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Intel on Thursday posted quarterly revenue that topped market expectations, saying it has cut about 15 percent of its workforce to be “more agile.”The US chip maker also said it “will no longer move forward” with projects in Germany and Poland as part of a push to save billions of dollars.The struggling chip maker’s earnings report came as rivals specializing in graphics processing units (GPUs) for artificial intelligence thrive due to rapid adoption of the technology.Intel is one of Silicon Valley’s most iconic companies, but its fortunes have been eclipsed by Asian powerhouses TSMC and Samsung, which dominate the made-to-order semiconductor business. The company was also caught by surprise with the emergence of Nvidia as the world’s preeminent AI chip provider.Intel’s niche has been in chips used in traditional computing processes, steadily being eclipsed by the AI revolution.Intel reported $12.9 billion in sales in the recently ended quarter, topping forecasts, but logged a $2.9 billion loss that included $1.9 billion in restructuring charges.”Intel has completed the majority of the planned headcount actions it announced last quarter to reduce its core workforce by approximately 15 percent,” the company said in an earnings release.”These changes are designed to create a faster-moving, flatter and more agile organization.”Intel shares were down slightly in after-hours trades that followed the release of the earnings figures.Intel chief executive Lip-Bu Tan took the helm in March, announcing layoffs as White House tariffs and export restrictions muddied the market.Malaysia-born tech industry veteran Tan has said it “won’t be easy” to overcome challenges faced by the company.

Donald Trump and US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell appeared together for a tense meeting Thursday as the president toured the central bank after ramping up his attacks on its management of the economy.Trump — who wants to oust Powell for refusing to lower interest rates but likely lacks the legal authority to do so — has threatened to fire the Fed chief over cost overruns for a renovation of its Washington headquarters.During a brief but painfully awkward exchange in front of reporters during a tour of the building, the pair bickered over the price tag for the makeover, which Trump said was $3.1 billion.The actual cost of the facelift has been put at $2.5 billion and Powell was quick to correct the president, telling him: “I haven’t heard that from anybody.”Trump produced a sheet of paper apparently listing construction costs and was told curtly that he was including work on the William McChesney Martin Jr. Building, which was not part of the project.  “You’re including the Martin renovation — you just added in a third building,” Powell scolded.Trump stuck to his guns, saying it was part of the overall redevelopment. Powell shot back: “No, it was built five years ago. We finished Martin five years ago… It’s not new.”Trump moved on but the tense atmosphere between the pair was almost palpable, with the Republican leader unaccustomed to being contradicted live on air.The tour came with Trump desperate to shift the focus away from the crisis engulfing his administration over its decision to close the file on multi-millionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on trafficking charges. Attorney General Pam Bondi informed the president in the spring that his name appeared in the Epstein files, according to the Wall Street Journal.Epstein was accused of procuring underage girls for sex with his circle of wealthy, high-profile associates when he died by suicide in a New York jail cell.Trump has picked all manner of targets, including his Democratic predecessors and former chiefs of the security and intelligence services, as he tries to move Epstein out of the headlines.He berated Powell over interest rates on Wednesday, and alluded to his annoyance over the cost of borrowing more than 10 times during Thursday’s tour.”As good as we’re doing, we’d do better if we had lower interest rates,” he told reporters.- ‘Do the right thing’ -Presidential visits to the Federal Reserve are not unheard of — Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gerald Ford and George W. Bush all made the trip — but they are rare.Trump has criticized Powell for months over his insistence on keeping the short-term interest rate at 4.3 percent this year, after cutting it three times last year, when Joe Biden was in office.Powell says he is monitoring the response of the economy to Trump’s dizzying array of import tariffs, which he has warned could lead to a hike in inflation.But Trump has angrily accused Powell of holding back the economy, calling the man he nominated in his first term “stupid” and a “loser.”The president struck a more conciliatory tone later Thursday, telling reporters  they’d had a “productive talk” on the economy, with “no tension.””It may be a little too late, as the expression goes, but I believe he’s going to do the right thing,” Trump said.Soaring costs for the Fed’s facelift of its 88-year-old Washington headquarters and a neighboring building — up by $600 million from an initial $1.9 billion estimate — have caught Trump’s eye.A significant driver of the cost is security, including blast-resistant windows and measures to prevent the building from collapsing in the event of an explosion. The Federal Reserve, the world’s most important central bank, makes independent monetary policy decisions and its board members typically serve under both Republican and Democratic presidents.Experts question whether Trump has the authority to fire Powell, especially since a Supreme Court opinion in May that allowed the president to remove other independent agency members but suggested that this did not apply to the Fed.

