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A forgotten industrial estate in Newark, New Jersey is the latest frontline in the fight over US President Donald Trump’s pursuit of mass deportations of undocumented migrants.Tensions at the site worsened on Friday when Newark mayor Ras Baraka was briefly detained while protesting against the newly reopened deportation center.Little more than a month after Trump’s inauguration in January, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) inked a billion-dollar, 15-year contract with outsourcing giant Geo to transform Delaney Hall into a 1,000-bed detention center.It dwarfed a similar for-profit facility in nearby Elizabeth that has some 300 beds, compared to the many thousands of people in New Jersey subject to removal proceedings.At that location, many detainees wear orange scrubs even though officials insist they are not prisoners and enjoy perks like the use of tablet computers.Bars and grilles cover windows, detainees face prison-like regimes, and surveillance cameras keep watch.There is an emphasis on suicide prevention in the centers, with posters in group cells encouraging detainees to volunteer to return home.In February, acting ICE director Caleb Vitello, who since moved jobs, praised the Newark site — the first new removal facility since Trump’s return — as helping “streamline” the president’s “mandate to arrest, detain and remove illegal aliens.”But there is friction with the host area as Newark is a sanctuary city, meaning local police do not routinely cooperate with ICE, and the city has sued to prevent the new detention site from operating.- ‘More afraid’ -Detainees started to arrive on May 1, Geo told AFP, sparking condemnation from Baraka, who is running to be statewide governor and fiercely opposes Trump’s migrant policy.Newark’s Department of Public Safety visited the vast fortified Delaney Hall site this week demanding to inspect it — but were refused entry.Baraka tried to get inside Tuesday and again on Wednesday, when the location was reinforced with armed federal agents, but was turned away both times.On Friday, he was arrested at the site by federal officials who handcuffed him.Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings,” Alina Habba, who Trump has named as New Jersey’s interim US attorney, said on social media. “He has been taken into custody.””The reality is this: I did nothing wrong,” Baraka said on his release.Newark has accused Geo of not possessing a certificate of occupancy, suggesting it is operating Delaney Hall illegally.There are parallel legal and political fights against Trump’s anti-migrant tactics.”It’s a local step to oppose this kind of bullying that is going on, and the disregard for the people’s laws,” Baraka told AFP earlier this week, suggesting that failing to uphold the laws would result in “barbarism” — “the wild, wild west.”Baraka said the arrest of Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly helping a migrant evade ICE had sown fear among city employees.Geo insisted it had a valid occupancy certificate for the site, disused since 2023, but previously used to hold detainees under President Barack Obama. A spokesman accused Baraka of pursing a “politicized campaign” and interfering with federal authorities while jeopardizing jobs in the center that pay $105,000 annually on average.Near the center, flanked by an oil depot and squat warehouses, an acrid smell forced protesters to don masks.”People are more afraid than any time before,” said Viri Martinez, part of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, 30 members of which picketed Delaney Hall this week.”ICE out of New Jersey,” they chanted.”We’ve heard so many stories of parents being scared to drop off their kids at school. Kids being scared. ‘What if I do go to school and my mom and dad are not back home when I come back’, right?” she said, interrupted by a trucker honking in support. 

