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Republicans in the US Congress announced an investigation into Harvard University on Thursday, accusing it of flouting civil rights law in an escalation of President Donald Trump’s attacks on elite institutions.The lawmakers wrote to the world-renowned education and research establishment demanding documents on its hiring practices, diversity programs and last year’s pro-Palestinian campus protests.The letter — signed by House Oversight Committee chair James Comer and House leadership chair Elise Stefanik — came with Trump seeking unprecedented levels of control over the country’s oldest and wealthiest university.Comer and Stefanik castigated Harvard President Alan Garber for rejecting demands for supervision by the White House, which has canceled $2.2 billion in funding and threatened further reprisals.”Harvard is apparently so unable or unwilling to prevent unlawful discrimination that the institution, at your direction, is refusing to enter into a reasonable settlement agreement proposed by federal officials intended to put Harvard back in compliance with the law,” they told Garber. “No matter how entitled your behavior, no institution is entitled to violate the law.”Trump — furious at Harvard for rejecting oversight of its admissions, hiring practices and political slant — told reporters the university’s conduct had been “horrific.”The president, who is in charge of every aspect of the federal government, said he was “not involved” in its fight with Harvard but had “read about it.” “I think what they did was a disgrace,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “They’re obviously anti-Semitic and all of a sudden, they’re starting to behave.”Harvard is just the latest in a series of top universities and other institutions in the administration’s crosshairs.But while New York’s Columbia University bowed to less far-ranging demands, Harvard flatly rejected the pressure, saying it would not “negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights.”Trump said Harvard should lose its government research contracts and tax-exempt status, while administration officials threatened to ban the school from admitting foreigners, who make up more than a quarter of the student body.Trump has also targeted Brown, Cornell, Northwestern, Pennsylvania and Princeton universities, threatening each with freezes of between $175 million and $1 billion, according to US media.Republicans have said their campaign against universities is a response to what they call rampant anti-Semitism, following divisive protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that swept campuses last year.Columbia — an epicenter of the activism — agreed last month to oversight of its Middle Eastern studies department after being threatened with a loss of $400 million in federal funds.Harvard staff and students rallied against the Trump administration in a campus protest Thursday aimed at encouraging university leadership to hold the line, research fellow Avi Steinberg told AFP. “They actually want Harvard to make good on its promises to its students and its faculty to protect every single student on campus, to protect the faculty and especially faculty free speech,” he said.

A mass shooting allegedly carried out by the son of a local deputy sheriff with her old service weapon left two people dead at a university in Florida, police in the southeastern US state said Thursday.Five people were hospitalized when the gunman — identified as Phoenix Ikner — rampaged through Florida State University, shooting at students, before he was shot and injured by local law enforcement.The campus was locked down as gunfire erupted, with students ordered to shelter in place as first responders swarmed the site moments after the lunchtime shootings.Leon County Sheriff Walt McNeil told reporters Ikner, 20, was a student at the university and the son of a an “exceptional” 18-year member of his staff.”Unfortunately, her son had access to one of her weapons, and that was one of the weapons that was found at the scene.He added that the suspect was part of Sheriff’s Office training programs, meaning “it’s not a surprise to us that he had access to weapons.”Ikner was taken to hospital after being shot. His condition was not immediately known.Bystander footage aired by CNN appeared to show a young man walking on a lawn and shooting at people who were trying to get away.Witnesses spoke of chaos as people began running through the sprawling campus as shots rang out near the student union.”Everyone just started running out of the student union,” a witness named Wayne told local news station WCTV.”About a minute later, we heard about eight to 10 gunshots.”The eyewitness said he saw one man who appeared to have been shot in the midsection.”The whole entire thing was just surreal. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”Everything was really quiet, than all chaotic.”- ‘Make them take time’ -The two people who died were not students, police said, but refused to give further details.The university, a public institution with more than 40,000 students, cancelled all classes and told students who did not live on campus to leave.FSU President Richard McCullough said the university was working to support those affected by the attack.”This is a tragic day for Florida State University,” he said.”We’re absolutely heartbroken by the violence that occurred on our campus earlier today.”Student Sam Swartz told the Tallahassee Democrat he had been in the basement of the student union when shooting started. “Everyone started freaking out,” Swartz said, adding he had heard around 10 shots.A group of eight people huddled in a hallway and barricaded themselves with trash cans and plywood.”I remember learning to do the best you can to make them take time,” Swartz said, adding that mass shooters are “just trying to get as many people” as they can.Footage on social media showed a stream of young adults walking through corridors with their hands in the air as they evacuated the building.Mass shootings are common in the United States, where a constitutional right to bear arms trumps demands for stricter rules.That is despite widespread public support for tighter control on firearms, including restricting the sale of high-capacity clips and limiting the availability of automatic weapons of war.President Donald Trump called the shooting “a shame, a horrible thing,” but insisted that Americans should retain unfettered access to guns.”I’m a big advocate of the Second Amendment. I have been from the beginning. I protected it,” he said, referring to the part of the US Constitution gun advocates say protects firearm ownership.”These things are terrible, but the gun doesn’t do the shooting — the people do.”A tally by the non-profit Gun Violence Archive shows there have been at least 81 mass shootings — which it defines as four or more people shot — in the United States so far this year.

