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The US State Department said it would revoke the visa of Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro, who returned to Bogota on Saturday after being accused of “incendiary actions” during a pro-Palestinian street protest in New York.Petro was in New York for the UN General Assembly, where he fiercely rebuked US President Donald Trump’s administration and called for a criminal inquiry into recent US strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean in his Tuesday address.The Colombian leader shared video on social media of himself speaking through megaphone to a large crowd on Friday, calling on “nations of the world” to contribute soldiers for an army “larger than that of the United States.””That is why, from here in New York, I ask all soldiers in the United States Army not to point their rifles at humanity. Disobey Trump’s order! Obey the order of humanity!” Petro said.The State Department said on social media that Petro had “stood on a NYC street and urged US soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence.””We will revoke Petro’s visa due to his reckless and incendiary actions,” it said.Petro struck a defiant note after leaving New York for Bogota, saying that he considered himself a “free person in the world.””I arrived in Bogota. I no longer have a visa to travel to the USA. I don’t care,” he wrote on social media early Saturday.He added that he was “not only a Colombian citizen but also a European citizen” which meant he would not require a visa but instead use the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) for entry into the United States.Petro said unarmed “poor young people” died in the strikes — more than a dozen in total — but Washington contends the actions are part of a US anti-drug operation off the coast of Venezuela, whose president Washington accuses of running a cartel.Trump has dispatched eight warships and a submarine to the southern Caribbean, and the biggest US deployment in years has raised fears in Venezuela of an invasion.Petro, whose country is the world’s biggest cocaine producer, has said he suspects some of those killed in the US boat strikes were Colombian.Last week, the Trump administration decertified Colombia as an ally in the fight against drugs, but stopped short of economic sanctions.The countries are historical allies, but ties have soured under Petro — Colombia’s first leftist leader.The South American country’s Interior Minister Armando Benedetti wrote on social media Friday night that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visa should have been revoked rather than Petro’s.”But since the empire protects him, it’s taking it out on the only president who was capable enough to tell him the truth to his face,” Benedetti said.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Saturday slammed as “unacceptable” what he described as US demands that Tehran hand over its enriched uranium, as sweeping UN sanctions loomed after nuclear talks collapsed.Earlier this month, the UN nuclear watchdog reported that Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched up to 60 percent had risen to an estimated 440.9 kilogrammes as of June 13, an increase of 32.3 kilogrammes since May 17.Though Iran allowed inspectors back into its sites, Western powers said they saw insufficient progress to justify delaying sanctions, after a week of top-level diplomacy at the UN General Assembly.European powers triggered the “snapback” mechanism a month ago, accusing Tehran of failing to comply with requirements over its nuclear program — including through countermeasures it launched in response to Israeli and US strikes in June.Pezeshkian on Saturday told reporters in New York that Washington had asked Tehran to relinquish all of its enriched uranium in exchange for a three-month reprieve from sanctions.The United States “wants us to hand over all our enriched uranium to them, and in return they would give us three months” exemption from sanctions, Pezeshkian told reporters in New York before leaving for Tehran.”This is by no means acceptable,” he said.He previously said France had made a similar proposal, offering only a one-month delay.”Why would we put ourselves in such a trap and have a noose around our neck each month?” he asked, accusing the United States of pressuring Europeans not to compromise.