Over the past decade since the United States and Cuba restored ties US diplomats on the Caribbean island have walked a diplomatic tightrope.Their every move is scrutinized by Havana for signs of support for critics of communist rule.Cubans who meet with the representative of the island’s arch-foe, which has toughened its six-decade trade blockade since President Donald Trump returned to power, also risk the ire of the authorities.Yet the new US chief of mission in Cuba, Mike Hammer, seems unfazed as he crisscrosses the country of 9.7 million, meeting with dissidents and splashing pictures of the encounters on social media since taking the post in November.It’s a sharp contrast to his more discreet predecessors.Cuba, which restored ties with the United States in 2015 after half a century of hostility, has accused Hammer of an “activist” approach to his mission.”I travel around Cuba because, as a diplomat with over 35 years’ experience, I know… that it is very important to understand a country and its people,” Hammer said recently in a Spanish-language video posted on the embassy’s X account.In the message he also invited Cubans to contact him to request a meeting and to suggest places he should visit.- Church activism -A former ambassador to Chile and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Hammer arrived in Cuba in the dying days of Joe Biden’s presidency.In the past six months, he has met dozens of dissidents, human rights activists, independent journalists, church leaders and families of jailed anti-government demonstrators, most of whom are under close surveillance.At every turn, the affable diplomat presses for the release of political prisoners, quoting Cuban nationalist hero Jose Marti on the need for a republic “that opens its arms to all.”In February, he travelled to the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba to meet opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer, who had just been released from prison under an eleventh-hour deal with Biden.Cuba agreed to free over 500 prisoners in return for Washington removing the island from a list of state sponsors of terrorism. On his first day back in office Trump tore up the deal by putting Cuba back on the terrorism list.Havana released the prisoners nonetheless but last month sent Ferrer and fellow longtime opposition leader Felix Navarro, whom Hammer also met, back to prison, for allegedly violating their parole conditions.Hammer has also shown solidarity with Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White rights group, who has been repeatedly arrested for trying to attend mass dressed in white, which the government considers a dissident act.On April 13, Hammer accompanied her to a Palm Sunday church service in Havana.Soler, 61, was briefly detained afterwards, triggering condemnation from Washington of Cuba’s “brutish treatment” of its people and its attempt to “intimidate US diplomats.”- Avoiding more sanctions -Michael Shifter, senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington, said Hammer’s style signaled a change in tack under Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who is fiercely critical of the island’s leadership.”Ambassador Hammer has instructions to make visits with greater frequency and visibility,” Shifter said.Cuba’s deputy foreign minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio last month lashed out at Hammer, accusing him of “being an activist that encourages Cubans to act against their country.”Another senior foreign ministry official accused Hammer of flouting the historic rapprochement deal struck by his former boss, ex-president Barack Obama with his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro.For Cuban political scientist Arturo Lopez-Levy, professor of international relations at the University of Denver, the problem facing Cuba is how to “keep the embassy open without it becoming a platform for subversive activities.”Shifter said he expected Cuba to show restraint.The island is struggling with its worst economic crisis in 30 years, marked by shortages of food and fuel, recurring blackouts and a critical shortage of hard currency.As a result, Havana has “an interest in avoiding even tougher sanctions,” Shifter said.

Senior US and Chinese officials are in Switzerland this weekend for talks aimed at de-escalating a burgeoning trade war sparked by President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff rollout, and fueled by strong retaliatory measures from Beijing. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are set to confer with China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng in the Swiss city of Geneva on Saturday and Sunday — the first such talks between the two sides since Trump slapped steep new levies on China last month.  Tariffs imposed on the Asian manufacturing giant since the start of the year currently total 145 percent, with cumulative duties on some goods reaching a staggering 245 percent.In retaliation, China slapped 125 percent levies on US goods, cementing what is effectively a trade embargo between the world’s two largest economies.Trump signaled on Friday that he could lower the sky-high tariffs on Chinese imports, taking to social media to suggest that an “80% Tariff on China seems right!” His press secretary Karoline Leavitt later clarified he would not do so unilaterally, adding that China would need to make concessions as well.