Ventura — who is heavily pregnant with her third child — was collected and matter-of-fact. She answered many defense questions with a simple “yes.”And when it came to the messages, she emphasized the subtext.”Knowing somebody… you know what how they speak and you know what they mean,” she said, implying that even when Combs appeared kind and open, an alternative reading was apparent to her.At another moment, as Estevao directed her past a batch of texts, Ventura indicated the defense lawyer might be cherry-picking those elements that cast Combs in the best light.”This isn’t about what I feel is relevant, right? Because there’s a lot that we skipped over,” Ventura said of the voluminous text records she was given to read.- Domestic abuse or sex trafficking? -Combs, 55, was once one of the most powerful figures in the music industry.He is now incarcerated on charges of sex trafficking and leading an illegal sex ring that enforced its power with crimes including arson, kidnapping and bribery.He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.Ventura spent two days on the stand giving vivid accounts of coercive sex parties demanded by Combs — she participated in hundreds, she testified — and his routine brutal beatings of her.But the defense contends that while Ventura’s relationship with Combs was complicated and included domestic abuse, it did not amount to sex trafficking, and that she behaved erratically and even violently herself.Estevao implied Thursday that Ventura was taking an active role in planning the sexual encounters, though the singer reiterated that it was with Combs that she wanted to be intimate, not random escorts, and that her efforts were a bid “to make him happy.”- ‘Humiliating’ -On Wednesday, Ventura alleged that in 2018, as she and Combs were breaking up, he raped her in her living room.And she said her time with the once-revered artist left her with post-traumatic stress disorder, drug addiction and suicidal thoughts.In a graphic hotel surveillance clip from March 2016 shown to jurors Monday, Tuesday and again Wednesday, Combs is seen brutally beating and dragging Ventura down a hallway.Judge Arun Subramanian on Thursday urged the defense to move more quickly in cross-examining Ventura given her late-stage pregnancy, and attorneys said they would attempt to wrap up by Friday.Prosectuors indicated Dawn Richard — a singer who found fame on MTV’s reality show “Making the Band,” which Combs produced — will be among the next witnesses.Richard sued Combs last year on allegations including sexual assault and battery. She said in the court documents she had witnessed Combs physically abuse Ventura.Trial proceedings are anticipated to continue well into the summer.

The US Supreme Court appeared divided on Thursday on whether federal judges have the right to issue nationwide blocks to presidential decrees, as they heard arguments about President Donald Trump’s bid to scrap birthright citizenship.The case before the court involved Trump’s executive order ending automatic citizenship for children born on American soil, but the question at hand was whether a single district court can freeze an executive branch move with a universal injunction.Other Trump initiatives have also been blocked by judges — both Democratic and Republican appointees — leading the president to make an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, where conservatives make up a 6-3 majority.A ruling by the court in favor of the administration could have far-reaching ramifications for the ability of the judiciary to rein in Trump or future American presidents.Both conservative and liberal justices expressed concerns during oral arguments about the increasing use of nationwide injunctions by district courts in recent years, but appeared divided and uncertain about how to tackle the issue.Arguments had been scheduled for an hour but went on for more than two and barely touched on the legality of Trump’s birthright citizenship order, which has been paused by courts in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state that deemed it unconstitutional.Justice Samuel Alito, an arch-conservative, said nationwide injunctions pose a “practical problem” because there are hundreds of district court judges and every one of them is “convinced” they know best. Justice Elena Kagan, one of the three liberals on the court, noted that justices across the ideological spectrum have “expressed frustration at the way district courts are doing their business,” but said in the birthright case, “the courts keep deciding the same way.””You just keep losing in the lower courts,” Kagan told the government’s lawyer, Solicitor General John Sauer.- ‘Nuclear weapon’ -Sauer compared nationwide injunctions to a “nuclear weapon,” saying they “disrupt the Constitution’s careful balancing of the separation of powers.”The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to restrict the application of a district court’s injunction solely to the parties who brought the case and the district where the judge presides.”Courts grant relief to the people who sue in front of them,” Sauer said. “So the notion that relief has to be given to the whole world because others who have not taken the time to sue are not before the courts results in all these problems.”Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal, pushed back.”Your argument seems to turn our justice system… into a ‘catch me if you can’ kind of regime,” Jackson said, “where everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people’s rights.”And I don’t understand how that is remotely consistent with the rule of law.”Sauer responded that the government is the one being forced to go “racing from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, having to sort of clear the table in order to implement a new policy.”Past presidents have also complained about national injunctions shackling their agenda, but such orders have sharply risen under Trump, who has seen more in two months than Joe Biden did during his first three years in office.- ‘Chaos’ -Jeremy Feigenbaum, solicitor general of New Jersey, one of 23 states opposing the bid to end birthright citizenship, said there is an “extraordinary basis” for a nationwide injunction in this case.Allowing separate court rulings on the birthright issue would lead to “chaos on the ground where people’s citizenship turns on and off when you cross state lines,” Feigenbaum said.Trump’s executive order decrees that children born to parents in the United States illegally or on temporary visas would not automatically become citizens.The three lower courts ruled that to be a violation of the 14th Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”Trump’s order “reflects the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed citizenship to the children of former slaves, not to illegal aliens or temporary visitors,” Sauer said.The Supreme Court rejected such a narrow definition in a landmark 1898 case.Whatever the justices decide on nationwide injunctions, the actual question of whether Trump can legally end birthright citizenship is expected to be back in front of the top court before long.

US President Donald Trump’s son Eric on Thursday assured the world’s leading crypto conference that Washington would hoard “a tremendous amount of bitcoin,” aided by his father’s policies of slashing environmental protections to ramp up energy production.In front of a packed crowd at the Consensus conference in Toronto, the younger Trump promoted his latest venture into the crypto industry, American Bitcoin, which he said aims to mine the digital currency more cheaply than its rivals. The US crypto industry has welcomed Trump’s return to the White House, praising policies its says mark a clear departure from the deep skepticism of the previous Democratic administration toward digital currencies.But the Trump family’s entry into the crypto sector, from American Bitcoin to family-backed projects like World Liberty Financial and the $TRUMP meme coin, have increased potential ethical concerns.$TRUMP saw a spike in value when it announced that its top 220 holders would be invited to a dinner with the president — with the top 25 receiving “an exclusive reception” beforehand — set to take place on May 22 at the Trump National Golf Club near Washington.Eric Trump told the conference his father’s administration’s commitment to drive down US energy costs would help large-scale crypto mining businesses that need data centers, which consume massive amounts of energy. “We have a president in the United States that actually believes in having a proper energy policy in the United States of America, where he wants the cheapest energy anywhere in the world because that’s going to fuel all the innovation that we’re talking about right now,” he said.- ‘We can win that race’ -The Trump administration has made bringing down energy prices and increasing domestic supply a key policy, along with rolling back clean energy initiatives and opening more federal land and offshore areas for oil and gas drilling.Similar bitcoin mining businesses in France and Scotland are not viable, Eric Trump argued, because “the energy price is too high.”Trump said he sees the bitcoin sector as a competition with “two races.”One area is the accumulation of bitcoin, whose value topped $100,000 again this month. “Then I think there’s the game of who can mine it the cheapest.”American Bitcoin will strive to “accumulate a tremendous amount of bitcoin,” he said.  “But I also want to be the person who’s mining it, by far the cheapest. And I think we can win that race.”Bitcoin mining involves using computing power to solve complex mathematical problems.The data centers increasingly required for large-scale mining have drawn criticism from environmentalists over their substantial energy needs. American Bitcoin announced plans this week to go public on the New York Stock exchange via a merger with Gryphon Digital Mining Inc. 