Hulk Hogan, the 1980s icon of professional wrestling who helped propel the low-budget spectacle into the global spotlight and parlayed his prowess in the ring into pop culture stardom, died Thursday. He was 71.Hogan, whose real name was Terry Bollea, was pronounced dead at a Florida hospital after emergency personnel responded to a cardiac arrest call at his home in Clearwater, police said.The Hall of Fame talent — known for his towering 6’7″ (two-meter) physique, bandana and blond handlebar mustache — was ubiquitous during his heyday, acting in film and television, appearing in video games and promoting a range of products.He also courted his share of controversy, first when a sex tape featuring him leaked, and again when a recording of him using racist language, including a slur referring to Black Americans, resurfaced in 2015.In recent years, Hogan became an avid supporter of US President Donald Trump.”One of pop culture’s most recognizable figures, Hogan helped WWE achieve global recognition in the 1980s,” World Wrestling Entertainment said on social media. “WWE extends its condolences to Hogan’s family, friends, and fans.”Hogan’s wrestling skills and magnetic personality as a heroic all-American in the ring transformed the sport into mainstream family entertainment, attracting millions of viewers and turning the league into a multi-billion-dollar empire.”Hulk Has Been By My Side Since We Started In The Wrestling Business. An Incredible Athlete, Talent, Friend, And Father!” fellow Hall of Famer Ric Flair said on social media.”R.I.P Hulkster, thank you for opening up doors for so many people in the business including myself,” said retired pro and Olympic champion Kurt Angle.- From local gym to Hall of Fame -Hogan was born on August 11, 1953 in the southern US state of Georgia to a construction worker father and a dance teacher mother. The family moved to Florida when he was a toddler.After dropping out of university, Hogan was spotted at his gym by local wrestlers and was quickly swept into competitions.His nickname came about in part because of comparisons to the Marvel superhero The Incredible Hulk, featured at the time in a television series.He first competed in 1979 in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now known as WWE) but became a mainstay and fan favorite in the mid-1980s alongside others like Andre the Giant and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper.At age 48 in 2002, in the waning days of his competitive career, he even battled Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.His brand of “Hulkamania” transferred to the small and big screen, with roles in films such as “Rocky III,” “No Holds Barred” and TV’s “Baywatch.””He was absolutely wonderful and his amazing skill made Rocky three incredibly special. My heart breaks,” said ‘Rocky’ star Sylvester Stallone.Hogan was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005.But the scandal over his use of racial slurs led to his firing from WWE in 2015. He later apologized for his actions and was reinstated to the Hall of Fame.When a tape emerged of Hogan having sex with a woman who was not his wife in 2012, he filed suit against Gawker Media and won a $140 million judgment for invasion of privacy. He eventually accepted a settlement of $31 million, but the case divided media and press freedom advocates after it was revealed that Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel had funded Hogan’s case as part of an effort to drive Gawker out of business.Gawker shut its site down months after the verdict.- ‘Great friend’ -Hogan memorably appeared at the 2024 Republican National Convention that would seal Trump’s nomination — tearing his shirt off to reveal a Trump-Vance tank top.”We lost a great friend today, the ‘Hulkster.’ Hulk Hogan was MAGA all the way — Strong, tough, smart, but with the biggest heart,” Trump said on social media.”He gave an absolutely electric speech at the Republican National Convention, that was one of the highlights of the entire week. He entertained fans from all over the World, and the cultural impact he had was massive.”Hogan suffered numerous health problems in later years, stemming from the years of abuse his body took in the ring. In the 1990s, he admitted under oath that he had used anabolic steroids at the peak of his career.He was married three times, and had two children with his first wife Linda.

