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US firms have warned the Federal Reserve that the cost of President Donald Trump’s tariffs will likely be borne by consumers, according to minutes of the bank’s most recent rate decision.Since returning to office in January, Trump has embarked on a stop-start tariff rollout that has unnerved investors and shaken global financial markets. The Fed’s meeting on May 6 and 7 took place after Trump had announced a 90-day pause on the most severe levies he had threatened against dozens of trading partners, and shortly before the White House unveiled trade deals with China and Britain, helping to soothe some market concerns. At that meeting, policymakers voted to hold the US central bank’s benchmark lending rate between 4.25 and 4.50 percent as they continued to fight inflation, which remains above the Fed’s long-term target of two percent. “Many participants remarked that reports from their business contacts or surveys indicated that firms generally were planning to either partially or fully pass on tariff-related cost increases to consumers,” the Fed said in its minutes of the meeting, published Wednesday. Participants also “noted that the Committee might face difficult tradeoffs if inflation proves to be more persistent while the outlooks for growth and employment weaken,” the Fed warned in its minutes. The Fed has a dual mandate to act independently to tackle both inflation and unemployment. The views of Fed officials chime with the opinions of many economists, who see Trump’s levies as inflationary and bad for growth. Trump and his allies insist that tariffs are one part of a wider policy mix, and that the US president’s overall package of economic plans — including tax cuts and deregulation — should boost economic growth. Given the high tariff-related uncertainty, Fed officials decided that it was prudent to keep rates where they were. “Participants agreed that with economic growth and the labor market still solid and current monetary policy moderately restrictive, the Committee was well positioned to wait for more clarity on the outlooks for inflation and economic activity,” the Fed said. 

Donald Trump’s expanding crackdown on elite universities is prompting some international students to abandon applications to campuses in the United States and spreading stress and anxiety among those already enrolled.The president has upended the country’s reputation among foreign students, who number around one million, as he presses a campaign against US universities he sees as obstructing his “Make America Great Again” populist agenda.He has blocked Harvard hosting international scholars in a maneuver being challenged legally, targeted non-citizen campus activists for deportation, and most recently suspended student visa processing across the board.Harvard applied mathematics and economic student Abdullah Shahid Sial, 20, said the Trump administration’s campaign against US universities that the president accused of being hotbeds of liberal bias and anti-Semitism had been “dehumanizing.””It’s really unfortunate that this is the case for 18, 19, and 20-year-olds who came here without any family, and in most cases, haven’t been to the US before,” said Sial, who is from Pakistan and hopes to be able to return to Harvard next academic year.Sial said he advised acquaintances to have backup plans if US colleges became inaccessible, and that a friend applied to Harvard’s law school, as well as Columbia’s, and two less reputable British institutions — ultimately opting to go to the UK.”He definitely liked Harvard way more (but) he doesn’t want this amount of uncertainty surrounding his education,” Sial said.Karl Molden, a Harvard government and classics student from Austria, said Trump’s move to block the university hosting and enrolling foreign students meant he was unsure if he would be able to return after summer vacation.- ‘In the dark’ -While that decision — affecting some 27 percent of the overall Harvard population — was paused by a judge pending a hearing Thursday, the move still threw student plans into chaos.”I kind of figured I would be in the target group of Trump. I’m personally right in the middle of it, so an option for me would be to study abroad… I have applied to study at Oxford because of all the action” taken by Trump, said Molden, 21.”It’s just really hard.”Harvard academics say they have already started to feel the impact of Trump’s vendetta against the school, in feedback from colleagues based outside the United States. “I’ve already heard this from professors in other countries who say ‘we encourage our best students to go to the United States’,” Harvard professor Ryan Enos told AFP at a noisy rally against Trump’s policies Tuesday, adding “we wonder if we can tell them that anymore.”The halt to visa processing revealed this week is reportedly to allow for more stringent screening of applicants’ social media — and protest activity.”International students already represent the most tracked and vetted category of nonimmigrants in the United States. It is a poor use of taxpayer dollars,” said the NAFSA Association of International Educators non-profit.Trump meanwhile continued his assault on Harvard, saying university leaders have “got to behave themselves.”Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they’re doing is getting in deeper and deeper,” he said Wednesday in the White House.One Spanish student of politics and statistics, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, told AFP she would not be deterred from pursuing her planned year abroad at Columbia University.”It’s scary, because we think to ourselves that all our activity on social networks could be monitored, for example if we like pro-Palestinian posts or anti-Trump posts. All of that could see us denied a visa,” she said.Students due to return to Harvard after the summer break are in limbo pending a ruling on Harvard’s exclusion from the foreign student system.”I’m completely in the dark,” said 20-year-old Alfred Williamson, a Welsh-Danish physics and government student in his second year at Harvard.”As for my other options, and like all other international students, I’m just clinging on to the hope that Harvard will win this battle against the White House.”Sial, the Harvard student from Pakistan, said foreign students like him were “made to fight this battle which no one signed up for.””It’s really unfortunate that it’s come down to that.”