- ‘Null and void’ -Pezeshkian reiterated that Iran had no intention of developing nuclear weapons, charging that Washington and Israel were instead using pressure to try to topple the Islamic republic.Talks over Iran’s nuclear program had also involved Steve Witkoff — Special Envoy of US president Donald Trump — who said Washington did not want to harm Iran and was open to further discussions.But Pezeshkian dismissed him as unserious, saying he backtracked on earlier understandings that collapsed after Israel launched its latest military campaign on Iran in June.Meanwhile, Iran recalled its envoys from Britain, France and Germany for consultations after the three countries triggered the sanctions mechanism, state television reported.The measures, due to take effect at 0000 GMT Sunday (8:00 pm Saturday in New York), will reinstate a global ban on dealings with companies, people and organisations accused of involvement in Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.The sanctions are aimed at imposing new economic pain to pressure Iran, but it remains to be seen if all countries will enforce them.Russian deputy ambassador Dmitry Polyansky said Friday that Moscow, a top partner of Iran, considered the reimposition of sanctions “null and void.”Russia and China sought at the Security Council Friday to delay the reimposition of sanctions until April but failed to muster enough votes.- ‘Maximum pressure’ -The United States already has unilateral sanctions on Iran and has tried to force all other countries to stop buying Iranian oil, although companies from China have defied the pressure.Trump imposed a “maximum pressure” campaign during his first term when he withdrew from a landmark 2015 nuclear agreement negotiated under former president Barack Obama, which had offered sanctions relief in return for drastic curbs on Iran’s nuclear program.The new sanctions mark a “snapback” of the UN measures that were suspended under the 2015 deal, which had been strongly supported by Britain, France and Germany after Trump’s withdrawal.The International Crisis Group, which studies conflict resolution, said in a report that Iran seemed dismissive of the snapback as it had already learned to cope with the US sanctions.But it noted that the snapback was not easy to reverse as it would require consensus at the Security Council.”It is also likely to compound the malaise around an economy already struggling with high inflation, currency woes and deepening infrastructure problems,” the report said.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a defiant UN address Friday urged no delay in the snapback and hinted that Israel was willing to again strike Iran’s nuclear program, after the 12 days of bombing in June that Iranian authorities say killed more than 1,000 people.Pezeshkian said that Iran would not retaliate against the sanctions by leaving the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, warning that unnamed powers were seeking a “superficial pretext to set the region ablaze.”

Eleven years after her son vanished, Delfina de la Cruz vented frustration at the unsolved disappearances of 43 Mexican students who were allegedly kidnapped by drug traffickers while authorities turned a blind eye.The students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college — whose members have a history of political activism — had commandeered buses to travel to a demonstration in Mexico City when they went missing on September 26, 2014.The case is considered one of the worst human rights atrocities in Mexico, where a spiral of drug-related violence has left more than 120,000 people unaccounted for.In the rain, de la Cruz and the mothers of other victims led a massive protest march in Mexico City on Friday to mark the anniversary.”We are back where we started,” she said. “I want to see my son, (know) what happened, where he is, if he is no longer there.” So far the remains of only three of the missing students have been found and identified, while the whereabouts of the rest are unknown.Investigators believe they were kidnapped by a drug cartel in collusion with corrupt police, although exactly what happened to them is unclear.At Friday’s march, retired university professor Jesus Gumaro held a banner criticizing former president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, for not “clearing up the crime.””We had hoped that it would be solved, but nothing has happened,” said Gumaro, 66.No one has been convicted despite the prosecution of dozens of people, including a former attorney general and several military personnel.The missing students’ relatives have accused the army of withholding information.On Thursday, protesters rammed a truck into the gates of a military barracks in Mexico City during a demonstration over the student disappearances.No injuries were reported in the truck ramming and the barracks remained secure.The students’ disappearance drew international condemnation and has become emblematic of a missing persons crisis in Mexico, with criminal violence claiming more than 450,000 lives since 2006.The so-called “historical truth” — an official version of the case presented in 2015 under then-president Enrique Pena Nieto — was widely discredited, notably the theory that the remains were incinerated and thrown into a river in the southern state of Guerrero.In 2022, a truth commission set up by Lopez Obrado’s government branded the case a “state crime” and said the military shared responsibility, either directly or through negligence.The commission found that the army was aware of what was happening and had real-time information about the kidnapping and disappearance.

