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UN top court orders Israel to open more land crossings for aid into Gaza
The top United Nations court on Thursday ordered Israel to take measures to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, including opening more land crossings to allow food, water, fuel and other supplies into the war-ravaged enclave.
The International Court of Justice issued two new so-called provisional measures in a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of acts of genocide in its military campaign launched after the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. Israel denies it is committing genocide. It says its military campaign is self defense and aimed at Hamas, not the Palestinian people.
Thursday’s order came after South Africa sought more provisional measures, including a cease-fire, citing starvation in Gaza. Israel urged the court not to issue new orders.
In its legally binding order, the court told Israel to take measures “without delay” to ensure “the unhindered provision” of basic services and humanitarian assistance, including food, water, fuel and medical supplies.
Israeli bombardment hits 212 schools in Gaza: UN
It also ordered Israel to immediately ensure that its military does not take action that could that could harm Palestinians' rights under the Genocide Convention, including by preventing the delivery of humanitarian assistance.
The court told Israel to report back in a month on its implementation of the orders.
Israel declared war in response to a bloody cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 others were taken hostage. Israel responded with a campaign of airstrikes and a ground offensive that have left over 32,000 Palestinians dead, according to local health authorities. The fighting also displaced over 80% of Gaza's population and caused widespread damage.
The U.N. and international aid agencies say virtually the entire Gaza population is struggling to get enough food, with hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of famine, especially in hard-hit northern Gaza.
South Africa welcomed Thursday's decision, calling it “significant.”
“The fact that Palestinian deaths are not solely caused by bombardment and ground attacks, but also by disease and starvation, indicates a need to protect the group’s right to exist,” the South African president said in a statement.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on the order.
Victory' in Gaza only 'a few weeks away', Netanyahu tells US Congress members
In a written response earlier this month to South Africa's request for more measures, Israel said the claims by South Africa were “wholly unfounded," “morally repugnant" and "an abuse both of the Genocide Convention and of the Court itself.”
After initially sealing Gaza’s borders in the early days of the war, Israel began to permit entry of humanitarian supplies. It says it places no restrictions on the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza and accuses the United Nations of failing to properly organize the deliveries.
The U.N. and international aid groups say deliveries have been impeded by Israeli military restrictions, ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of public order.
Israel has been working with international partners on a plan to soon begin deliveries of aid by sea.
Israel has repeatedly feuded with the United Nations, particularly UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees and main provider of aid in Gaza. Israel accuses the agency of tolerating and even cooperating with Hamas — a charge UNRWA denies.
The court said in its order that “Palestinians in Gaza are no longer facing only a risk of famine ... but that famine is setting in." It cited a report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs that said at least 31 people, including 27 children, have already died of malnutrition and dehydration.
783 million people face chronic hunger. Yet the world wastes 19% of its food, UN says
The world court said earlier orders imposed on Israel after landmark hearings in South Africa’s case “do not fully address the consequences arising from the changes in the situation” in Gaza.
On Tuesday, the army said it inspected 258 aid trucks, but only 116 were distributed within Gaza by the U.N.
COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of Palestinian civilian affairs, has also run pilot programs to inspect the humanitarian aid at Israel’s main checkpoints in the south and then use land crossings in central Gaza to try to bring aid to the devastated northern part of the Strip. The agency had no immediate comment on the ICJ ruling.
Israeli bombardment hits 212 schools in Gaza: UN
The heavy bombardment against Gaza by Israel has resulted in "direct hits" on 212 schools within the enclave, according to analysis partnered with the United Nations released on Wednesday.
Satellite images have shown that at least 53 schools have been "completely destroyed" since the conflict began on Oct. 7, 2023, along with an almost 9-percent rise in attacks on school facilities since mid-February, as reported by the UN children's fund (UNICEF), the Education Cluster, and Save the Children.
The "high trend of attacks on school facilities" has worsened the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, the report's authors noted, amid "intense Israeli bombardment from air, land, and sea across much of the Gaza Strip."
Of the 563 school buildings in Gaza, 165 of the 212 that received a direct hit are in areas designated for evacuation by the Israeli military. Data indicates that 62 schools were directly targeted in southern Khan Younis governorate, 14 in the Middle Area governorate, 94 in Gaza governorate, and 42 in North Gaza governorate -- which is the most severely affected area to date, with 86.2 percent of school buildings either directly hit or damaged.
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More than one in two school premises run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) have also been hit since October last year, according to the report, along with government buildings targeted by Israeli shelling or during the ground operation.
"No education is happening in Gaza at all for nearly six months," UNRWA said on Wednesday upon the publication of the UN-partnered report, noting more than 625,00 students and 22,000 teachers attended school before Oct. 7.
Additional findings derived from the satellite imagery and other sources "provide evidence for military use of schools" by Israeli Security Forces "since the beginning of the escalation."
The report also highlighted that since Oct. 7, over 320 school buildings have been utilized as shelters by displaced individuals. Among these facilities, 188 have experienced direct hits or have been damaged.
