AFP USA

A US judge ordered President Donald Trump on Wednesday to pause the planned mass layoffs of federal workers during the government shutdown after the White House said it expected to fire 10,000 workers.The shutdown has ground into its third week, with Congress deadlocked in a clash over spending and Trump following through on his threats to take a hatchet to the workforce in response.District Judge Susan Illston issued the temporary restraining order in San Francisco in response to a suit filed by labor unions claiming the layoffs are illegal and “not ordinary.”Some employees also did not know they were being laid off because notices were sent to government email accounts which cannot be accessed during a shutdown, according to the seven-page order seen by AFP.Illston said unions had been hearing from pregnant members or other workers who “worry their health insurance will be impacted,” but there is no one in the office to answer questions.”Those who have received reductions in force notices cannot prepare for their upcoming terminations because the human resources staff who would typically assist them are also furloughed,” she added.Trump’s budget chief Russ Vought had been asked in an interview earlier how many layoffs there would be.”I think we’ll probably end up being north of 10,000,” he said. “We want to be very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy.”Court documents filed by the Department of Justice showed that more than 4,000 employees were fired on Friday, with the US Treasury and health, education and housing departments hardest hit.Vought said that was a “snapshot” and that there would be more.The court drama came as the Senate failed for the ninth time to approve a House-passed funding bill championed by Republicans — ensuring that an estimated 1.4 million federal employees remain at their posts unpaid or on enforced leave, also without pay.- ‘Playing politics’ -Trump has warned that continued refusal by Democrats to support the resolution would result in mass layoffs targeting workers deemed to be aligned with the opposition party.But with lawmakers bracing for a historically long standoff, Trump has also sought to deflect blame from Republicans by diverting funds to popular causes such as the military and young mothers.House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Monday that Congress was “barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history.” Johnson has kept the House floor shuttered since mid-September, and is holding firm in refusing to move a standalone bill to pay troops throughout the shutdown.But Trump directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to use any funds available to avoid 1.3 million military personnel missing their first paychecks on Wednesday.Many Democrats consider the move illegal, although most have balked at embarking on what would be a politically unpopular lawsuit to block it.While the military are guaranteed to get their paychecks on time, the Capitol Police — the force charged with securing Congress — missed their full paycheck for the first time on Tuesday.At least 688,000 federal employees are working without pay, according to the latest estimate provided to AFP by the independent Bipartisan Policy Center think tank.A further 706,000-plus employees are furloughed — meaning on enforced leave with no pay — while 832,000 employees are showing up for work and still getting their checks.The White House has not announced how it is going to handle the next military payday, due on October 31.”The administration should reverse every single firing from last week and should stop playing politics with people’s livelihoods,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said in a floor speech. “They should instead get serious about negotiation with Congress to end this shutdown at once.”

Britain’s Prince Andrew behaved as if having sex with the then 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre was his “birthright”, according to allegations in her posthumous memoir.In “Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice”, Giuffre — the woman at the centre of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal — said she had sex with Andrew on three separate occasions including when she was under 18.Giuffre rose to public prominence after alleging that the disgraced US financier Epstein used her as a sex slave and that Andrew had assaulted her.Andrew, 65, has repeatedly denied Giuffre’s accusations and avoided trial by paying a multimillion-dollar settlement.In extracts published by The Guardian, Giuffre describes meeting the prince, a younger brother of King Charles III, in London in March 2001.Andrew was allegedly challenged to guess her age which he did correctly adding by way of explanation: “My daughters are just a little younger than you.”Giuffre and Andrew later went to the Tramp nightclub in central London where she said he was “sort of a bumbling dancer, and I remember he sweated profusely”.They later returned to the London house of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate and former girlfriend, where they had sex, Giuffre alleged in the book due out next week.”He was friendly enough, but still entitled -– as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright,” she wrote.The following morning Maxwell allegedly told her: “You did well. The prince had fun.”She said Epstein paid her $15,000 dollars for “servicing the man the tabloids called Randy Andy”.Epstein took his own life in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial for trafficking underage girls for sex.Maxwell, 63, was sentenced in the US in 2022 to 20 years in prison for recruiting underage girls for Epstein.Giuffre, a US and Australian citizen, died at her farm in Western Australia on April 25.Andrew’s association with Epstein has left his reputation in tatters and made him a source of embarrassment to the king.In a devastating 2019 TV interview Andrew — once feted as a handsome war hero who served as a helicopter pilot in the Falklands War — denied ever meeting Giuffre and defended his friendship with Epstein.He now makes increasingly rare appearances and his popularity rating has plummeted to an all-time low, an ignominious fall for the prince, thought to have been the late Queen Elizabeth II’s favourite child.The book is due to be published by Knopf on October 21.