US President Donald Trump said Wednesday he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off from striking Iran as he voiced optimism about nuclear talks his administration is holding with Tehran.Iran said that it may consider allowing Americans to inspect its facilities as part of the United Nations nuclear watchdog if a deal is reached.Trump, asked if he had told Netanyahu in a call next week not to take any action that could disrupt the diplomacy, said: “Well, I’d like to be honest, yes I did.”Pressed on what he told the Israeli premier, Trump replied: “I just said I don’t think it’s appropriate, we’re having very good discussions with them.”He added: “I told him this would be inappropriate to do right now because we’re very close to a solution. “I think they want to make a deal, and if we can make a deal, save a lot of lives.” Tehran and Washington have in recent weeks held five rounds of talks focused on the issue — their highest-level contact since Trump in 2018 withdrew from a previous deal negotiated by former president Barack Obama.Trump on a visit to Qatar earlier in May voiced optimism at reaching a new agreement with Iran that avoids military conflict.Israel sees cleric-ruled Iran, which supports Hamas militants in Gaza, as its top enemy. Israel has repeatedly threatened strikes on its nuclear facilities, after pummelling Iranian air defenses in rare direct combat.- ‘Reconsider accepting Americans’ -Iran denies Western charges that it is seeking a nuclear weapon, insisting its program is solely for peaceful, civilian purposes.Trump, withdrawing from the Obama-era deal in 2018, imposed sweeping sanctions that include pressuring all countries not to buy Iranian oil.”Countries that were hostile to us and behaved unprincipledly over the years — we have always tried not to accept inspectors from those countries,” Iran’s nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami told reporters, referring to staff from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).Tehran “will reconsider accepting American inspectors through the agency” if “an agreement is reached, and Iran’s demands are taken into account,” he said.President Masoud Pezeshkian, currently on an official visit to Oman, thanked the Gulf state for its mediation efforts between the longtime adversaries, which have had no formal diplomatic ties since 1979.Iranian Foreign Minister and top negotiator Abbas Araghchi, who is accompanying Pezeshkian in Oman, said that “the date for the new round of negotiations will probably be clarified within the next few days.”While welcoming the negotiations, Iranian officials have repeatedly declared uranium enrichment “non-negotiable.” Trump administration officials have publicly insisted that Iran not be allowed to enrich any uranium — even at low levels for civilian purposes, as allowed under Obama’s 2015 deal.”The continuation of enrichment in Iran is an inseparable part of the country’s nuclear industry and a fundamental principle for the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told reporters.”Any proposal or initiative that contradicts this principle or undermines this right is unacceptable.”Iran currently enriches uranium up to 60 percent — the highest level of any non-nuclear weapons state. That rate is still below the 90 percent threshold required for a nuclear weapon, but far above the 3.67 percent limit set under the 2015 deal.