A top Department of Justice official was meeting on Thursday with Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned accomplice of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, US media reported, as President Donald Trump struggles to tamp down a furor over his handling of the explosive case.The former British socialite is serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted in 2021 of recruiting underage girls for Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial in his own sex trafficking case.Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — Trump’s former personal lawyer for his hush money trial and two federal criminal cases — was interviewing Maxwell at a courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida, CNN, NBC and the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper said.”If Ghislaine Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say,” Blanche said on Tuesday. “No one is above the law — and no lead is off-limits.”Trump, 79, was once a close friend of Epstein and The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the president’s name was among hundreds found during a DOJ review of the so-called “Epstein files,” even if there was no indication of wrongdoing.Trump spokesman Steven Cheung called the report “fake news” and said Trump had long ago broken with Epstein and “kicked him out of his (Florida) club for being a creep.”Trump filed a $10 billion defamation suit against the Journal last week after it reported that he had penned a sexually suggestive letter to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003.Maxwell, 63, is the only former Epstein associate convicted in connection with his activities, which right-wing conspiracy theorists allege included trafficking young models for VIPs.The meeting with Maxwell marks another attempt by the Trump administration to defuse anger among the Republican president’s own supporters over what they have long seen as a cover-up of sex crimes by Epstein, a wealthy financier with high-level connections.- ‘A Trump-friendly tale?’ -Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said Blanche’s meeting with Maxwell raises a number of troubling questions.”Is he really going as (deputy attorney general) or is he going de facto as Trump’s personal criminal attorney, Tom Hagen style?” the senator said in a reference to the Corleone family lawyer in “The Godfather.””Will he promise her a pardon for silence, or for a Trump-friendly tale?” Whitehouse asked. “Who will be in the room? What records will be kept?”Many of the president’s core supporters want more transparency on the Epstein case, and Trump — who has long fanned the conspiracy theories — had promised to deliver that on retaking the White House in January.But he has since dismissed the controversy as a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” and the DOJ and FBI released a memo this month claiming the so-called Epstein files did not contain evidence that would justify further investigation.Epstein committed suicide while in jail and was not murdered, did not blackmail any prominent figures, and did not keep a “client list,” according to the July 7 FBI-DOJ memo.Seeking to redirect public attention, the White House has promoted unfounded claims in recent days that former president Barack Obama led a “years-long coup” against Trump around his victorious 2016 election.The extraordinary narrative claims that Obama had ordered intelligence assessments to be manipulated to accuse Russia of election interference to help Trump.Yet it runs counter to four separate criminal, counterintelligence and watchdog probes between 2019 and 2023 — each of them concluding that Russia did interfere and did, in various ways, help Trump.Epstein was found hanging dead in his New York prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges that he sexually exploited hundreds of victims at his homes in New York and Florida.Among those with connections to Epstein was Britain’s Prince Andrew, who settled a US civil case in February 2022 brought by Virginia Giuffre, who claimed he sexually assaulted her when she was 17.Giuffre, who accused Epstein of using her as a sex slave, committed suicide at her home in Australia in April.