Deep sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program look set to go into force once again, even as a UN watchdog confirmed Friday inspections of its atomic sites had resumed. Russia failed in an effort with Beijing Friday to delay the reimposition of the measures on Tehran, with Moscow raising the prospect that it may not enforce the sanctions — despite being required to under international law.European powers triggered the process to reimpose economic sanctions after demanding Iran reverse a series of steps it took after Israel and the United States bombed its nuclear sites in June.The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, did confirm Friday that inspections of Iranian nuclear sites had resumed this week after a hiatus following Washington and Israel’s strikes. Resumption of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspections was a key measure demanded by the Europeans — Britain, France and Germany.”I signed an agreement with the agency in Cairo and the director general of the agency is quite satisfied and happy,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.Araghchi has insisted any effort to reimpose sanctions is “legally void,” vowing never to “bow to pressure” on its nuclear program — but left the door open to more talks.Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said Friday Tehran would not leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in retaliation to sanctions being reimposed.China and Russia’s effort to buy time for diplomacy was rejected by nine countries against four in favor.”UN sanctions, targeting Iranian proliferation, will be reimposed this weekend,” said Britain’s ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward.”We stand ready to continue discussions with Iran on a diplomatic solution to address international concerns about its nuclear program. In turn, this could allow for the lifting of sanctions in the future.”The UN sanctions, notably on Iran’s banking and oil sectors, are set to take effect automatically at the end of Saturday.China and Russia at the Security Council session on Friday pushed a resolution that would have extended talks until April 18, 2026.”We had hoped that us, that European colleagues in the US, would think twice, and that they would opt for the path of diplomacy and dialog, instead of their clumsy blackmail,” the Russian deputy ambassador to the UN told the council prior to the vote.”Did Washington, London, Paris, Berlin make any compromises? No, they did not.”- ‘Several workable solutions’? -France’s ambassador to the UN Jerome Bonnafort told the council all sides had been “trying to find, until the very last moment, a solution.”France — speaking for itself, Germany, and Britain — has told Iran it must allow full access to UN nuclear inspectors, immediately resume nuclear negotiations, and offer transparency on highly enriched uranium, the whereabouts of which has been the subject of speculation.The European nations “and the US have consistently misrepresented Iran’s peaceful nuclear program,” said Araghchi who insisted Tehran had put forward “several workable” proposals.The European countries’ “pursuit of the so called ‘snapback’ is… legally void, politically reckless and procedurally flawed,” he said.The 2015 deal, negotiated during Barack Obama’s presidency, lifted sanctions in return for Iran drastically scaling back its controversial nuclear work.President Donald Trump in his first term withdrew from the deal and imposed sweeping unilateral US sanctions, while pushing the Europeans to do likewise.Steve Witkoff, Trump’s roving envoy who had been negotiating with Iran until Israel attacked, said Wednesday that Iran was in a “tough position” but also held out hope for a solution.But Iran’s president was withering in his assessment of Washington’s diplomatic efforts, claiming that Witkoff and his team were not serious.”We came to understandings a number of times but they were never taken seriously by the Americans,” Pezeshkian told reporters on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.Iran has long contended that it is not seeking nuclear weapons, pointing to an edict by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and US intelligence has not concluded that the country has decided to build a nuclear weapon.dt-abd-gw-sct/sla/ksb

US President Donald Trump called on Microsoft on Friday to fire its head of global affairs, Lisa Monaco, a former senior official in Democratic administrations.”It is my opinion that Microsoft should immediately terminate the employment of Lisa Monaco,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.Since taking office in January, the Republican president has taken a number of punitive measures against his perceived enemies and political opponents.Former FBI director James Comey, a prominent Trump critic, was indicted on two criminal counts on Thursday and Trump said Friday he hopes “there are others.”Trump, in his call for Microsoft to fire Monaco, noted that she served as deputy attorney general in the Joe Biden administration, when criminal cases were brought against him.”Monaco has been shockingly hired as the President of Global Affairs for Microsoft, in a very senior role with access to Highly Sensitive Information,” he wrote. “Monaco’s having that kind of access is unacceptable, and cannot be allowed to stand.”She is a menace to US National Security, especially given the major contracts that Microsoft has with the United States Government,” he added. “The US Government recently stripped her of all Security Clearances, took away all of her access to National Security Intelligence, and banned her from all Federal Properties.”Trump was the target of several investigations after leaving the White House in 2021.The FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago home in 2022 as part of a probe into mishandling of classified documents and Trump was charged by Special Counsel Jack Smith with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Neither case came to trial, and Smith — in line with a Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president — dropped them both after Trump won the November 2024 vote.