The US government rested its case against Facebook-owner Meta on Thursday, as it tries to persuade a US judge that the tech giant bought Instagram and WhatsApp to neutralize them as rivals.The landmark case, brought by the Federal Trade Commission, could see Meta forced to divest itself of the two apps, which have grown into global powerhouses since their buyouts.The trial, held in a federal court in Washington, is presided over by Judge James Boasberg who will decide the outcome of the case.At the heart of the antitrust battle is the question of whether the crucial ingredient that undergirds Meta’s success is its ability to make connections between friends or family across its apps.The argument — that real-life connections are the glue that make Facebook’s apps successful — is the foundation of the government’s argument that describes a world where only youth-targeted Snap is a credible, if very distant, rival.Meta counters that its rivals are YouTube and TikTok and that it competes furiously in a much wider and ever-changing market to capture the eyeballs and attention of the world’s users.The trial, expected to continue for several more weeks, has seen top Meta executives take the stand, including founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former Meta chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.Much of the testimony has been devoted to government lawyers building their case that Facebook and its family of apps constitute a market that is distinct from TikTok and YouTube, apps where personal connections have very little impact on usage.The US government argues that Meta’s hold on friends and family offers a unique ability to build out its products and rake in billions of dollars in profits every quarter.As a sign of the monopoly, the government also points to widespread reports of customer dissatisfaction with Meta products but continued success and growth of its apps.Meta executives argue that its apps are facing major headwinds and that calling them a monopoly is wrong.On the government’s last day of calling its witnesses, the head of Facebook, Tom Alison told the court the company is in an “upheaval,” facing generational changes in online habits as young users prefer TikTok-style short video content over sharing pictures and text.”The reality is that Facebook was built 21 years ago and Gen Z users have different expectations,” Alison said.But the government believes that Facebook’s hold on friends and family shields its business from swings in the market and that it bought Instagram and WhatsApp, in 2012 and 2014 respectively, to remove potential threats to its dominance.- ‘Failed’ -Testimony in the past weeks has included revelations by Kevin Systrom, the founder of Instagram, that he felt that Zuckerberg had undermined the success of his photo-sharing app in favor of Facebook once he was bought out.This seemed to back the government’s argument that the purchase of Instagram was originally intended as an effort to remove a potential rival, before it became successful in its own right.Meta on Thursday began calling its own list of witnesses, beginning with executives from Snap.”After five weeks of trial, it is clear that the FTC has failed to meet the legal standard required under antitrust law,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.”Regardless, we will present our case to show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram competes with TikTok (and YouTube and X and many other apps),” Meta added.

A US judge pleaded not guilty on Thursday to helping a man evade immigration agents, court documents showed, as she argues that federal officials have no power to prosecute her.Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury on charges of obstructing an official proceeding and concealing a person from arrest. Her attorney issued a statement saying that Dugan “asserts her innocence and looks forward to being vindicated in court,” according to the New York Times.President Donald Trump has conducted a crackdown on undocumented migrants since coming to power in January, and has clashed with several courts which have argued he has not followed due process. Dugan’s arrest set off a torrent of criticism by Democrats and applause by some Republicans, while more than 150 former state and federal judges signed a letter to the Justice Department calling the arrest an attempt to intimidate the judiciary.Dugan is seeking to dismiss the case, arguing that she cannot be prosecuted over actions she took as a judge in and around her courtroom, according to local media. Her lawyers have pointed to a Supreme Court decision last year that found that Trump was immune from prosecution for official acts.The charges stem from a standoff with federal agents outside Dugan’s courtroom in downtown Milwaukee in April. They had come to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican defendant appearing on misdemeanor battery charges whom immigration officials say was deported in 2013.Prosecutors say Dugan sent the agents down the hall to see the chief judge and, while they were away, postponed Flores-Ruiz’s hearing and escorted him through a jury exit to a private part of the courthouse.The area leads to the public hallway where immigration agents were waiting. But Flores-Ruiz was allowed to leave the building before being arrested outside.Dugan was arrested a week later in a sting publicized by FBI Director Kash Patel, who posted a photo on social media of her being led away in handcuffs. Attorney General Pam Bondi accused Dugan of “protecting a criminal defendant over victims of crime.”Protesters gathered outside the court in Milwaukee in support of Dugan, waving signs reading “Stop Trump’s war on democracy,” “Intimidation is a tool of fascism” and “No justice, no peace.”A trial has been scheduled for July.