Netflix on Thursday reported quarterly profit of $2.9 billion as revenue grew 13 percent with help from recent subscription price hikes.The streaming television service said it was “off to a good start in 2025″ on revenue of $10.5 billion in the recently ended quarter. Shares in the Silicon Valley-based company were up more than four percent in after-market trades.Revenue grew due thanks to slightly higher subscription and ad earnings, along with the timing of some expenses, according to Netflix.Netflix early this year raised premium and standard memberships in the United States two dollars more per month, to $25 and $18 respectively, while a standard ad-supported tier increased by one dollar.In a bid to boost sputtering growth, the company launched an ad-subsidized offering in late 2023 around the same time as a crackdown on sharing passwords.The streaming service had announced in January that a top priority would be growing its ad business.Netflix has been steadily improving its ad platform as viewers continue to turn away from traditional television to streaming shows on demand.”We’re executing on our 2025 priorities: improving our series and film offering and growing our ads business; further developing newer initiatives like live programming and games; and sustaining healthy revenue and profit growth,” Netflix said in a letter to shareholders.Netflix forecast revenue growth of 15 percent in the current quarter, crediting its lineup of shows and films along with improvements to its ad platform.”We remain optimistic about our 2025 slate with a lineup that includes returning favorites, series finales, new discoveries and unexpected surprises designed to thrill our members,” Netflix told shareholders.Netflix touted hits including its  “Adolescence” series that has logged some 124 million views, and the Spanish-language film “Counterattack” from Mexico.Netflix said in February it would spend $1 billion over four years producing films and series in Mexico, in a boost to that government’s efforts to attract investment in the face of US tariff threats.Investors view Netflix as a rare haven in a stock market roiled by US President Donald Trump’s stop-start  tariff plans targeting dozens of trade partners.This quarter marks a shift by Netflix to stop reporting subscriber numbers along with its earnings figures.The company, considered by analysts as the leading video streaming service, finished out last year with more than 300 million subscribers.

Salvadoran soldiers on Thursday barred a US senator who is in the country to seek the release of a man wrongfully deported by President Donald Trump’s administration from visiting the prison where he is held.On the second day of his trip to El Salvador, Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen tried to make his way to the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) outside the capital San Salvador to see Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The car he was traveling in was stopped by soldiers, he said, about three kilometers (1.8 miles) from the complex holding thousands of Salvadoran gangsters, and now also nearly 300 migrants expelled from the United States. “We were told by the soldiers that they had been ordered not to allow us to proceed,” the senator later told reporters. He said the goal had been to check on the health and well-being of Abrego Garcia, who “has had no communication with anybody on the outside,” including his wife and lawyers. He said the man had been “illegally abducted” and was now the subject of “illegal detention” in the same prison built to hold members of gangs who had previously threatened his family.Abrego Garcia, 29, was arrested in Maryland last month and expelled to El Salvador along with 238 Venezuelans and 22 fellow Salvadorans who were deported shortly after Trump invoked a rarely-used wartime authority. Trump administration officials have claimed he is an illegal migrant, a gang member and involved in human trafficking, without providing evidence. Abrego Garcia had enjoyed a protected status in the United States, precluding his deportation to El Salvador for his own safety. A federal judge has since ordered he be returned, but the administration — despite admitting an “administrative error” in his deportation — contends he is now solely in Salvadoran custody. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who met Trump in Washington on Monday, said he does not have the power to send the man back. – Cots without mattresses -On Wednesday, Van Hollen met Salvadoran Vice President Felix Ulloa, who denied him permission to see the prisoner or even talk to him by telephone. Asked why Abrego Garcia was being held at all, Ulloa told him “that the Trump administration is paying El Salvador, the government of El Salvador, to keep him at CECOT,” the senator recounted.Bukele had built the CECOT to hold gang members rounded up in an iron-fisted anti-crime drive welcomed by most Salvadorans but widely denounced for violating human rights. CECOT inmates are confined to their cells for all but 30 minutes a day, denied visits, forced to sleep on stainless steel cots without mattresses, and subside on a diet of mostly beans and pasta. 

