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The United States announced Wednesday it had seized more than 700,000 pounds (300,000 kilograms) of meth precursor chemicals that officials said were en route from China to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. “This is the largest seizure of precursor chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine in US history,” US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro told reporters at the Port of Houston in the southern state of Texas. She spoke in a warehouse filled with plastic-wrapped blue barrels — 13,000 of them, according to Pirro — shipped from Shanghai on two separate vessels, and bound for laboratories of the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico when they were seized “on the high seas” last week.”Foreign law enforcement partners” assisted US personnel to consolidate the shipments in Panama and bring them to Houston, said Todd Lyons, acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).The Trump administration’s designation of the Sinaloa cartel as a foreign terrorist organization has given federal authorities the ability to track precursor chemicals before they reach US soil, Lyons said.”Everyday, tons of chemicals that are used to create synthetic drugs like methamphetamine and fentanyl are shipped from China to Mexico in China’s undeclared war against America and their citizens,” Pirro said.The chemicals would have been used to make 420,000 pounds of methamphetamine with a street value in Houston of $569 million, Pirro said.The seizure was announced a day after Trump said US forces had attacked a drug-smuggling boat off Venezuela, killing 11 “narcoterrorists” in international waters. The attack marked a major escalation of US action after Trump signed an executive order authorizing military action against drug cartels. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in Mexico for a meeting with President Claudio Sheinbaum on Wednesday, vowed the United States would ramp up strikes on cartels, but assured Mexico of respect for its sovereignty.Also this week, the US Treasury Department sanctioned a Chinese chemical company, Guangzhou Tengyue, that it said was involved in the manufacture and sale of synthetic opioids to Americans. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control also sanctioned two individuals connected to the company, Huang Xiaojun and Huang Zhanpeng, alleging they were directly involved in shipping illicit drugs to the United States. The sanctions freeze any property or assets they have in the United States.Drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45, according to US officials, who say companies in China are the main source of chemicals use to make illicit drugs that enter the United States. 

Republican members of the US House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to create a new subcommittee to investigate the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.The move comes nearly three years after a Democratic-led House panel blamed then-president Donald Trump for the storming of Congress by his supporters.Trump was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House for inciting the attack on the Capitol but was acquitted by the Republican-majority Senate.After taking office for a second time in January, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people charged or convicted of assaulting the Capitol to prevent the certification by Congress of Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory.Trump continues to falsely claim that he won the November 2020 election and has repeatedly condemned the findings of the previous January 6 committee.The official objective of the new subcommittee is to “investigate the remaining questions surrounding January 6, 2021.”The subcommittee will have eight members including three Democrats and is to release its final report by December 2026.

A US judge ordered Wednesday that deep funding cuts by the Trump administration to Harvard University be overturned, after they were imposed over claims of anti-Semitism and bias at the Ivy League institution.Harvard sued in April to restore more than $2 billion in frozen funds. The administration insisted its move was legally justified over Harvard’s alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students, particularly amid campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.The cuts to Harvard’s funding stream forced it to implement a hiring freeze while pausing ambitious research programs, particularly in the public health and medical spheres — pauses experts warned risked American lives.”The Court vacates and sets aside the Freeze Orders and Termination Letters as violative of the First Amendment,” Boston federal judge Allison Burroughs said in her order.”All freezes and terminations of funding to Harvard made pursuant to the Freeze Orders and Termination Letters on or after April 14, 2025 are vacated and set aside.”Burroughs pointed to Harvard’s own admissions in legal filings that there had been an issue of anti-Semitism on campus — but said that the administration’s funding cuts would have no bearing on the situation.- ‘Smokescreen’ for university ‘assault’ -“It is clear, even based solely on Harvard’s own admissions, that Harvard has been plagued by anti-Semitism in recent years and could (and should) have done a better job of dealing with the issue,” she wrote. “That said, there is, in reality, little connection between the research affected by the grant terminations and anti-Semitism.”The judge, appointed by Democratic former president Barack Obama, said the evidence she had seen suggested Trump “used anti-Semitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.”Both Harvard and the American Association of University Professors brought cases against the Trump administration’s measures which were combined.Trump has sought to have the case heard in the Court of Federal Claims instead of in the federal court in Boston, just miles away from the heart of the university’s Cambridge campus.The Ivy League institution has been at the forefront of Trump’s campaign against top universities after it defied his calls to submit to oversight of its curriculum, staffing, student recruitment and “viewpoint diversity.”Trump and his allies claim that Harvard and other prestigious universities are unaccountable bastions of liberal, anti-conservative bias and anti-Semitism, particularly surrounding protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.The government has also targeted Harvard’s ability to host international students, an important source of income who accounted for 27 percent of total enrollment in the 2024-2025 academic year.