The United States said Wednesday it will refuse visas to foreign officials who block Americans’ social media posts, as President Donald Trump’s administration wages a new battle over free expression.Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who has controversially rescinded visas for activists who criticize Israel and ramped up screening of foreign students’ social media — said he was acting against “flagrant censorship actions” overseas against US tech firms.He did not publicly name any official who would be denied a visa under the new policy. But last week he suggested to lawmakers that he was planning sanctions against a Brazilian Supreme Court judge, Alexandre de Moraes, who has battled X owner and Trump ally Elon Musk over alleged disinformation.The administration of Trump — himself a prolific and often confrontational social media user — has also sharply criticized Germany and Britain for restricting what the US allies’ governments term hate and abusive speech.Rubio said the United States will begin to restrict visas to foreign nationals who are responsible for “censorship of protected expression in the United States.””It is unacceptable for foreign officials to issue or threaten arrest warrants on US citizens or US residents for social media posts on American platforms while physically present on US soil,” Rubio said in a statement.”It is similarly unacceptable for foreign officials to demand that American tech platforms adopt global content moderation policies or engage in censorship activity that reaches beyond their authority and into the United States,” he said.”We will not tolerate encroachments upon American sovereignty, especially when such encroachments undermine the exercise of our fundamental right to free speech.”Rubio has said he has revoked the US visas for thousands of people, largely students who have protested against Israel’s offensive in Gaza.Among the most visible cases has been Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University who had written an opinion piece in a student newspaper criticizing the school’s position on Gaza.Masked agents arrested her on a Massachusetts street and took her away. A judge recently ordered her release.Rubio on Tuesday suspended further appointments for students seeking visas to the United States until the State Department drafts new guidelines on enhanced screening of applicants’ social media postings.- Anger at Brazilian judge -Social media regulation has become a rallying cry for many on the American right since Trump was suspended from Twitter, now X, and Facebook on safety grounds after his supporters attacked the US Capitol following his defeat in the 2020 election to Joe Biden.In Brazil, where supporters of Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro similarly stormed the presidential palace, Congress and Supreme Court in 2023 after Bolsonaro’s election loss, Moraes has said he is seeking to protect democracy through his judicial power.Moraes temporarily blocked X across Brazil until it complied with his order to remove accounts accused of spreading disinformation.More recently he ordered a suspension of Rumble, a video-sharing platform popular with conservative and far-right voices over its refusal to block the account of a user based in the United States who was wanted for spreading disinformation.Germany — whose foreign minister met Wednesday with Rubio — restricts online hate speech and misinformation, saying it has learned a lesson from its Nazi past and will ostracize extremists.US Vice President JD Vance in a speech in Munich in February denounced Germany for shunning the far-right, noting the popularity of its anti-immigrant message.In an essay Tuesday, a State Department official pointed to social media regulations and said Europeans were following a “similar strategy of censorship, demonization and bureaucratic weaponization” as witnessed against Trump and his supporters.”What this reveals is that the global liberal project is not enabling the flourishing of democracy,” wrote Samuel Samson, a senior advisor for the State Department’s human rights office.”Rather, it is trampling democracy, and Western heritage along with it, in the name of a decadent governing class afraid of its own people.”