Donald Trump is due to visit the US Federal Reserve Thursday as the president escalates pressure on its chairman Jerome Powell over the central bank’s management of the economy.Trump — who wants to oust Powell for refusing to lower interest rates but likely lacks the legal authority — has threatened to fire the Fed chief over cost overruns for a renovation of its Washington headquarters.The White House did not specify whether Trump would meet Powell, who has vowed to remain in place until the end of his term next May, but the president would likely welcome any encounter.The afternoon tour comes with Trump desperate to shift focus from the crisis engulfing his administration over its decision to close the file on multi-millionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on trafficking charges. Attorney General Pam Bondi informed the president in the spring that his name appeared in the Epstein files, according to the Wall Street Journal.Trump has picked all manner of targets, including his Democratic predecessors and former chiefs of the security and intelligence services, as he bids to move Epstein out of the headlines.He again berated Powell on Wednesday, moments after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had appeared on television to claim the banker’s job was safe.”Housing in our Country is lagging because Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell refuses to lower Interest Rates,” Trump thundered on his social media platform, Truth Social.Presidential visits to the Federal Reserve are not unheard of — Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gerald Ford and George W. Bush all made the trip — but they are rare.Trump has criticized Powell for months over his insistence on keeping short-term interest rate at 4.3 percent this year, after cutting it three times last year, when Joe Biden was in office.Powell says he is monitoring the response of the economy to Trump’s dizzying array of import tariffs, which he has warned could lead to a hike in inflation.But Trump has angrily accused Powell of holding back the economy, calling the man he nominated in his first term “stupid” and a “loser.”- Threats and abuse -Soaring costs for the Fed’s facelift of its 88-year-old Washington headquarters and a neighboring building — from an initial $1.9 billion to $2.5 billion — have caught Trump’s eye.Ahead of his visit, staff gave reporters a tour of the renovations, on track to finish in 2027.A significant driver of the cost is security, including blast resistant windows and measures to prevent the building from collapsing in the event of an explosion. Plans for a rooftop seating area were abandoned, the staff said, as they were seen as an unnecessary “amenity.”Trump’s budget director Russell Vought wrote to Powell earlier this month to tell him the president was “extremely troubled by your mismanagement of the Federal Reserve System.””Instead of attempting to right the Fed’s fiscal ship, you have plowed ahead with an ostentatious overhaul of your Washington, D.C. headquarters,” Vought wrote. The Federal Reserve, the world’s most important central bank, makes independent monetary policy decisions and its board members typically serve under both Republican and Democratic presidents.Experts question whether Trump has the authority to fire Powell, especially since a Supreme Court opinion in May that allowed the president to remove other independent agency members but suggested that this did not apply to the Fed.Before the visit, Trump plans to sign executive orders at the White House on Thursday afternoon, as he continues to face pushback from his supporters over his handling of the Epstein case.Justice Department officials were to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s imprisoned accomplice on Thursday in her cell in Tallahassee, Florida, US media reported.

A top Department of Justice official was expected to meet on Thursday with Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned accomplice of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as President Donald Trump struggles to quell fury over his handling of the notorious case.The former British socialite is serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking minors on behalf of Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial in his own pedophile trafficking case.Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — Trump’s former personal lawyer for his hush money trial and two federal criminal cases — was to interview Maxwell at a federal courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida, multiple US media reported.”If Ghislane Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say,” Blanche said in a statement on Tuesday. “No one is above the law — and no lead is off-limits.”Maxwell, the daughter of the late British press baron Robert Maxwell, is the only former Epstein associate who was convicted in connection with his activities, which right-wing conspiracy theorists allege included trafficking young models for VIPs.But Joyce Vance, an ex-federal prosecutor who now teaches law at the University of Alabama, said any “‘new’ testimony (Maxwell) offers is inherently unreliable unless backed by evidence.””Trump could give Ghislaine Maxwell a pardon on his last day in office, in exchange for favorable testimony now,” Vance said in a post on X. “She knows he’s her only chance for release.”The meeting with Maxwell marks another attempt by the Trump administration to defuse anger among the Republican president’s own supporters over what they have long seen as a cover-up of sex crimes by Epstein, a wealthy financier with high-level connections.