A top health official in Florida vowed Wednesday to end all vaccine mandates in the state, including school requirements, likening the measure to prevent childhood diseases to “slavery.”The announcement thrust the conservative-leaning state into the heart of an intensifying national fight, as vaccine-skeptic federal Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pushes to steer the country away from the life-saving practice.More than 1,000 current and former workers from the federal health department signed a scathing letter to Congress Wednesday accusing Kennedy of putting the health of Americans at risk and demanding that he resign.On the West Coast, the Democratic-led states of California, Washington and Oregon said they were creating a new body to issue their own immunization guidelines, arguing it was needed to counter “politicization” at the federal level — underscoring just how divisive the issue has become.”The Florida Department of Health, in partnership with the governor, is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida — all of them, every last one of them,” Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo told a cheering audience at the Grace Christian School in Valrico.”Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” added Nigerian-born Ladapo, a Harvard-trained physician who has served as the state’s top health official since 2021. He was previously known for his opposition to mRNA Covid vaccines, which he has falsely claimed contaminate a person’s genome.”Who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body? Who am I to tell you what your child should put in (their) body? I don’t have that right. Your body is a gift from God.”Speaking at the same event, Governor Ron DeSantis said Republicans would soon introduce a “big medical package” to put the changes into law.”It is a dangerous time to be a child in the United States of America,” renowned pediatrician and vaccine expert Paul Offit told AFP. “Goodness, it’s going to be really hard to rebuild these things back up again.”- Disease comeback -If fully enacted, Florida would become the first US state to abandon school vaccine requirements, long credited with wiping out once-common childhood scourges such as measles, mumps, rubella, polio and hepatitis B.But resistance to vaccines has swelled in recent years, stoked by false claims linking them to autism — a debunked notion Kennedy himself promoted for years before taking office as health secretary.The issue has become deeply polarized along partisan lines, with conservatives more likely to seek exemptions on religious grounds.As a result, the United States in 2025 saw its worst measles outbreak in more than three decades, with 1,431 cases centered on a Mennonite community in Texas.Kennedy has used his office to curb access to Covid shots and weave anti-vaccine conspiracy theories into federal policy — and last week ousted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Sue Monarez over immunization guidelines, plunging the agency into turmoil.That move helped spur California, Washington and Oregon, together home to more than 50 million people, to announce the formation of a “West Coast Health Alliance” that will work with scientists and medical associations to craft its own recommendations.”President (Donald) Trump’s mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists — and his blatant politicization of the agency — is a direct assault on the health and safety of the American people,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a joint statement with officials from the other two states.In their letter, the current and former federal health department workers wrote they had sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and urged Trump and Congress to appoint a new health secretary if Kennedy does not resign.