The US Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration on Friday to freeze for now more than $4 billion in foreign assistance appropriated by Congress.The conservative-dominated  court said upholding the president’s authority to conduct foreign affairs appears to “outweigh the potential harm” faced by the intended recipients of the aid money.The court said its emergency order was not a final determination on the merits of the case but it allows for a temporary freeze on disbursement of the funds while the case continues in lower courts.The three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Elena Kagan saying the stakes in the case are “high.””At issue is the allocation of power between the Executive and Congress over the expenditure of public monies,” Kagan said.But Friday’s emergency order was issued with “scant briefing, no oral argument, and no opportunity to deliberate in conference,” she added.The effect of the decision, Kagan said, “is to allow the Executive to cease obligating $4 billion in funds that Congress appropriated for foreign aid, and that will now never reach its intended recipients.”Because that result conflicts with the separation of powers, I respectfully dissent,” she said.President Donald Trump, since taking office in January, has sought to exert greater control over federal spending and tasked Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, with downsizing swaths of the US government.Among the chief targets was USAID, the primary organization for distributing US humanitarian aid around the world, with health and emergency programs in some 120 countries.

Two major TV companies that stopped airing comedian Jimmy Kimmel after US government pressure said Friday they would start broadcasting his show again, ending a boycott of the late-night host.Disney-owned ABC had suspended production of the show last week when Sinclair and Nexstar said they would no longer carry his program on the dozens of local stations they own, purportedly over remarks the comedian made in the wake of the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.After a public outcry over freedom of speech, ABC reversed course.Kimmel’s return on Tuesday proved a huge ratings hit, even as lingering blackouts by Sinclair and Nexstar — which each own dozens of ABC-affiliated channels — meant a quarter of the country still could not watch.Sinclair, having previously demanded Kimmel make a personal donation to Kirk’s activist group, said Friday it would carry the show again with immediate effect.”Our objective throughout this process has been to ensure that programming remains accurate and engaging for the widest possible audience,” the company said.”We take seriously our responsibility as local broadcasters to provide programming that serves the interests of our communities, while also honoring our obligations to air national network programming.”Hours later, Nexstar followed suit.”We have had discussions with executives at The Walt Disney Company and appreciate their constructive approach to addressing our concerns,” it said in a statement.”As a local broadcaster, Nexstar remains committed to protecting the First Amendment while producing and airing local and national news that is fact-based and unbiased and, above all, broadcasting content that is in the best interest of the communities we serve.”Both companies had first removed Kimmel last week after Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr appeared to threaten the licenses of stations broadcasting the show unless they did so.President Donald Trump, who has long chafed at the mockery he receives from Kimmel and his fellow late night talk show hosts, has repeatedly demanded they be taken off air, and has called other criticism of him “illegal.”In its statement Friday, Sinclair said its decision to stop airing “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was “independent of any government interaction or influence.””Free speech provides broadcasters with the right to exercise judgment as to the content on their local stations,” it said.”While we understand that not everyone will agree with our decisions about programming, it is simply inconsistent to champion free speech while demanding that broadcasters air specific content.”But on his Tuesday night return, Kimmel took aim at the “anti-American” attempt to silence a comedian.”The president of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs,” he said.”Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”

US President Donald Trump ordered the declassification and release on Friday of any government records about Amelia Earhart, the famed American aviator who vanished over the Pacific in 1937.Earhart went missing while on a pioneering round-the-world flight with navigator Fred Noonan and her disappearance is one of the most tantalizing mysteries in aviation lore.”I have been asked by many people about the life and times of Amelia Earhart,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “Her disappearance, almost 90 years ago, has captivated millions.”I am ordering my Administration to declassify and release all Government Records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her,” he said.Earhart’s disappearance has fascinated historians for decades and spawned books, movies and theories galore.The prevailing belief is that Earhart, 39, and Noonan, 44, ran out of fuel and ditched their twin-engine Lockheed Electra in the Pacific near Howland Island while on one of the final legs of their epic journey.Earhart, who won fame in 1932 as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, took off on May 20, 1937 from Oakland, California, hoping to become the first woman to fly around the world.She and Noonan vanished on July 2, 1937 after taking off from Lae, Papua New Guinea, on a challenging 2,500-mile (4,000-kilometer) flight to refuel on Howland Island, a speck of a US territory between Australia and Hawaii.They never made it.