Billionaire Elon Musk has criticized Donald Trump’s signature spending bill, in his first major break with the US president since he stepped back from his role taking a chainsaw to government spending.The South African-born tech tycoon said Trump’s bill would increase the deficit and undermine the work of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has fired tens of thousands of people.Musk — who was a constant presence at Trump’s side before pulling back to focus on his Space X and Tesla businesses — also complained that DOGE had become a “whipping boy” for dissatisfaction with the administration.”I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in an interview with CBS News, an excerpt of which aired late Tuesday.Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” — which passed the US House last week and now moves to the Senate — offers sprawling tax relief and spending cuts and is the centerpiece of his domestic agenda.But critics warn it will decimate health care and balloon the national deficit by as much as $4 trillion over a decade.”A bill can be big, or it can be beautiful. But I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion,” Musk said in the interview, which will be aired in full on Sunday.The White House sought to play down any differences over US government spending, without directly naming Musk.”The Big Beautiful Bill is NOT an annual budget bill,” Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on Musk’s social network, X, after the tech titan’s comments aired.All DOGE cuts would have to be carried out through a separate bill targeting the federal bureaucracy, according to US Senate rules, Miller added.But Musk’s comments represented a rare split with the Republican president whom he helped propel back to power, as the largest donor to his 2024 election campaign.- ‘Whipping boy’ -Trump tasked Musk with cutting government spending as head of DOGE, but after a feverish start Musk announced in late April he was mostly stepping back to run his companies again.Musk complained in a separate interview with the Washington Post that DOGE, which operated out of the White House with a staff of young technicians, had become a lightning rod for criticism.”DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk told the newspaper at the Starbase launch site in Texas ahead of Space X’s latest launch on Tuesday.”Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”Musk blamed entrenched US bureaucracy for DOGE’s failure to achieve all of its goals — although reports say his domineering style and lack of familiarity with the currents of Washington politics were also major factors.”The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” he said. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least.”Musk has previously admitted that he did not achieve all his goals with DOGE even though tens of thousands of people were removed from government payrolls and several departments were gutted or shut down.Musk’s own businesses suffered in the meantime.Protesters against the cost-cutting targeted Tesla dealerships while arsonists even torched a few of the electric vehicles, and the firm’s profits slumped.”People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That’s really uncool,” Musk told the Post.Musk has also been focusing on Space X after a series of fiery setbacks to his dreams of colonizing Mars — the latest of which came on Tuesday when its prototype Starship exploded over the Indian Ocean.The tycoon last week also said he would pull back from spending his fortune on politics, having spent around a quarter of a billion dollars to support Trump.

Telegram established a partnership with Elon Musk’s xAI to provide the Grok generative artificial intelligence program on the messaging service for one year, Telegram’s CEO announced Wednesday.In exchange for implementing Grok across its platforms, Telegram will receive $300 million in cash and equity, plus 50 percent of the revenue from xAI subscriptions sold via Telegram, Telegram’s chief Pavel Durov announced on X, the former Twitter.Grok will be accessible on Telegram this summer, Durov said.The terms of the deal may appear unbalanced, but the transaction allows xAI, which in late March acquired Musk’s X platform, to have access to Telegram’s customers, which Durov estimated has more than one billion users.Generative AI businesses have been aiming to grow their user base in order to recover revenues after huge investments in the state-of-the-art technology.xAI in February released the latest version of its chatbot, Grok 3, which the billionaire hopes will find traction in a highly competitive sector contested by the likes of ChatGPT and China’s DeepSeek.Grok 3 is also going up against OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT — pitting Musk against collaborator-turned-arch rival Sam Altman.Grok is accessible on the X platform, but with limitations on non-paying users. The premium service costs $40 per month, or $395 per year.Durov has faced judicial action in France after clashing with French authorities over illegal content on his popular messaging service, including claims that France interfered in Romanian elections.Earlier this month, French authorities denied a request for Durov, who holds French and Russian passports, to travel to the United States for talks with investment funds.

Billionaire Elon Musk, who has stepped back from his role of slashing US government spending by firing tens of thousands of people, has criticized President Donald Trump’s signature spending bill.The “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” — which passed in the House of Representatives and now moves to the Senate — would usher into law Trump’s vision for a new “Golden Age,” led by efforts to shrink social safety net programs to pay for a 10-year extension of his 2017 tax cuts. But critics say it will decimate health care for the poorest Americans and cause the national debt to balloon.”I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in an interview with CBS News. An excerpt was aired Tuesday evening with comments that put him at odds with Trump, who tasked Musk with cutting government spending as head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.The spending bill is the centerpiece of Trump’s domestic policy agenda and could define his second term in the White House.Independent analysts have warned it would increase the deficit by as much as $4 trillion over a decade.”I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” Musk told CBS News, “but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.” The full interview will be aired Sunday.In a separate interview with the Washington Post, Musk, the head of Tesla and SpaceX, looked back on his work leading the reforms, in which many civil servants lost their jobs with little or no warning.”The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” he said. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least.”Musk announced in late April he was stepping back from government to run his companies again.He said in May that he did not achieve all his goals with DOGE even though tens of thousands of people were removed from government payrolls and several government departments were gutted or shut down altogether.Musk told the Post he would keep working with DOGE but focus on upgrading federal government computer systems rather than firing more people.