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man at the heart of a firestorm over US President Donald Trump’s migrant expulsions, arrived in Maryland as a teenager fleeing gangsters extorting his family.After working in the United States for 14 years and raising a family there, the 29-year-old now finds himself locked up in El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) — built to house the very gangsters that once threatened his life.According to documents presented to a US immigration judge in 2019, Abrego Garcia was born in El Salvador in 1995 to a policeman father and a mother who sold maize griddle cakes known as pupusas.As kids, Abrego Garcia, his brother and two sisters worked in the family shop named after his mother: Cecilia.  At the time, the country was engulfed in a vicious war between the Barrio 18 and MS-13 gangs that made Central America’s northern region one of the most violent in the world.  With threats of death, Barrio 18 members started extorting Abrego Garcia’s family for protection money.  Fearing Abrego Garcia and his brother would be forcibly recruited by the gangs, their parents sent them to the United States, where much of their family lives.  Abrego Garcia arrived without migration papers in Maryland in 2011, aged 16, and started working in construction.-  ‘Excellent father’ -In 2018, Abrego Garcia started a relationship with American Jennifer Vasquez Sura, with whom he has a five-year-old son diagnosed with autism.Vasquez Sura has two other children from a previous relationship — one of whom also has autism and the other epilepsy.She has described Abrego Garcia as an “excellent father” to all three kids, telling the Maryland-based CASA migrant rights NGO “he has been the main provider of our household and the love of my life for over seven years.”On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security posted a copy on X of a temporary protective order that Vasquez Sura had sought against her husband in 2021 after an alleged violent interaction.”This MS-13 gang member is not a sympathetic figure,” the department concluded.But Vasquez Sura came out immediately with a statement to say she had acted out of an abundance of caution informed by a previous abusive relationship, and had dropped the matter against her husband — opting for couples counseling instead.The incident, she said, “is not a justification” for the government “abducting him and deporting him.”In 2019, while looking for work at a Home Depot — a DIY retailer — Abrego Garcia was arrested along with several other men by an anti-gang police unit, beginning the saga of his alleged MS-13 affiliation.According to the police file, a confidential informant was queried about Abrego Garcia after his arrest and affirmed that he was a member of MS-13. The police also noted Abrego Garcia’s attire was often worn by Hispanic gang members.He was placed into deportation proceedings but an immigration judge later in 2019 barred him from being sent to El Salvador, concluding he would be in danger there.The order allowed him to receive a work permit.”He has never been convicted of any crime, gang-related or otherwise,” Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said.- ‘Political games’ -Then, on March 12 this year, Abrego Garcia’s life was turned upside down.He was arrested in front of his five-year-old son as they exited a store in Maryland. Three days later, he landed in El Salvador with 238 Venezuelans and 22 fellow Salvadorans deported just hours after Trump invoked a rarely used wartime authority.Trump officials have claimed he is an illegal migrant, a gang member and involved in human trafficking, without providing evidence besides the 2019 police report.A federal judge has ordered for Abrego Garcia to be returned, but the administration — despite admitting an “administrative error” in his deportation — contends he is now solely in Salvadoran custody.El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who met Trump in Washington on Monday, said he does not have the power to send the man back.”I will not stop fighting until I see my husband alive,” Vasquez Sura said ahead of a hearing over the case this week in Maryland.She urged the Trump and Bukele governments “to stop playing political games with the life of Kilmar.”