President Donald Trump insists he has found a solution to keep TikTok alive in the United States through a group of investors who will buy the short-video app from its Chinese owners in accordance with US law.But questions remain unresolved about how this will play out and what it means for American users.- Is there actually a deal? -Any sale of TikTok’s US operations would require Chinese owner ByteDance to divest. That would need approval from China’s government, which is reluctant to see a national champion forced out of its largest market as a trade war rages with an increasingly protectionist Trump.While the Trump administration has insisted that China has accepted a deal for the sale, there has been no confirmation from Beijing. Queries to TikTok and ByteDance have gone unanswered.”This deal is still very confusing in terms of what is exactly going on,” University of Florida media professor Andrew Selepak told AFP.- Is Trump taking over TikTok? -In an executive order signed on Thursday, the White House outlined a deal centered on key investors with close ties to the president.Trump has specifically named Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, a longtime ally and the world’s second-richest man, as a major player in the arrangement. For decades, Ellison has been one of Silicon Valley’s few high-profile Republicans in a tech sector dominated by liberal politics.Ellison is returning to the spotlight through his dealings with Trump, who has brought his old friend into major AI partnerships with OpenAI, for example. The 81-year-old has also backed his son David’s acquisition of Hollywood studio Paramount and is reportedly eyeing Warner Brothers.The investor group also includes 94-year-old media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, who control Fox News.Whether this signals a conservative rebranding of TikTok — a platform Trump credits with helping him reach young voters — remains unclear. Trump denied this possibility on Thursday.The prospect of a right-wing shift, or increased government intervention in media, has raised concerns that key platforms are falling under conservative control, potentially limiting diverse viewpoints in a bitterly divided America.The fate of TikTok will be decided amid major shifts across social media platforms. Elon Musk has transformed X (formerly Twitter) into a vehicle for far-right politics, driving away many establishment media outlets and liberal users.Meanwhile, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has aligned with Trump and overhauled content moderation on Facebook and Instagram to address Republican claims of anti-conservative bias.- Why so cheap? – At Thursday’s White House ceremony, Vice President JD Vance pegged the deal at $14 billion. That’s a surprisingly low figure given Twitter’s $44 billion valuation when it sold and TikTok’s unique reach among young consumers in the world’s largest economy.Bloomberg reporting helped shed light on the modest price tag: unnamed sources indicated that ByteDance would retain significant value through an expensive licensing arrangement, potentially receiving about half of the new company’s profits even if the company would hold just a 20 percent stake, according to Trump’s plan.Such terms could trigger alarm in Washington, where some lawmakers could scrutinize whether any sale meets the requirements of the divest-or-ban law that should have taken effect in January but has been repeatedly delayed since Trump took office.And confusingly, the executive order announced Thursday extended the deadline to ban TikTok until mid-January to finalize a deal that the Trump administration simultaneously claimed was already complete.John Moolenaar, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, reiterated this point on Friday and warned that he would be “conducting full oversight over this agreement.””ByteDance has shown time and again that it is a bad actor,” he said.The Trump plan “offers vague assurances about protecting US national security but provides virtually no specifics,” said Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law.Adding to skepticism: Ellison’s Oracle already manages TikTok’s data servers from an earlier attempt to address US security concerns. Critics question whether this deal changes anything substantive.