- ‘A creep’ -A Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday hiked up that pressure as it claimed Trump’s name was among hundreds found during a review of DOJ documents on Epstein, even if there was no indication of wrongdoing.Trump spokesman Steven Cheung called the report “fake news” and said Trump had long ago broken with Epstein and “kicked him out of his (Florida) club for being a creep.”The same newspaper claimed last week that Trump had penned a sexually suggestive letter to Epstein, a former friend, for his birthday in 2003. Trump has sued for at least $10 billion over the story.Many of the president’s core supporters want more transparency on the Epstein case, and Trump — who has long fanned conspiracy theories — had promised to deliver that on retaking the White House in January.But he has since dismissed the controversy as a “hoax,” and the DOJ and FBI released a memo this month claiming the so-called Epstein files did not contain evidence that would justify further investigation.Epstein had committed suicide while in jail, did not blackmail any prominent figures, and did not keep a “client list,” according to the FBI-DOJ memo.- Diversion -Seeking to redirect public attention, the White House has promoted unfounded claims in recent days that former president Barack Obama led a “years-long coup” against Trump around his victorious 2016 election.The extraordinary narrative claims that Obama had ordered intelligence assessments to be manipulated to accuse Russia of election interference to help Trump.Yet it runs counter to four separate criminal, counterintelligence and watchdog probes between 2019 and 2023 — each of them concluding that Russia did interfere and did, in various ways, help Trump.Epstein was found hanging dead in his New York prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges that he sexually exploited hundreds of victims at his homes in New York and Florida.Among those with connections to Epstein was Britain’s Prince Andrew, who settled a US civil case in February 2022 brought by Virginia Giuffre, who claimed he sexually assaulted her when she was 17.Giuffre, who accused Epstein of using her as a sex slave, committed suicide at her home in Australia in April.

Hugs, tears, and cheers greeted makeup artist Andry Hernandez on a joyous return home to the Venezuelan Andes on Wednesday — ending a months-long ordeal involving US deportation, a notorious El Salvador jail, and alleged sexual abuse.  The 33-year-old was one of 252 Venezuelan migrants swept up in US President Donald Trump’s immigration dragnet and sent without trial to El Salvador last March. Hernandez has spent the last four months incommunicado at El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), accused of belonging to the Tren de Aragua criminal gang. He and the rest of the men were returned to Venezuela on Friday as part of an exchange for 10 US citizens and permanent residents who were held in Venezuela. As Hernandez drove into his tiny hometown of Capacho, on the rugged southwestern border with Colombia, he was met by elated family members, who for months knew nothing of his fate. A small crowd chanted “Andry, Andry, Andry,” as he jumped out of the vehicle and embraced his overjoyed parents, who were sobbing with relief. Hernandez had left for the United States in 2024, hoping for a better life free of the discrimination faced by Venezuela’s LGBTQ community. “I left my home with a suitcase full of dreams, with dreams of helping my people, of helping my family,” he told reporters. Instead, Hernandez said he got “a nightmare that I thought would never end.” US authorities had claimed that the crown tattoos on his wrists were “evidence” he belonged to Tren de Aragua, something that Hernandez and his family fervently denied. “Thank you for all the love you have for me and for showing me that I was never alone, that I was never alone in that maximum-security prison,” he said. His case was closely followed by international human rights organizations. Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab released a video in which Hernandez said he had been sexually abused by CECOT prison guards.   – ‘Every night I prayed’ -The tearful homecoming was echoed in villages and towns across Venezuela on Wednesday, as the former CECOT detainees returned home after days in the capital, Caracas.  In the working-class neighborhood of Maracaibo, a throng of people gave thanks for the return of four friends released from El Salvador. Edwuar Hernandez, Ringo Rincon, Andy Perozo, and Mervin Yamarte were welcomed with waving flags, spraying foam, and blowing horns.  With his arms outstretched and his eyes lifted to the sky, Yamarte thanked God for his freedom.  “Thank you, Father God,” he whispered through tears, standing beside his former prison companions. A tearful Hernandez recalled the pain of his ordeal. “I thought I was never going to get out of there,” he said. The relief of his mother Yarelis was palpable. “Every night I prayed to God that he would give me at least a glimpse of him in my dreams,” she said, adding that “the days went on forever.””I don’t wish it on any mother.”