- ‘A good sign’ -“The relationship is not good,” said Bill Reinsch, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), referring to current ties between Washington and Beijing. “We have trade-prohibitive tariffs going in both directions. Relations are deteriorating,” said Reinsch, a longtime former member of the American government’s US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. “But the meeting is a good sign.””I think this is basically to show that both sides are talking, and that itself is very important,” Xu Bin, professor of economics and finance at the China Europe International Business School, told AFP. “Because China is the only country that has tit-for-tat tariffs against Trump’s tariffs.” Beijing has insisted the United States must lift tariffs first and vowed to defend its interests.Bessent has said the meetings in Switzerland would focus on “de-escalation” and not a “big trade deal.”The head of the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO) on Friday welcomed the talks, calling them a “positive and constructive step toward de-escalation.””Sustained dialogue between the world’s two largest economies is critical to easing trade tensions, preventing fragmentation along geopolitical lines and safeguarding global growth,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said, according to a spokesperson.Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter also sounded an upbeat note.”Yesterday the Holy Spirit was in Rome,” she said Friday, referring to the election of Pope Leo XIV. “We must hope that he will now go down to Geneva for the weekend.” – 10 percent ‘baseline’ – Bessent and He will meet two days after Trump unveiled a trade agreement with Britain, the first deal with any country since he unleashed a blitz of sweeping global tariffs last month.The five-page, non-legally binding document confirmed to nervous investors that the United States is willing to negotiate sector-specific relief from recent duties — in this case on British cars, steel and aluminum. In return, Britain agreed to open up its markets to US beef and other farm products.But a 10 percent baseline levy on most British goods remained intact, and Trump remains “committed” to keeping it in place for other countries in talks with the United States, Leavitt told reporters Friday. A few hours later, Trump appeared to contradict her, suggesting there could be some flexibility to the baseline — but only if the right deals could be reached. “There could be an exception at some point, we’ll see,” he said during an Oval Office event. “If somebody did something exceptional for us, that’s always possible.”Reinsch from CSIS said one of big issues for both the United States and China going into the talks in Geneva was their starkly different negotiating strategies.”Trump’s approach is generally top-down,” he said. “He wants to meet with (Chinese President) Xi Jinping, and thinks that if the two of them can get together, they can make a big deal and then have the subordinates go work out the details.””The Chinese are the reverse,” he said. “They want to have all the issues settled and everything agreed to at lower levels before there’s any leaders meeting.”burs-da/acb

Louis Prevost is still reckoning with what just happened in his family.His little brother, Robert Francis Prevost, is now Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope in the Catholic Church’s history, an incredible fate for a boy from Chicago who dreamt of becoming a priest.”We knew from a very early time, maybe when he was five or six, he was going to be a priest. There was no doubt in my mind,” Prevost, 73, told AFP from his home in Port Charlotte, Florida.”When we played games, as kids, he liked to play priest a lot. I thought: ‘what the heck? Priest?'”He bought Necco wafers, little candy discs, and he’d pretend those were communion and give it to all our friends the yard,” Prevost recounted with a smile.”We were teasing him when he was six years old: ‘you’re gonna be the Pope.’ And he didn’t like that.”On Thursday, after white smoke billowed out of the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, Prevost recalled feeling nervous because he felt the cardinal chosen to be pope would be his brother.He turned on the TV, trying to calm down during the prolonged wait got the announcement.When Cardinal Dominique Mamberti said his brother’s name at the Vatican, Prevost burst with joy.”I was in the bed, sitting down. It’s good thing I was because I probably would have fallen over,” Prevost said.”When I thought: ‘My brother’s the Pope. You’re kidding me.’ My mind was blown out of this world, it was crazy, ridiculous. So excited.”- ‘Out of reach’ -Now with the initial excitement subsiding, he is left wondering how his youngest brother’s new role might affect their personal relationship.”This could be bad for the family. Will we ever see him again? Will we ever get to talk to him like brothers again? Or will it have to be all official? How are you Holy Father, blah, blah, blah. It opens up a lot of questions,” Prevost said. “He’s still there, but he’s out of reach. We can’t just pick up the phone and call him. Now it’s got to be really special when you get to call the Pope,” he added.Prevost hopes his other brother, John, will be able to give him some answers when he visits Rome from their hometown of Chicago.He thinks his brother’s papacy will be able to unite the Catholic Church, attract more faithful and make the world a more peaceful place.”Whether he has the ability to settle, like the Gaza thing or the Russia and Ukraine conflict, who knows? But I’ve seen him take two warring parties and make peace in five minutes between them,” Prevost said. “He’s got a gift to communicate to people and make them open their eyes.”He also hopes having an American pope will revitalize the Catholic Church in the United States.”When he comes to America, he’s going to speak English, not Latin or Spanish or Italian,” Prevost said.”People will understand what he’s saying. They’ll see him, they’ll realize he’s one of us.”