US President Donald Trump said he would “100 percent” reach a tariffs deal with the European Union as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia led a charm offensive at the White House on Thursday.Trump complimented the “fantastic” far-right leader, the first from Europe to visit the Republican since he slapped 20 percent tariffs on EU exports that he has since suspended for 90 days.Casting herself as the only European who can de-escalate Trump’s trade war with Europe, Meloni highlighted her conservative common ground with Trump.”The goal for me is to make the West great again, and I think we can do it together,” she told reporters in the Oval Office, highlighting shared views on immigration and “woke ideology.”Meloni said Trump had accepted an invitation to visit Rome in the “near future” and that he might also meet European leaders there.The two leaders talked up the chances of a deal, one of a series that Trump says he will extract from major trading partners over his world-shaking tariffs.”There will be a trade deal, 100 percent,” Trump said during an earlier working lunch with Meloni, who said she was “sure” they could reach an agreement.But in a sign of the potential challenges ahead, Trump said that he was in “no rush” and that Meloni had not changed his mind on his overall tariff policy.”Everybody wants to make a deal — and if they don’t want to make a deal, we’ll make the deal for them,” Trump added.Meloni was the only European leader to be invited to Trump’s January 20 inauguration, and US officials said she was “eye-to-eye with the president on a lot of issues like immigration and Ukraine.”Trump said that Europe needed to “get a lot smarter” on immigration, returning to his administration’s repeated attacks on the bloc on the subject.- ‘Aware of what I am defending’ -Russia’s war in Ukraine however remained a touchy subject.Meloni has been a staunch ally of Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky since Russia’s invasion of the country in 2022, most recently calling Moscow’s Palm Sunday attack on the city of Sumy “horrible and vile.” Trump however has stunned allies with a pivot towards Moscow and repeated attacks on Zelensky, whom he berated in an Oval Office meeting in February.The US leader said with Meloni beside him that “I don’t hold Zelensky responsible but I’m not exactly thrilled with the fact that that war started,” adding that he was “not a big fan” of the Ukrainian.Meloni had earlier acknowledged the uncertainty weighing on her trip as Europe reels from repeated blows from a country that has been the continent’s defender for decades.”Surely, I am aware of what I represent and I am aware of what I am defending,” Meloni said Tuesday.Italian newspapers reported that one of the goals of Meloni’s visit was to pave the way for a meeting between Trump and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.Meloni’s decision to personally intercede with Trump has caused some disquiet among EU allies, who are concerned that her visit could undermine bloc unity.”If we start having bilateral discussions, obviously it will break the current dynamic,” France’s Industry Minister Marc Ferracci warned last week. A European Commission spokeswoman said that while the EU alone could negotiate trade agreements, Meloni’s “outreach is very welcome” and was coordinated with Brussels.Following Thursday’s meeting with Trump, Meloni will fly back to Rome on Friday in time to host US Vice President JD Vance, with whom she has a meeting planned.Trump’s threatened tariffs could have a major impact on Italy, the world’s fourth-largest exporter, which sends around 10 percent of its exports to the United States.