Victims of notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein said Wednesday they were compiling a confidential list of his associates who abused underage girls.President Donald Trump, a one-time close friend of the deceased financier, sought meanwhile to dampen the enduring political furor over the Epstein case.”This is a Democrat hoax that never ends,” Trump told reporters at the White House.”They’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president,” he said.Trump’s comments came as eight of Epstein’s victims held an emotional news conference at the US Capitol, where some of them spoke publicly for the first time about the sexual abuse they suffered.Some of the women were as young as 14 when introduced to Epstein.”We were just kids,” said Marina Lacerda, who said she was paid $300 to give “an older guy” a massage at his New York mansion.”It went from a dream job to the worst nightmare,” said Lacerda, who was “Minor Victim 1″ in Epstein’s federal indictment.The women urged the Justice Department to release all of the Epstein investigation files and for Congress to pass a bill compelling their publication.”There is no hoax. The abuse was real,” said Haley Robson, who was recruited to give a massage to Epstein when she was 16 years old.”If I disobeyed him I knew something bad would happen,” Robson said.Epstein died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking of underage girls.Many of Trump’s supporters have been obsessed with the Epstein case for years and have held as an article of faith that “deep state” elites were protecting Epstein associates in the Democratic Party and Hollywood.They were further incensed in July when the FBI and Justice Department said that Epstein had committed suicide, did not blackmail any prominent figures, and did not keep a “client list.”Lisa Phillips, another Epstein victim, said she and other women were putting together a list of their own of Epstein associates.”We know the names. Many of us were abused by them,” Phillips said. “We will confidentially compile the names we all know were regularly in the Epstein world.”We are not asking for pity. We are demanding accountability.”- ‘Your time is up’ -Robson said she and other Epstein victims “know who was involved” and condemned law enforcement for failing to act.”We know the players and we are sitting here for 20 years waiting for you to get up and do something,” she said. “Well guess what? Your time is up, and now we’re doing it.”Republican lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene attended the press conference and said if given a list “I will walk in the Capitol on the House floor and I’ll say every damn name that abused these women.””I’d be proud to do it,” she said.Attorney Brad Edwards, who has represented scores of Epstein’s victims, said he did not believe the well-connected hedge fund manager kept a list of “clients” he provided with girls.”I don’t think he wrote the names of those people down,” Edwards said. “There’s not a list of, ‘Hey, here’s all of the people that I sent females to.’ That’s just not how that organization worked.”Trump was once a friend of Epstein’s and, according to The Wall Street Journal, the president’s name was among hundreds found during a Justice Department review of the Epstein files, though there has been no evidence of wrongdoing.The news conference was held a day after a House of Representatives committee released 33,000 documents from the investigation into Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.Thousands of documents related to the Epstein probe have been circulated previously and Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House committee, said most of the records released on Tuesday had already been made public.

US President Donald Trump’s deadly strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat from Venezuela marks a significant escalation from law enforcement to military action against cartels that his administration has branded as terror groups.Video footage posted by Trump on social media Tuesday showed a multi-engine speedboat with several people aboard bouncing across the waves — but rather than being stopped and boarded, the vessel is suddenly engulfed in an inferno.The US president said 11 members of the Tren de Aragua gang were killed in the strike, which should “serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America.”Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the strike “demonstrates a change in the rules of engagement.””There is no longer US Coast Guard boarding of vessels; there is an approach far more similar to how the United States deals with pirates in the Gulf region, or terrorists in the Sahel,” he said.The United States — which has a long history of carrying out strikes against suspected militants without due process — designated Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and several other drug trafficking organizations as terror groups earlier this year.The strike on the boat comes at a time of soaring tensions between the United States and Venezuela over the deployment of American warships in the region that the Washington says are to combat trafficking but which Caracas views as a threat.- ‘Highly dissuasive effect’ -The United States alleges that leftist Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro heads a cocaine trafficking cartel and recently doubled its bounty to $50 million in exchange for his capture to face drug charges.Maduro has meanwhile accused Trump of attempting to effect regime change and launched a drive to sign up thousands of militia members.Asked about the potential for escalation with Venezuela as a result of the strike, Berg said that “Maduro is unlikely to say much, given that doing so would essentially confirm the administration’s assertion that he is a narcotrafficker and the head of a cartel.”Gustavo Flores-Macias, dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, noted that the United States has a history of military interventions in Latin America, but said this one was the first under Trump’s policy of designating cartels as terror groups.”With the turn toward military strikes instead of traditional law enforcement in addressing drug trafficking in the region, the White House is looking to send a strong message,” Flores-Macias said.That message is aimed “not only to deter drug traffickers but also as a show of force to put the government of Nicolas Maduro on notice that the US is considering military action in Venezuela,” he said.It remains to be seen how effective Trump’s policy will be at curbing trafficking in the Caribbean, but Berg said the US Navy’s multi-ship deployment “could disrupt Southern Caribbean trafficking routes for some time, with its generational scale and size.””In the short term, (the strike) is likely to have a highly dissuasive effect,” he said. “Few will risk being in a ‘go fast’ boat anytime soon.”