A senior White House official said Friday that President Donald Trump, as part of his sweeping immigration crackdown, is looking at suspending habeas corpus, the right of a person to challenge their detention in court.”The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters.”So it’s an option we’re actively looking at,” Miller said. “A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants and has repeatedly referred to their presence in the United States as an “invasion.”Since taking office in January, Trump has been seeking to step up deportations, but his efforts have met with pushback from multiple federal courts which have insisted that migrants targeted for removal receive due process.Among other measures, the Republican president invoked an obscure wartime law in March to summarily deport hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador.Several federal courts have blocked further deportations using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and the Supreme Court also weighed in, saying migrants subject to deportation under the AEA must be given an opportunity to legally challenge their removal in court.The AEA was last used to round up Japanese-Americans during World War II and was previously invoked during the War of 1812 and World War I.Suspending habeas corpus could potentially allow the administration to dispense with individual removal proceedings and speed up deportations, but the move would almost certainly be met with stiff legal challenges and end up in the Supreme Court.It has been suspended only rarely in US history, most notably by president Abraham Lincoln during the 1861-1865 Civil War and in Hawaii after the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Paula Hambrick never imagined that in her lifetime the Catholic Church would be led by a pope from the United States, never mind her hometown of Chicago.But at a mass on Friday in her Midwestern city in honor of the newly elected Pope Leo XIV, a native son of the so-called Windy City, the 77-year-old was counting her blessings.”There’s probably three things that I would have hoped for in my life: to see the Cubs win the World Series, a woman become president and an American pope,” she told AFP, naming one of the local professional baseball teams.”I got two out of three! It’s pretty good odds, right?” said Hambrick, who like the new pope hails from the city’s southern suburbs.”It’s terrific. I’m thrilled,” she added, speaking under the wood vault of Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral.By 8 am the pews were fuller compared to one hour earlier for the first mass to celebrate the new pope, but still relatively sparse.Alejandro Mendoza, who was among the several hundred people to turn out for the service, said he had become more proud of Chicago.”I’m telling everybody that the pope is from where I’m from,” the 24-year-old said.”It feels like you know him. It’s very special, this sense of pride.”- ‘A prophetic figure’ -Maryjane Okolie, a nun who has been working in the southern suburbs of Chicago for more than a decade, said people there were “excited” and “surprised” that Robert Francis Prevost had become the 267th pope.”Everybody is talking about it,” she told AFP. She said she hoped Leo would follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, pope Francis, who gained a reputation for attending to the disadvantaged.Nate Bacon, a 61-year-old deacon who has been working in Guatemala for more than 10 years and was in town to visit his son, said he was “shocked” by the news.”At a time when the United States is in a really dominating kind of posture, to have a pope from the United States felt it had a cringe factor to it,” he said.Those concerns were assuaged when Bacon learned that Prevost had performed years of missionary service in Peru and that the new pope “was someone who built bridges and would continue the work of pope Francis.””I became enthusiastic,” Bacon told AFP.He said he hopes Leo can undo some of the “destruction” wrought by the administration of US President Donald Trump, who has adopted an aggressive anti-immigration stance since taking office this year.”I’m hoping a pope who was born in the United States could be a prophetic figure and a sign of a return to true values of justice, peace, and welcoming strangers and immigrants, and standing with those whom society has thrown away,” he added.Bishop Lawrence Sullivan, who helped lead Friday’s mass, said a return to Chicago by Leo would bring “tremendous excitement and joy.”