Donald Trump is due to visit the US Federal Reserve Thursday as the president escalates his pressure on its chairman Jerome Powell over the central bank’s management of the economy. Trump — who wants to oust Powell for refusing to lower interest rates but likely lacks the legal authority — has threatened instead to fire the Fed chief over cost overruns for a renovation of its Washington headquarters.The White House did not specify whether Trump would meet Powell, who has vowed to remain in place until the end of his term next May, but the president would likely welcome any encounter.The afternoon tour comes with Trump desperate to shift focus from the crisis engulfing his administration over its decision to close the file on multi-millionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on trafficking charges. Attorney General Pam Bondi informed the president in the spring that his name appeared in the Epstein files, according to the Wall Street Journal.Trump has picked all manner of targets, including his Democratic predecessors and former chiefs of the security and intelligence services, as he bids to move Epstein out of the headlines.He again berated Powell on Wednesday, moments after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had appeared on television to claim Powell’s job was safe.”Housing in our Country is lagging because Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell refuses to lower Interest Rates,” Trump thundered on his social media platform, Truth Social.Presidential visits to the Federal Reserve are not unheard of — Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gerald Ford and  George W. Bush all made the trip — but they are rare.They have been viewed in the past as an attempt to influence monetary policy.  Trump has criticized Powell for months over his insistence on keeping short-term interest rate at 4.3 percent this year, after cutting it three times last year, when Joe Biden was in office.Powell says he is monitoring the response of the economy to Trump’s dizzying array of import tariffs, which he has warned could lead to a hike in inflation.But Trump has angrily accused Powell of holding back the economy, calling the man he nominated in his first term “stupid” and a “loser.”- Threats and abuse -Soaring costs for the Fed’s renovation of its Washington headquarters and a neighboring building — from an initial $1.9 billion to $2.5 billion — have caught Trump’s attention.Trump’s budget director Russell Vought wrote to Powell earlier this month to tell him the president was “extremely troubled by your mismanagement of the Federal Reserve System.””Instead of attempting to right the Fed’s fiscal ship, you have plowed ahead with an ostentatious overhaul of your Washington, D.C. headquarters,” Vought wrote. The Federal Reserve, the world’s most important central bank, makes independent monetary policy decisions and its board members typically serve under both Republican and Democratic presidents.Its 12-member Federal Open Market Committee votes on any decisions concerning interest rates and can in theory disagree with the views of the chairman.Experts question whether Trump has the authority to fire Powell, especially since a Supreme Court opinion in May that allowed the president to remove other independent agency members but suggested that this did not apply to the Fed.When asked last week if the costly rebuilding could be grounds to fire Powell, Trump said, “I think it is.”Before the visit, Trump plans to sign executive orders at the White House on Thursday afternoon, as he continues to face pushback from his supporters over his handling of the Epstein case.Justice Department officials were to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s imprisoned accomplice on Thursday in her cell in Tallahassee, Florida, US media reported.

The Department of Justice was to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned accomplice of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, on Thursday, US media reported, as President Donald Trump struggles to quell fury over his handling of the notorious case.The former British socialite is serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking minors on behalf of Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial in his own pedophile trafficking case.Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — Trump’s former personal lawyer for his 2024 hush money trial — was expected to meet Maxwell in Tallahassee, Florida, according to US media.”If Ghislane Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say,” Blanche said in a statement on Tuesday.It marks another attempt by the Trump administration to defuse spiraling anger among the Republican president’s own supporters over what they have long seen as a cover-up of Epstein’s crimes and high-level connections.A Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday hiked up that pressure as it claimed Trump’s name was among hundreds found during a review of DOJ documents on Epstein. The White House has denied this.The same paper claimed last week that Trump penned a sexually suggestive letter to Epstein, a former friend, for his birthday in 2003. Trump has sued for at least $10 billion over the story.Many of his core supporters want more transparency on the Epstein case, and Trump — who has long fanned conspiracy theories — had promised to deliver that on retaking the White House in January.But he has since dismissed the controversy as a “hoax,” while the DOJ and FBI released a heavily-criticized memo this month claiming the so-called Epstein files did not contain evidence that would justify further investigation.Seeking to redirect public attention, the White House has promoted unfounded claims that former president Barack Obama led a “years-long coup” against Trump around his victorious 2016 election.The extraordinary narrative claims that Obama had ordered intelligence assessments to be manipulated to accuse Russia of election interference to help Trump.But it runs counter to four separate criminal, counterintelligence and watchdog probes between 2019 and 2023 — each of them concluding that Russia did interfere and did, in various ways, help Trump.