US President Donald Trump offered Friday to send more troops to Poland as he welcomed the country’s new nationalist president Karol Nawrocki to the White House with a military flyover.Trump also hinted at taking stronger action against Russia if it fails to end its war with Ukraine, which has put NATO ally Poland on edge since Moscow’s invasion in 2022.Nawrocki, a conservative historian and fervent Trump supporter, visited the White House during Poland’s election campaign and is now making his first foreign trip as president.Trump gave him a warm welcome — including an offer to boost the US military footprint in Poland, where around 8,000 US troops are currently reinforcing NATO’s eastern flank, according to US media.”We’ll put more there if they want,” Trump, 79, said after shaking hands with Nawrocki, 42, in the Oval Office. “We’re with Poland all the way and we’ll help Poland protect itself.”Trump added that the flyover by F-16 and F-35 jets during Nawrocki’s arrival was “very much in honor” of a Polish F-16 jet pilot killed last week while preparing for an air show.”He was a legend in Poland,” Trump said of the pilot, Major Maciej “Slab” Krakowian, 37.- ‘Very proud’ -Nawrocki then praised the US troop presence and said it was “the first time in history” that Poland had been happy to host foreign troops.He also stressed that Warsaw aims to keep increasing its own military spending within the NATO alliance to meet Trump’s demands — despite already being the top spender based on the proportion of GDP.Trump meanwhile prided himself on having backed political novice Nawrocki in Polish elections, the latest in a series of right-wing leaders in Europe supported by Trump.Trump welcomed Nawrocki to the Oval Office in June before the Polish election, with the White House posting a picture of the pair grinning and giving the thumbs-up sign.”I don’t endorse too many people, but I endorsed him, and I was very proud of the job he’s done,” Trump said on Wednesday.The eastern European nation is deeply polarized, with the nationalist Nawrocki clashing with the pro-EU government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a former European Council chief. During the election campaign, Nawrocki highlighted the importance of ties with the United States and his close relationship with Trump. His “Poland First, Poles First” echoed Trump’s “America First” slogan.- Strong Ukraine support -The talks were set to be dominated by the war in Poland’s neighbor Ukraine.While Trump and Nawrocki see eye-to-eye politically, Poland is closely watching the US leader’s peace efforts in Ukraine, which Warsaw has largely been frozen out of.Poland has been a strong supporter of Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion and is a vital transit country for military and humanitarian supplies.Trump said that “you’ll see things happen” if he’s dissatisfied with President Vladimir Putin’s response, hinting at fresh sanctions or tariffs against Moscow.”I have no message to President Putin, he knows where I stand, and he’ll make a decision one way or the other,” Trump told reporters.Trump will speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday, a White House official told AFP. He is also set to speak to European leaders, the French presidency said.Ukraine is proving divisive in Poland too.Nawrocki recently blocked a law extending Ukrainian refugees’ rights proposed by Tusk’s government. Nawrocki has also, like Trump, opposed Ukraine’s desire for NATO membership.

A historic California Gold Rush-era town lay in ruins Wednesday after lightning storms sparked almost two dozen wildfires.The storied settlement of Chinese Camp was badly hit when flames roared through on Tuesday, with photographs showing the smoldering shells of 19th century buildings.Other structures appear to have been reduced to ashes.Around 12,000 acres (5,000 hectares) have been charred by 22 separate blazes raging around 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of San Francisco, officials said.The series of fires — dubbed the TCU September Lightning Complex — erupted after a storm passed through the area, with lightning strikes igniting the dry vegetation.Hundreds of firefighters were tackling the blazes, some of which were in remote and inaccessible areas and involved crews hiking deep into isolated countryside, said Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency.”A number of structures have been damaged or destroyed, and a Damage Inspection Team is on order,” a Cal Fire statement said.”Weather conditions continue to be a challenge to crews as gusty winds remain in the area from nearby thunderstorm cells.”Multiple communities continue to be at risk, including ancestral tribal lands, and evacuation orders and warnings remain in place.”Starting in 1849, a gold rush brought tens of thousands of prospectors to California to seek their fortune, including from China.Chinese Camp is described by county tourism managers as an “abandoned ghost town” but remains home to dozens of people, according to census data.It is also the site of a number of historic buildings, including a post office built 170 years ago and one of the oldest Catholic churches in that part of California.Wildfires are a natural part of the life cycle of the countryside in the Western United States.But human activity — specifically the unchecked use of fossil fuels — is changing the climate, often making blazes more likely and more destructive.