A US judge on Friday ordered the release of a Turkish student detained by federal agents as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activism.Judge William Sessions said Rumeysa Ozturk, a Ph.D student at Tufts University in Massachusetts, should be released “immediately” from custody while her removal proceedings continue.Ozturk’s student visa was revoked by the State Department after she co-authored an article in the university newspaper, The Tufts Daily, criticizing the college’s handling of student anger around Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.Video of the 30-year-old Ozturk’s March 25 arrest by masked agents on a sidewalk sparked outrage online, and added to concerns about freedom of speech and respect for due process under Trump.Sessions echoed the concerns during Friday’s live-streamed custody hearing, at which Ozturk appeared remotely from a detention center in Louisiana.”Continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens,” the judge said.”Any one of them may now avoid exercising their First Amendment rights for fear of being whisked away to a detention center from their home,” he said.”Her continued detention cannot stand,” Sessions said. “The court orders the government to release Miss Ozturk from custody immediately.”The judge said he was not putting any travel restrictions on Ozturk and she was free to return to her home in Massachusetts.Ozturk is one of a number of foreign students facing deportation over their pro-Palestinian campus activities, and she still faces removal proceedings.The decision to release her from custody was welcomed by Turkey but condemned by the White House.Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc, in a post on X, called it a “positive development” and said it was “unacceptable for someone to be prosecuted because of their faith or their support for Palestine.”Stephen Miller, a senior White House official, lashed out at the decision, saying “there’s a judicial coup in this country.””Foreigners in this country do not have a right to stay in this country if they support designated terrorist organizations like Hamas,” Miller told reporters.”The secretary of state has the absolute authority… to revoke an immigration benefit or a visa and then to pursue a deportation.”- ‘Won’t stop fighting’ -Tufts University has publicly backed Ozturk, demanding her release so she can return to the school and complete her doctoral studies in child development.Jessie Rossman, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which is among the groups representing Ozturk, welcomed her release.”For 45 days, Rumeysa has been detained in Louisiana,” Rossman said. “During that time, she has suffered regular and escalating asthma attacks.”And at the same time, the government has failed to produce any justification for her detention,” Rossman said, adding that the ACLU “won’t stop fighting until she is free for good.”Trump has targeted prestigious universities that became the epicenter of the US student protest movement sparked by Israel’s war in Gaza, stripping federal funds and directing immigration officers to deport foreign student demonstrators.Critics argue that the campaign amounts to retribution and will have a chilling effect on free speech, while its supporters insist it is necessary to restore order to campuses and protect Jewish students.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved an at-home cervical cancer screening tool as an alternative to Pap smears by a gynecologist, the company behind the device said Friday.The “Teal Wand” — a self-collection vaginal swab shaped like a tampon and developed by Teal Health — will be available online for individuals aged 25 to 65 who are at average risk for cervical cancer.Users request a kit online, have a brief visit with a telehealth provider to gauge eligibility and then the kit is prescribed. They then collect the sample and ship it to a lab for analysis. Cervical cancer, which affects the lower part of the uterus, is diagnosed in about 0.6 percent of women. Although HPV vaccination and regular screening are highly effective at preventing the disease, more than one in four women fall behind on routine appointments.”When we make care easier to get, we help women stay healthy, for themselves and for the people who rely on them every day,” Teal Health CEO Kara Egan said in a statement.The Teal Wand tests for high-risk strains of human papillomavirus (HPV), the primary cause of cervical cancer. A large clinical trial found its accuracy comparable to a traditional Pap smear, which requires a speculum and is often cited as a barrier to screening due to discomfort.Most sexually active people will contract HPV at some point, though only a small fraction develop cancer.Teal Health did not disclose pricing but said it is in talks with insurers to ensure affordability. The product will launch first in California in June.

US authorities said the overstretched airport of Newark, one of three serving the New York metropolitan area, suffered a new 90-second outage early on Friday.Delays and flight cancellations had already followed an April 28 incident at Newark Liberty International Airport, in which traffic controllers stationed in nearby Philadelphia were unable to communicate with planes.In the latest incident, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there “was a telecommunications outage that impacted communications and radar display” at the same Philadelphia traffic control station that guides aircraft in and out of Newark’s airspace.The outage occurred around 3:55 am (07:55 GMT) on Friday and “lasted approximately 90 seconds,” a short statement said.Following the first incident, the FAA said Wednesday it was slowing arrivals and departures at Newark, which is one of the United States’ busiest airports. In Wednesday’s statement, the FAA said it was adding new telecommunications capacity, replacing copper connections with updated materials and deploying backup equipment.It also cited runway construction as a cause for the slowdown.The troubles at Newark follow a January 29 mid-air collision near Washington’s Reagan National Airport involving a passenger jet and a military helicopter, the first major US commercial crash since 2009.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described Friday’s incident as a “glitch” “caused by the same telecoms and software issues that were raised last week,” adding that FAA and Department of Transportation staff were installing new telecommunications connections. “The goal is to have the totality of this work done by the end of the summer,” she said.Leavitt praised Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who on Thursday unveiled a sweeping plan to modernize the nation’s air traffic control system.”These are much needed changes. This is a very bold plan by the Department of Transportation,” Leavitt said. “I think it’s unfortunate that the previous administration sat on their hands and did nothing,” Leavitt said, referring to the Biden administration.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader in the legislative chamber, called the problem at Newark an “air travel safety emergency that requires immediate and decisive action, not a promise of a big, beautiful unfunded overhaul that will take years to begin to implement,” according to a statement. “The back up system that is not working must be fixed. Now,” said Schumer.Schumer has questioned the impact of FAA job cuts on Newark’s operations, made during Elon Musk tenure as the unofficial head of the Department of Government Efficiency. In a statement earlier this week Schumer said that the incidents are evidence the Trump administration is not “up to the task of keeping people safe.”