Donald Trump will fly into Scotland on Friday for a private visit to the land where his mother was born and spent her childhood on the remote Isle of Lewis.”It’s great to be home, this was the home of my mother,” he said when he arrived on his last visit in 2023.Born Mary Anne MacLeod, Trump’s mum emigrated to the United States when she was 18. She then met and married Fred Trump, kickstarting the family’s meteoric rise that has led their son, Donald, all the way to the White House.During his visit the current US president, who is six months into his second term, plans to officially open his latest golf course in northeastern Aberdeen — making him the owner of three such links in Scotland.Although Donald Trump has talked openly about his father Fred — a self-made millionaire and property developer whose own father emigrated from Germany — he remains more discreet about his mother, who died in 2000 at the age of 88.She was born in 1912 on Lewis, the largest island in the Outer Hebrides in northwest Scotland, and grew up in the small town of Tong. Trump visited the humble family home in 2008, pausing for a photo in front of the two-storey house. He has cousins who still live in the house, which has been modernised since Mary Anne MacLeod’s time but remains modest, standing just around 200 metres (650 feet) from the sea.Its slate roof and grey walls are a world away from Trump’s luxury Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, or his gold-adorned apartment in Trump Tower, New York. According to the British press, which based its reports on local documents, Trump’s grandfather was a fisherman. MacLeod was the 10th and last child of the family, and her first language was Gaelic before she learnt English at school.Life was tough on Lewis after World War I, which claimed the lives of many of the island’s young men. Following in the footsteps of her older sister, and so many other Scots over the decades, she decided to emigrate to the United States.MacLeod boarded the SS Transylvania from Glasgow in 1930, bound for New York.- Pink Rolls-Royce -On her immigration papers she wrote she was a “domestic” when asked about her profession. One of Trump’s sisters recalled that MacLeod had worked as a nanny in a wealthy family.But a few years later her life turned around when she reportedly met Fred Trump at an evening dance. They were married in 1936 in Manhattan’s wealthy Upper East Side, and MacLeod became a US citizen in 1942.As Fred Trump built and expanded his property empire in the city by constructing middle-class homes in districts such as Queens and Brooklyn, Mary Anne devoted herself to charitable works.”Even in old age, rich and respected and with her hair arranged in a dynamic orange swirl, she would drive a rose-coloured Rolls-Royce to collect coins from laundry machines in apartment blocks that belonged to the Trumps,” the Times wrote this month.Photos of her hobnobbing with New York high society show her with her blonde hair swept up in a bun, reminiscent of her son’s distinctive side-swept coiffure.She was “a great beauty”, Donald Trump has gushed in one of his rare comments about his mother, adding she was also “one of the most honest and charitable people I have ever known”.And on X he has pointed to “great advice from my mother: ‘Trust in God and be true to yourself'”.In 2018 then-British prime minister Theresa May presented Trump with his family tree tracing his Scottish ancestors.Less than 20,000 people live on Lewis, and MacLeod is a common surname.Residents tell how Mary Anne MacLeod regularly returned to her roots until her death, while one of the president’s sisters won over the locals by making a large donation to a retirement home.But Donald Trump has not impressed everyone in Scotland, and protests against his visit are planned on Saturday in Aberdeen and Edinburgh.Earlier this year in April a banner fluttered from a shop in the port of Stornoway, the island’s largest town. “Shame on you Donald John,” it proclaimed.Local authorities have asked for the banner to be taken down, but it is due to tour the island this summer with residents invited to sign it.