At least six people were hurt, one of them critically, after a mass shooting at a Florida university on Thursday, hospital officials said.The campus of Florida State University in Tallahassee was locked down after gunfire erupted, with students ordered to shelter in place.Local media, citing a police spokesperson, reported one man was in custody.The Tallahassee Democrat newspaper said the spokesperson did not confirm the identity of the man, or comment on social media reports that there was more than one shooter.Witnesses spoke of chaos as people began running through the sprawling campus when shots rang out in the area of the student union.”Everyone just started running out of the student union,” a witness named Wayne told local news station WCTV.”About a minute later, we heard about eight to 10 gunshots.”The eyewitness said he saw one man who appeared to have been shot in the midsection.”The whole entire thing was just surreal. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”Everything was really quiet, than all chaotic.”The university, a public institution with more than 40,000 students, warned all those on campus to take shelter.”An active shooter has been reported in the area of Student Union,” the university said on social media.”Police are on scene or on the way. Continue to seek shelter and await further instructions. Lock and stay away from all doors and windows and be prepared to take additional protective measures.”A statement from Tallahassee Memorial Hospital said doctors were “actively receiving and caring for patients.”A spokesperson for the hospital told AFP: “We have six patients, one in critical condition, and the rest in serious condition,” confirming they were hurt in the shooting.Student Sam Swartz told the Tallahassee Democrat he had been in the basement of the student union when shooting started. “Everyone started freaking out,” Swartz said, adding he had heard around 10 shots.A group of eight people, who were working on a project, huddled in a hallway and barricaded themselves with trash cans and plywood.”I remember learning to do the best you can to make them take time because they don’t want to do anything that takes time, they’re just trying to get as many people,” Swartz said.Footage on social media showed a stream of young adults walking through corridors with their hands in the air as they evacuated the building.Mass shootings are alarmingly common in the United States, where a constitutional right to bear arms trumps calls for stricter rules.Despite widespread public support for tighter control on firearms, including  restricting the sale of high-capacity clips and limiting the availability of automatic weapons of war, an entrenched political establishment refuses to act.A tally by the non-profit Gun Violence Archive shows there have been at least 81 mass shootings — which it defines as four or more people shot — in the United States so far this year.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday insisted that he could force out the head of the independent Federal Reserve, lashing out after Jerome Powell warned of tariffs-fueled inflation.Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said Powell would “leave if I ask him to.” He added: “I’m not happy with him. I let him know it and if I want him out, he’ll be out of there real fast, believe me.”Earlier, in a scathing post on Truth Social, Trump repeated a demand for Powell to lower interest rates, saying his “termination… cannot come fast enough.” Sources also told the Wall Street Journal that Trump has privately discussed firing Powell for months but has not made a final decision, and raised it during private meetings at Mar-a-Lago with former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh.The US president does not have direct authority to fire Federal Reserve governors, but Trump could initiate a lengthy process to attempt to unseat Powell by proving there was “cause” to do so.Powell warned Wednesday that Trump’s sweeping tariffs on virtually every trade partner could put the Fed in the unenviable position of having to choose between tackling inflation and unemployment.Trump’s stop-start tariff policy has unnerved investors and governments around the world, leaving them unsure about his long-term strategy and what it might mean for international trade.The US central bank has adopted a wait-and-see attitude to cutting rates, holding them steady at 4.25 to 4.5 percent since the start of this year.Trump has frequently criticized the Fed chairman, whom he originally nominated during his first term, accusing Powell of playing politics.Trump’s earlier post suggested Powell’s decisions were “Too Late” and that he should have followed the European Central Bank’s lead, which on Thursday lowered its benchmark deposit rate by a quarter point.ECB chief Christine Lagarde expressed her confidence in Powell following Trump’s remarks, saying she had “a lot of respect for my friend and esteemed colleague.”On the campaign trail in August, Trump suggested the White House should have a “say” in setting monetary policy. Democrats, however, have defended the independence of the institution.”An independent Fed is vital for a healthy economy — something that Trump has proved is not a priority for him,” senior Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer said on X in response to Trump’s criticism of Powell.- Powell pledges to stay -While presidents have a long history of clashing with Fed chiefs, any move to force Powell to leave office would be unprecedented in modern US political history.Speaking on April 4, Powell insisted he had no plans to step down as Fed chairman before his term ends next year. “I fully intend to serve all of my term,” he said at an event in Virginia.At the time, Powell also suggested that the Fed was in no rush to cut its benchmark lending rate from its current elevated level.Financial markets see a roughly two-thirds chance that policymakers will vote to keep rates unchanged again at the next Fed interest rate meeting in May, according to data from CME Group.Setting key interest rates is one of the primary levers the Fed exercises in its dual mandate of managing inflation and unemployment.Lowering interest rates serves to make borrowing cheaper and tends to kickstart the economy by encouraging investment, while raising them — or keeping them steady at higher rates — can help cool inflation.US year-on-year consumer inflation slowed to 2.4 percent in March, bringing it closer to the Fed’s long-term two-percent target.That drop was aided by a 6.3 percent fall in gasoline prices, according to official data.