Randy Baxter holds on for dear life as a simulator shows him just how powerful a magnitude 7 earthquake can be.”It was much stronger than I thought,” the 62-year-old academic tells AFP as he steps out of the machine on the campus of the University of California, Fullerton.Once a year, this specially designed trailer goes on a week-long tour to educate Californians about what to do when the earth begins to move in one of the most seismically active parts of the world.The state lives with the constant knowledge that it could be struck at any minute by “The Big One” — a powerful quake projected to kill 1,800 people, injure 53,000 and cause $200 billion of damage.There are more than 500 active faults in California, which together generate thousands of tremors every year.The majority are small — barely noticed by the 40 million people who live here.But others can be big enough to cause real damage, and California’s Office of Emergency Services (CAL OES) wants people to know what to do.”When you do feel that shaking, we want everybody to drop, cover and hold on,” says Jon Gudel of CAL OES.”It’s exactly what it sounds like: you try to find something sturdy, preferably a table, drop underneath it, cover your head and neck area, and then hold on to that table until the shaking ends.”- Disaster guaranteed – The walls of the quake simulator are covered with photos showing the aftermaths of some of the worst geological disasters to hit California.They include the Great San Francisco earthquake, which destroyed 80 percent of the city in 1906, and the Northridge earthquake in 1994, which killed 72 people around Los Angeles, pancaking elevated highways. Andrea Okoh, who lives along the San Andreas Fault, a scar stretching 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) across the state, admits to being “extremely worried.”The 36-year-old human resources director has bolted her furniture to the wall since an earthquake woke her in the middle of the night in January.”Since I was a child, we’ve had earthquakes, but lately, when we have them, they’re more intense and they’re closer together,” she says. “That is scary.”Geologist Ashleigh Kuiroz says an apparent recent rash of quakes is not an indicator that The Big One is imminent.But in some ways, they are helpful.”They are a great reminder to maybe think about getting an earthquake kit ready for your house,” she says.”Make sure that you have pet food, make sure you have the medication that you need, first aid supplies, things like that.”Organizers also recommend that residents and tourists install the “MyShake” app, which can give a vital few seconds warning of a tremor.Despite decades of study and a global array of sensors, seismologists say it’s impossible to predict when a destructive quake will strike.But the one thing they can say with absolute certainty is that it will definitely happen.”It’s not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’,” says Gudel. “That’s why it’s important to be prepared.”

US President Donald Trump indicated Wednesday he had authorized covert CIA action against Venezuela and said he was considering strikes against alleged drug cartels on land in the South American country.Trump’s comments triggered outrage from leftist Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, who decried “coups d’etat orchestrated by the CIA” and ordered military exercises following a fresh US strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean.Republican Trump declined to comment in detail about a New York Times report that he had secretly approved the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela against Maduro.”But I authorized for two reasons really,” he said, before listing familiar talking points accusing Maduro of leading a “narco-terrorist” regime and of releasing prisoners from jails and sending them to the United States.Asked if he had given the CIA authority to “take out” Maduro, Trump replied: “That’s a ridiculous question for me to be given. Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer?”Trump added that he was weighing up whether to expand US military actions against alleged Venezuelan drug cartels to the land after a series of deadly naval strikes on boats.”We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.At least 27 people have been killed in recent US attacks on boats in the Caribbean.Trinidad and Tobago, which is located off the coast of Venezuela, is investigating whether two of those killed were its citizens, officials said Wednesday.Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro recently called on the United Nations to open a “criminal process” against Trump for the strikes, which he believes have also killed Colombians.Experts have questioned the legality of using lethal force in foreign or international waters against suspects who have not been intercepted or questioned.- ‘No to regime change’ -Trump’s comments come amid a major US naval build-up in the Caribbean that Washington says is part of an anti-drug operation.But the moves have been widely condemned in Latin America and fears are mounting in Caracas that Trump is seeking regime change.”No to war in the Caribbean… No to regime change… No to coups d’etat orchestrated by the CIA,” Maduro said in an address Wednesday to a committee set up after Washington deployed warships in the region.Maduro earlier ordered military exercises in the country’s biggest shantytowns after the latest alleged drug-boat strike on Tuesday, which Trump said had killed six “narcoterrorists.”Under Maduro’s direction, exercises were conducted across the entire Atlantic Caribbean coast of Venezuela, and other military activities are planned in the states on the border with Colombia.In a message on the social network Telegram, Maduro said he was mobilizing the military, police and a civilian militia to defend Venezuela’s “mountains, coasts, schools, hospitals, factories and markets.”Trump accuses Maduro of heading a drug cartel — charges Maduro denies.Ahead of ramping up military actions, the US Justice Department in August doubled a bounty for information leading to Maduro’s capture to $50 million.Trump has previously said that he is not looking at regime change in Venezuela, while at the same time accusing Maduro of stealing last year’s presidential election and being “illegitimate.”The pressure on Maduro inched higher last week when US-backed opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for leading peaceful resistance to his 12-year rule.Machado dedicated the award to Trump, who had campaigned for the award for himself.