President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah repeated calls Wednesday for Germany to pay reparations for its genocide against Namibian tribes as she led the first official commemoration of the atrocity more than 120 years ago.Thousands of indigenous Herero and Nama people were massacred by colonial-era German troops between 1904 and 1908 after they rebelled against their rule in what is regarded as the first genocide of the 20th century. “We should find a degree of comfort in the fact that the German government has agreed that the German troops committed a genocide against the… people of our land,” Nandi-Ndaitwah said at the ceremony held in the gardens of parliament.Berlin has offered an apology but there is still no agreement on reparations in talks that began with the German government in 2013, she said.”We must remain committed that as a nation, we shall soldier on until the ultimate conclusion is reached,” she said.Germany has pledged more than one billion euros ($1 billion) in development aid over 30 years to benefit the descendants of the two tribes, stressing this could not be considered as payment of reparations. Namibia has rejected the offer.The commemoration was attended by around 1,000 people including the German ambassador, Thorsten Hutter. Candles were lit in honour of the victims and a minute of silence was followed by song and speeches.”It is a stark reminder of the pain and suffering that was inflicted by German imperial troops during the colonial era,” Hutter said.”I believe that it is important to understand that we cannot change the past, but as the people who are living today, it is our responsibility to remember those atrocities that were committed,” he said.After lengthy and sometimes acrimonious negotiations, Germany in 2021 recognised the killings by its settlers constituted a genocide. An estimated 60,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama people were killed. Some were beheaded and their skulls handed to researchers in Berlin for since-discredited “scientific” experiments framed to prove the racial superiority of whites over blacks.Germany returned the skulls and other human remains to Namibia in 2011 and 2018. May 28 was chosen for the annual Genocide Remembrance Day commemoration as it was the day in 1907 when German authorities ordered the closure of concentration camps following international criticism over the brutal conditions and high death rates.It has been declared a public holiday in Namibia, a sparsely populated and largely desert nation of nearly three million people.

The US State Department has ordered the suspension of student visa processing in the latest escalation of a Trump administration crackdown on foreign students criticized Wednesday by China.President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking unprecedented control over leading US universities, including revoking foreign student visas and deporting some of those involved in protests against the war in Gaza.A cable signed Tuesday by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and seen by AFP orders embassies and consulates not to allow “any additional student or exchange visa… appointment capacity until further guidance is issued.”The government plans to ramp up vetting of the social media profiles of international applicants to US universities, the cable said.Rubio earlier rescinded hundreds of visas and the Trump administration has moved to bar Harvard University from admitting non-Americans.China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning on Wednesday said Beijing urged Washington to “safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of international students, including those from China.”Hundreds of thousands of Chinese students attend US universities, long viewed by many in China as beacons of academic freedom and rigour.The sweeping US measures have resulted in foreign governments moving to snap up affected students, with Japan and Hong Kong urging local universities to take in more international applicants.In Taiwan, a PhD student set to study at the University of California told AFP they were left “feeling uncertain” by the visa pause.”I understand the process may be delayed but there is still some time before the semester begins in mid-August,” said the 27-year-old student who did not want to be identified.”All I can do now is wait and hope for the best.”