US President Donald Trump signaled on Friday that he could lower sky-high tariffs on Chinese imports, as the rival superpowers prepare for trade talks in Switzerland over the weekend.”80% Tariff on China seems right!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. Levies on the Asian manufacturing giant are currently 145 percent, with cumulative duties on some goods reaching a staggering 245 percent.In retaliation to the steep tariffs from Washington, China has slapped 125 percent levies on US goods.Trump added that it was “Up to Scott B.” — US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — who will confer with China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng this weekend in Geneva to try to cool the conflict roiling international markets.US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will also attend the talks.”The President still remains with his position that he is not going to unilaterally bring down tariffs on China. We need to see concessions from them as well,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters later Friday.”As for the 80 percent number, that was a number the president threw out there. And we’ll see what happens this weekend,” she added. The cripplingly high duties amount to an effective trade embargo between the world’s two largest economies, with private shipping data already pointing to a sharp slowdown in goods flowing from China to the United States. – ‘A good sign’ -“The relationship is not good,” said Bill Reinsch, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), referring to current ties between Washington and Beijing. “We have trade-prohibitive tariffs going in both directions. Relations are deteriorating,” said Reinsch, a longtime former member of the American government’s US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. “But the meeting is a good sign.””I think this is basically to show that both sides are talking and that itself is very important,” Xu Bin, professor of economics and finance at the China Europe International Business School, told AFP. “Because China is the only country that has tit-for-tat tariffs against Trump’s tariffs.” Beijing has insisted the United States must lift tariffs first and vowed to defend its interests.Bessent has said the meetings in Switzerland would focus on “de-escalation” and not a “big trade deal.”The head of the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO) on Friday welcomed the talks, calling them a “positive and constructive step toward de-escalation.””Sustained dialogue between the world’s two largest economies is critical to easing trade tensions, preventing fragmentation along geopolitical lines and safeguarding global growth,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said, according to a spokesperson.Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter also sounded an upbeat note.”Yesterday the Holy Spirit was in Rome,” she said Friday, referring to the election of Pope Leo XIV. “We must hope that he will now go down to Geneva for the weekend.” – 10 percent baseline – Bessent and He will meet two days after Trump unveiled what he called a historic trade agreement with Britain, the first deal with any country since he unleashed a blitz of sweeping global tariffs last month.The five-page, non-legally binding document confirmed to nervous investors that the United States is willing to negotiate sector-specific relief from recent duties — in this case on British cars, steel and aluminum. In return, Britain agreed to open up its markets to US beef and other farm products.But a 10 percent baseline levy on most British goods remained intact, and Trump remains “committed” to keeping it in place for other countries in talks with the United States, Leavitt told reporters. Reinsch from CSIS said one of the practical problems going into the Geneva negotiations is the two countries’ starkly different negotiating strategies.”Trump’s approach is generally top-down,” he said. “He wants to meet with (Chinese President) Xi Jinping, and thinks that if the two of them can get together, they can make a big deal and then have the subordinates go work out the details.””The Chinese are the reverse,” he said. “They want to have all the issues settled and everything agreed to at lower levels before there’s any leaders meeting.”burs-da/acb