US President Donald Trump said Wednesday he was considering strikes targeting Venezuelan cartels on land, after a series of deadly strikes at sea against alleged drug-carrying boats.”We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked if he was weighing strikes on land. But Trump declined to confirm a New York Times report that he had secretly authorized the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela against the administration of President Nicolas Maduro.Asked if he had given the CIA authority to “take out” Maduro, Trump replied: “That’s a ridiculous question for me to be given. Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer?”Venezuela is taking the threats — open or clandestine — seriously.On Tuesday, under Maduro’s direction, exercises were conducted across the entire Atlantic Caribbean coast of Venezuela, and other military activities are planned in the states on the border with Colombia.In a message on the social network Telegram, Maduro said he was mobilizing the military, police and a civilian militia to defend Venezuela’s “mountains, coasts, schools, hospitals, factories and markets.”Trump said on Tuesday that another strike on boats allegedly transporting drugs from Venezuela had killed six “narcoterrorists.”At least 27 people have been killed so far in the US attacks. Experts question the legality of using lethal force in foreign or international waters against suspects who have not been intercepted or questioned.Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has said he believes some of those killed were Colombian.Trump accuses Maduro of heading a drug cartel — charges Maduro denies.Ahead of ramping up military actions, the US Justice Department in August doubled a bounty for information leading to Maduro’s capture to $50 million.

Argentine stocks surged Wednesday on a new US promise of aid for embattled President Javier Milei, despite Donald Trump conditioning the assistance on his ally winning upcoming midterm elections.Some stocks on the benchmark Merval index rose by almost 10 percent on the announcement by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that his department was working on the second $20 billion “facility” for Argentina in as many months.The new program brings the total promised US assistance for the South American country to a whopping $40 billion.Bessent told reporters in Washington that the new aid “would be adjacent to our swap line” announced in September, which already totaled $20 billion.He said the new bailout would come from “private banks and sovereign wealth funds” and would be “more aimed at the debt market,” amid growing concerns over Argentina’s ability to meet its looming debt repayments.Bessent made the announcement a day after Trump hosted the right-wing Milei at the White House, in a bid to boost the Argentine leader ahead of midterm elections on October 26.Milei, once a global poster boy for budget-slashing libertarian politics, is heading into the polls diminished by his failure to stabilize Argentina’s ailing peso, despite spending nearly all the Central Bank’s dollar reserves to prop it up.Bessent last week said that the US Treasury had begun purchasing pesos to help support the currency.Milei has also faced a growing rebellion in Congress over his austerity measures and is still reeling from a corruption scandal engulfing his sister and right-hand woman, Karina Milei.Last month, he suffered a stunning defeat in Buenos Aires provincial polls seen as a key bellwether of his support.Opinion polls show his bloc running neck-and-neck with the center-left opposition in the midterms, but Milei’s La Libertad Avanza coalition is expected to fall far short of winning an outright majority.Political scientist Gustavo Marangoni, head of the M&R polling firm, told AFP that Milei’s party had “no chance of winning a majority,” predicting he would win around one-third of the seats up for grabs.Trump threatened Argentine voters with withdrawing aid if his ally was defeated.”If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina,” he warned.- ‘Quasi-colonial’ attitude -Economist Carlos Melconian, former president of the state-owned Banco Nacion, reacted angrily to Trump’s remarks, calling it “a quasi-colonial incursion” into Argentina’s affairs.”Trump doesn’t want to save the country, he only wants to save Milei,” centrist Senator Martin Lousteau said.On Wednesday, Bessent assured that Milei would continue to enjoy US support as long as he could continue to veto legislation passed by parliament that did not fit his agenda. “It is not election-specific, it is policy-specific,” he said. “So as long as Argentina continues enacting good policy, they will have US support,” he said.Milei enacted sweeping budget cuts after taking office in December 2023 on a promise to quell chronically high inflation and revive the sputtering economy.But his reforms left tens of thousands of public servants out of a job, caused consumer spending to nosedive and left many of Argentina’s most vulnerable citizens living on the breadline.In an interview with CNBC broadcast Wednesday, the 54-year-old president said he had “no intention of changing course until the end of my term.””I am committed to the agenda of lowering taxes, deregulating and keeping the economy growing,” he said.burs-cb/jgc