- Protests at Harvard -The suspension of visa processing came as Harvard students protested on Tuesday after the government said it intended to cancel all remaining financial contracts, Trump’s latest attempt to force the institution to submit to unprecedented oversight.Trump is furious at Harvard for rejecting his administration’s push for oversight on admissions and hiring, amid the president’s claims the school is a hotbed of anti-Semitism and “woke” liberal ideology.A judge issued a restraining order pending a hearing on the matter scheduled for Thursday, the same day as the university’s graduation ceremony for which thousands of students and their families had gathered in Cambridge, Massachusetts near Boston.The White House, meanwhile, doubled down in its offensive, saying that public money should go to vocational schools that train electricians and plumbers. “The president is more interested in giving that taxpayer money to trade schools and programs and state schools where they are promoting American values, but most importantly, educating the next generation based on skills that we need in our economy and our society,” spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News Tuesday.Some Harvard students were worried that the Trump administration’s policies would make US universities less attractive to international students.”I don’t know if I’d pursue a PhD here. Six years is a long time,” said Jack, a history of medicine student from Britain who is graduating this week and gave one name.Harvard itself has filed extensive legal challenges against Trump’s measures.Alumni plan to file a legal brief against Trump on June 9, filmmaker Anurima Bhargava told a virtual meeting staged by Crimson Courage, a grassroots alumni group.The group is gathering thousands of signatures to show the courts the depth of support for the existing legal action. The Trump administration is also piling financial pressure on Harvard.It has announced the cutting of Harvard’s government contracts, estimated by US media to be worth $100 million.In the last few weeks, the elite educational and research powerhouse has already seen billions of dollars in federal grants frozen and millions of dollars of federal contracts torn up.The university has sued both to block the revocation of its right to recruit and sponsor foreign students, 27 percent of its total roll, as well as to overturn the withdrawal of federal funding.On Monday, Trump vowed he would prevail in the increasingly public struggle with Harvard, claiming that foreign students there include “radicalized lunatics, troublemakers.”

The billionaire chief of Georgia’s ruling party — widely seen as the Caucasus country’s most powerful figure — has refused to meet the US ambassador, the American embassy said Wednesday.The diplomatic snub comes as ties between Washington and Tbilisi have sunk to their lowest level in years, with the United States repeatedly condemning Georgia for democratic backsliding, its violent crackdown on protestors and its move to suspend talks on joining the European Union.Bidzina Ivanishvili, the country’s richest person and key power broker, is among those hit with US sanctions and visa restrictions put in place under ex-president Joe Biden.”Bidzina Ivanishvili has refused to meet with Ambassador (Robin) Dunnigan to hear a message from the Trump Administration,” the US embassy said in a statement.Officials from Ivanishvili’s ruling Georgian Dream party have dismissed Washington’s sanctions pressure as blackmail.The embassy said the meeting had been requested by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, so the US envoy could “again relay specific steps the Georgian government can take to show it is serious about resetting its relationship with the United States”.”It is our hope that the Georgian government sincerely wishes to return to 33 years of partnership and friendship with America and the American people,” it added.Dunnigan, a career diplomat, was appointed by Biden but has continued as ambassador to Georgia under Trump.Critics accuse the Georgian Dream party of moving Tbilisi away from the West and closer to Russia, with whom Georgia fought a brief war in 2008.Ivanishvili said it was “inappropriate” for him to meet with the US ambassador due to sanctions against him, and said the ambassador had refused to meet Georgia’s prime minister.”Against the backdrop of such personal blackmail, I believe it would be inappropriate for me to meet with the ambassador and discuss matters of state,” the billionaire said.Prime Minister Kobakhidze on Tuesday accused Washington of being controlled by the “deep state”, echoing language frequently employed by President Donald Trump.”We want relations with a United States that is free from the deep state — a relationship with an independent, sovereign country — and that is what we are waiting for,” Kobakhidze said.Georgia has been rocked by protests since Georgian Dream shelved talks on joining the European Union shortly after disputed parliamentary elections last October.