A US judge on Thursday ruled that Google illegally wielded monopoly power in the online ad technology market, in a legal blow that could rattle the tech giant’s revenue engine.The federal government and more than a dozen US states filed the antitrust suit against Alphabet-owned Google, accusing it of acting illegally to dominate three sectors of digital advertising — publisher ad servers, advertiser tools, and ad exchanges.It is one of two federal suits targeting Google that could ultimately see the company split up and curb its influence — and part of a wider government push to rein in Big Tech.The vast majority of websites use the trio of Google ad software products that together leave no way for publishers to escape Google’s advertising technology, the plaintiffs alleged.District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema agreed with most of that reasoning, ruling that Google built an illegal monopoly over ad software and tools used by publishers, but partially dismissed the argument related to tools used by advertisers.”Google has willfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts to acquire and maintain monopoly power in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets for open-web display advertising,” Brinkema said in her ruling.”Google further entrenched its monopoly power by imposing anticompetitive policies on its customers and eliminating desirable product features,” she wrote.”In addition to depriving rivals of the ability to compete, this exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web.”Google quickly vowed to appeal the ruling.”We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half,” the company’s vice president of regulatory affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland said in a statement.”The court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don’t harm competition,” Mulholland said.For Emarketer senior analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf, “the bigger picture is crystal clear: the antitrust tides have turned against Google and other digital advertising giants.””The extent of the fallout will depend on the legal remedies employed, and the implementation timeline is likely to span years if Google loses its anticipated appeals,” Mitchell-Wolf told AFP.- What to do? -Launched under the presidential administrations of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, five major antitrust cases from the Federal Trade Commission and the US Justice Department are proceeding against major US technology companies.These cases represent an aggressive shift in antitrust enforcement, after a relatively quiet period in antitrust prosecution since the Microsoft case in the late 1990s.In August last year, a US judge ruled that Google maintained a monopoly with its dominant search engine. The company has appealed that ruling as well.Online advertising is the driving engine of Google’s fortune and pays for widely used online services such as Maps, Gmail, and search offered free.Money pouring into Google’s coffers also allows the Silicon Valley company to spend billions of dollars on its artificial intelligence efforts, as it tries to keep up with rivals.Brinkema gave attorneys on both sides of the online ad tech case seven days to submit a schedule for arguing their positions regarding what remedies should be imposed on Google.Ordering Google to spin off its ad publisher and exchange operations is likely to be among the plaintiffs’ proposals.For Mitchell-Wolf, the ruling has “profound implications for the advertising industry.””The open web is so deeply rooted in Google’s advertising technology that any change to the status quo could crush vulnerable publishers,” the analyst said.Nicole Gill, co-founder of advocacy group Accountable Tech, called Brinkema’s decision a “massive victory,” while Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnes Callamard called for a “rights-respecting structural break-up of Google.”

US President Donald Trump on Thursday said he doesn’t hold Volodymyr Zelensky “responsible” for Russia’s invasion of his country but continued to criticize the pro-Western Ukrainian leader.Trump has repeatedly made the false claim that Ukraine started the war and this week accused Zelensky of responsibility for “millions” of deaths.”I don’t hold Zelensky responsible but I’m not exactly thrilled with the fact that that war started,” Trump said at the White House alongside visiting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.”I’m not blaming him, but what I am saying is that I wouldn’t say he’s done the greatest job, OK? I am not a big fan.”Zelensky earlier this week invited Trump to visit Ukraine to see war devastation for himself, in a Sunday interview with CBS that Trump responded to with threats against the TV network.His invitation followed a heated row at the White House in late February between the Ukrainian president, Trump and US Vice President JD Vance, which played out in front of press.Meloni told reporters that “we’ve been defending freedom of Ukraine together, together we can build a just and lasting peace. We support your efforts.”The far-right leader has thrown Italy’s weight behind European efforts to shore up Ukraine’s defences since the full-scale Russian invasion began in early 2022.Trump added Thursday that a deal with Ukraine on extracting the war-wracked country’s strategic minerals could be reached next week.Kyiv and Washington had been close to signing a deal until a February clash between Trump and Zelensky temporarily derailed work on the agreement.”We have a minerals deal which I guess is going to be signed on Thursday… next Thursday. Soon. And I assume they’re going to live up to the deal. So we’ll see. But we have a deal on that,” Trump said.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told AFP that a deal is targeted for April 26.