A prominent US scholar of India who was arrested after allegations of retaining classified documents and meeting Chinese officials is denying the charges against him, his lawyers said Wednesday.Ashley Tellis, 64, who held senior positions under former president George W. Bush and remained an unpaid advisor to the State Department, was arrested Saturday and faces up to 10 years in prison.”Ashley J. Tellis is a widely respected scholar and senior policy advisor,” his lawyers, Deborah Curtis and John Nassikas, said in a statement.”We will be vigorously contesting the allegations brought against him, specifically any insinuation of his operating on behalf of a foreign adversary,” they said.A criminal affidavit made public Tuesday said that Tellis went into the State Department late on September 25 and appeared to print from a secret document on US Air Force techniques.It alleged that Tellis met repeatedly with Chinese officials at a restaurant in the Washington suburb of Fairfax, Virginia, and that at one dinner he appeared to leave a manila envelope.The charges announced by the Justice Department relate to improper handling of documents rather than the meetings, with an FBI special agent saying a search found more than 1,000 pages of top-secret or secret documents in his house.Tellis has been a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a leading Washington think tank, which said Wednesday that he has been put on administrative leave.Tellis, a naturalized American originally from India, helped negotiate the Bush administration’s civil nuclear cooperation deal with India, a landmark step to closer relations between the world’s two largest democracies.But Tellis in recent years has emerged as a leading contrarian in Washington about India, saying that New Delhi’s interests were not aligned on a host of issues including Ukraine.

United Airlines reported a slight dip in profits Wednesday as operating expenses ticked higher, adding that a strengthening demand outlook would boost fourth-quarter results.The big US carrier reported third-quarter profits of $949 million, down 1.7 percent from the year-ago level, as growth in operating expenses edged out the increase in revenues of 2.6 percent to $15.2 billion.The company estimated fourth-quarter profits of between $3.00 and $3.50 per share, better than Wall Street estimates. United is poised for a “strong” fourth quarter “as the demand environment strengthens,” said a United press release.The outlook echoes bullish commentary about consumer appetite earlier this month from Delta Air Lines.Both carriers have billed themselves as able to provide a premium-travel experience that emphasizes better onboard amenities in addition to reliable operations in an effort to strengthen brand loyalty. United’s press release emphasized perks such as Apple TV on board, increased investment on food quality and the introduction of Starlink Wi-Fi on flights, which is scheduled to launch on Thursday in a flight from Newark to Houston.The company promises Starlink on “every plane by 2027,” said United CEO Scott Kirby. “Our customers value the United experience, making them increasingly loyal to United.”Shares of United fell 1.8 percent in after-hours trading.