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed Wednesday the United States would ramp up strikes on cartels after blowing up an alleged drug boat off Venezuela, but assured Mexico of respect to its sovereignty.In the highest-level meeting between the two neighbors since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Rubio met for an hour and a half in Mexico City with President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has sought cooperation in the complicated relationship with Washington.The visit came a day after Trump said US forces blew up an alleged drug boat off the coast of Venezuela, whose leftist leader Nicolas Maduro is a nemesis of the United States.Rubio pledged to ramp up the stakes for drug traffickers, saying that years of peaceful interdiction has not worked and not affected cartels’ bottom line.The United States “blew it up and it’ll happen again. Maybe it’s happening right now,” Rubio told a news conference.”These are not stockbrokers. These are not real estate agents who on the side deal with drugs.””If you’re on a boat full of cocaine or fentanyl, whatever, headed to the United States, you’re an immediate threat to the United States,” he said.But Rubio made clear that he did not have similar qualms about Mexico and hailed the efforts by Sheinbaum.”It is the closest security cooperation we have ever had maybe with any country but certainly in the history of US-Mexico relations,” he said.In a joint statement, the two countries said they “reaffirm our security cooperation, which is based on the principles of reciprocity, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, shared and differentiated responsibility, as well as mutual trust.”Sheinbaum, addressing reporters on Tuesday before the strike, said that any US military “intervention” in Mexico was a red line.- Sign to Venezuela -AFP has not been able to verify the number of people in the boat and their identities.The attack marked a major escalation of US action after Trump signed an executive order authorizing military action against drug cartels.But Venezuela is a unique case, as the United States does not recognize the legitimacy of President Nicolas Maduro, a leftist firebrand whose last election in 2024 was widely seen internationally and by the opposition as riddled with irregularities.Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado hailed what she called a tightening of the “siege imposed by Western democracies” on Maduro’s “narco-terrorist cartel.””Venezuela is almost free,” Machado said in a video. “Nothing can stop a people who have already decided to be free and live in democracy.”- Pragmatic approach by Sheinbaum -Sheinbaum, who also comes from the political left, has sought a pragmatic relationship with Trump, who has voiced respect for her despite his past harsh comments about Mexicans.Like her predecessor and fellow leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Sheinbaum has largely cooperated with Trump in his key priority of curbing migration to the United States.Mexico has stepped up enforcement on its borders in recent years — including its own southern border, a gateway for Central American migrants to the United States.Sheinbaum has also taken steps to curb imports from China, whose manufacturers have eyed Mexico as a way into the US market.The Trump administration has already imposed a slew of new sanctions in hopes of weakening major cartels in Mexico.Trump blames the cartels for the flow of fentanyl, the powerful painkiller behind an overdose epidemic in the United States.

The Metropolitan Opera in New York announced Wednesday an agreement to perform in Saudi Arabia and provide artistic training in the oil-rich kingdom as it works to shore up a creaky financial outlook.The prestigious cultural institution, which received a Moody’s credit downgrade just days ago, will travel to Riyadh for five years to perform during the opera house’s winter break under an agreement with the Saudi Music Commission.The performances will be at the Royal Diriyah Opera House, which is expected to open in 2028.The agreement commits Met creative staff to provide training to Saudi opera singers, composers, directors and other artisans. The collaboration also envisions the commissioning of a new opera, according to a joint press release by the Met and Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture.”Music is a universal language that transcends borders, uniting people through creativity,” said a statement from Paul Pacifico, the CEO of the Saudi Music Commission.”This collaboration is more than a cultural exchange; it is an opportunity to forge new connections, share our stories through music, and contribute to a vibrant global arts community.” The venture reflects the “increasingly challenging” economics of producing Grand Opera, Met General Manager Peter Gelb told AFP.”The Met cannot survive based on the earned revenue sources and the annual fundraising,” said Gelb, who declined to provide financial details about the venture. “This agreement with the Saudi government helps us meet our financial needs.”On August 27, Moody’s Ratings downgraded the Met two notches to “B3,” placing the institution more deeply into the non-investment grade category, reflecting “persistent and increasing deterioration in the operating performance.”A note from Moody’s emphasized Met moves to tap its endowment to cover deficits, noting a $70 million draw in 2023 and 2024 and another $50 million authorized in 2025.”These draws will reduce future support to budgetary operations as regular draws decline in line with lower reserves,” Moody’s said.Gelb said the Met is actively exploring other sources of raising funds. These include licensing agreements of its intellectual property, as well as naming rights to the Met building at Lincoln Center.