Flawed engineering and inadequate testing contributed to the catastrophic implosion of a private submersible during a 2023 expedition to the Titanic wreckage, the US National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday.Its report comes after a US Coast Guard investigation in August outlined a litany of issues with operator OceanGate’s conduct, as well as design flaws in its Titan submersible, that led to a “preventable tragedy” in which all five passengers were killed.”We found that OceanGate’s engineering process for the Titan was inadequate and resulted in the construction of a carbon fiber composite pressure vessel that contained multiple anomalies and failed to meet necessary strength and durability requirements,” NTSB’s report said.”Because OceanGate did not adequately test the Titan, the company was unaware of the pressure vessel’s actual strength and durability, which was likely much lower than their target.”Additionally, OceanGate’s analysis of Titan pressure vessel real-time monitoring data was flawed, so the company was unaware that the Titan was damaged and needed to be immediately removed from service” after a previous dive, it added.OceanGate chief executive Stockton Rush was joined on the doomed expedition by British explorer Hamish Harding, French deep-sea explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani-British tycoon Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman.Seats on the submersible cost $250,000 per person.Communications were lost with the SUV-sized submersible about an hour and 45 minutes into its dive on June 18, 2023, kicking off a dramatic search that briefly captivated the world.Debris was found a few days later on the ocean floor, about 1,600 feet (500 meters) from the bow of the Titanic, and human remains were recovered when the sub was brought to the surface.Shortly after the tragedy, OceanGate halted all operations.Last year, the family of Nargeolet sued OceanGate for $50 million, accusing the US-based company of gross negligence.The wreckage of the Titanic sits 400 miles (644 kilometers) off the coast of Newfoundland and has become a lure for nautical experts and underwater tourists since its discovery in 1985.The ship hit an iceberg and sank in 1912 during its maiden voyage from England to New York, with 2,224 passengers and crew on board. More than 1,500 people died.

A federal judge on Wednesday “reluctantly” dismissed a lawsuit brought by young Americans accusing President Donald Trump’s administration of threatening their constitutional right to life and liberty through its aggressive fossil-fuel push.Judge Dana Christensen said that while the plaintiffs had presented “overwhelming” evidence that the government’s actions would worsen climate change and harm them, the case to overturn them “must be made to the political branches or to the electorate.””With this understanding in mind, the Court reluctantly concludes…that it cannot grant Plaintiffs the relief they seek,” he wrote.Trump, who received hundreds of millions of dollars from Big Oil in the runup to the 2024 election, has made expanded fossil fuel extraction the centerpiece of his energy policy, while curbing permits for solar and wind farms and ending tax credits for renewables. In a filing earlier this year, 22 plaintiffs — including several minors and represented by the nonprofit Our Children’s Trust — asked the court to block three executive orders they said violated their inalienable rights by seeking to “unleash” more drilling.They also accused the administration of eroding federal climate science, leaving the public less informed about mounting dangers.Julia Olson, the youths’ lead lawyer, vowed to swiftly appeal.”We will definitely appeal and get it up to the Ninth Circuit as quickly as we can so that they can correct this injustice, and give these young people their right to be heard in the federal courts,” she told AFP. The Ninth Circuit is a higher court.She called the decision “completely wrong” and an “anathema to the entire US Constitution and the entire purpose of the separation of powers among the three branches of government,” adding it places fossil fuel interests “above the health and safety of children.”- Emotional testimony -During a two-day hearing last month in Christensen’s packed courtroom in Missoula, Montana, the youths described in vivid testimony how global warming had reshaped their lives.Among them was Joseph Lee, an undergraduate from California who suffered a life-threatening heat stroke, and Jorja McCormick of Livingston, Montana, who said she was traumatized by wildfires that forced her family to flee their home.Christensen, an Obama appointee known for previous environmental rulings, listened intently and frequently engaged with witnesses as the plaintiffs called experts in climate science, energy economics, politics and law and children’s health.Those included climatologist and Nobel Peace Prize co-winner Steve Running, and John Podesta, a former senior White House official who testified about the legal nature of executive orders.Government lawyers, on the other hand, did not call their own witnesses and did not focus on disputing the reality of climate change.Instead, they argued that the lawsuit was fundamentally undemocratic and echoed Juliana v. United States — a similar youth-led case that featured some of the same plaintiffs and wound through the courts for nearly a decade before the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal last year, closing it out.While lawyers for the youths contended the case differed from Juliana in key ways, Christensen disagreed and concluded that his hands were tied by the precedent set by that case.”Plaintiffs have presented overwhelming evidence that the climate is changing at a staggering pace, and that this change stems from the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, caused by the production and burning of fossil fuels,” Christensen wrote.He added that they had also shown “overwhelming evidence that implementation of the Challenged EOs will increase the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, thereby exacerbating the harms Plaintiffs experience from an already-warming climate.”But he ruled their injuries could not be redressed by a court, saying he was troubled by being asked to reset national energy policy to its state before Trump’s second term — and by the idea of having to monitor every climate action by the government if he sided with the plaintiffs.