The authors of the report stated that once the conflict ends, at least 67 percent of schools in Gaza "will require either complete reconstruction or significant rehabilitation to become functional again."
Victory' in Gaza only 'a few weeks away', Netanyahu tells US Congress members
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a meeting of US Congress members that "victory" in Gaza and "getting" Hamas' senior leadership in the enclave are only "a few weeks away."On Wednesday, Netanyahu told a bipartisan group from the US Congress, “We’ve killed many senior leaders [of Hamas], including number four in Hamas, number three in Hamas. We’ll get number two and number one. That’s victory. Victory is within reach. It’s a few weeks away," reports CNN.
Hosting the congressional delegation in Jerusalem, which the Prime Minister's Office claimed was organised by the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Netanyahu said it was "very important to maintain bipartisan support" but "especially in these trying times."
Netanyahu stated that Israel "had no choice" but to enter Rafah because its "very existence is on the line."
Netanyahu is an obstacle to peace: US Senate Majority Leader Chuck SchumerThe prime minister stated that Israel has had a "remarkable alignment" with the Biden administration since the October 7 Hamas attack, but they have fundamentally opposing views on an Israeli incursion into Rafah, the report said.Israel has received international condemnation before of its planned onslaught on the southern Gaza city, where over one million Palestinians are currently taking shelter. Netanyahu had previously stated to the delegation that displaced Palestinians in Gaza could "just move" out of Rafah and "move with their tents."
Biden: Netanyahu 'hurting Israel' by not preventing more civilian deaths in Gaza"There is all of the Gaza Strip north of Rafah," Netanyahu remarked. "People can move up or down," he continued.Disagreements regarding the possible invasion of Rafah and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza have strained relations between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden.Earlier this week, Netanyahu postponed a scheduled government trip to Washington in protest over the United States' abstention from a UN Security Council vote that allowed a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza to pass, the report also said.The resolution, proposed by the 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council, demanded an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan, the immediate and unconditional release of hostages and “the urgent need to expand the flow” of aid into Gaza.
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Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, pioneer of behavioural economics dead at 90
Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who won a Nobel Prize in economics for his insights into how ingrained neurological biases influence decision making, died Wednesday at the age of 90.
Kahneman and his longtime collaborator Amos Tversky reshaped the field of economics, which prior to their work mostly assumed that people were “rational actors” capable of clearly evaluating choices such as which car to buy or which job to take. The pair's research — which Kahneman described for lay audiences in his best-selling 2011 book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” — focused on how much decision-making is shaped by subterranean quirks and mental shortcuts that can distort our thoughts in irrational yet predictable ways.
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Take, for instance, false confidence in predictions. In an excerpt from his book, Kahneman described a “leaderless group” challenge used by the Israeli army's Psychology Branch to assess future leadership potential. Eight candidates, all unknowns to one another, had to cross a six-foot wall together using only a long log — without touching the wall or the ground with the log, or touching the wall themselves.
Observers of the test — including Kahneman himself, who was born in Tel Aviv and did his Israeli national service in the 1950s — confidently identified leaders-in-the-making from these challenges, only to learn later that their assessments bore little relation to how the same soldiers performed at officer training school. The kicker: This fact didn't dent the group's confidence in its own judgments, which seemed intuitively obvious — and yet also continued to fail at predicting leadership potential.
“It was the first cognitive illusion I discovered,” Kahneman later wrote. He coined the phrase “ the illusion of validity ” to describe the phenomenon.
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Kahneman’s partner, Barbara Tversky — the widow of Amos Tversky — confirmed his death to The Associated Press. Tversky, herself a Stanford University emerita professor of psychology, said the family is not disclosing the location or cause of death.
Kahneman's decades-long partnership with Tversky began in 1969 when the two collaborated on a paper analyzing researcher intuitions about statistical methods in their work. “The experience was magical,” Kahneman later wrote in his Nobel autobiography. “Amos was often described by people who knew him as the smartest person they knew. He was also very funny ... and the result was that we could spend hours of solid work in continuous mirth.”
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The two worked together so closely that they flipped a coin to determine which of them would be the lead author on their first paper, and thereafter simply alternated that honor for decades.
“Amos and I shared the wonder of together owning a goose that could lay golden eggs -– a joint mind that was better than our separate minds,” Kahneman wrote.
Kahneman and Tversky began studying decision making in 1974 and quickly hit upon the central insight that people react far more intensely to losses than to equivalent gains. This is the now-common notion of “loss aversion,” which among other things helps explain why many people prefer status quo choices when making decisions. Combined with other findings, the pair developed a theory of risky choice they eventually named “prospect theory.”
Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002 for these and other contributions that ended up underpinning the discipline now known as behavioral economics. Economists say Tversky would certainly have shared the prize had he not died in 1996. The Nobel is not awarded posthumously.
US sanctions online media site Gaza Now, its founder for allegedly supporting Hamas
The U.S. on Wednesday imposed sanctions on online media site Gaza Now and its founder Mustafa Ayash for allegedly supporting Hamas.
U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control says that after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas against Israel — the online entity began a fundraising effort in support of the organization.
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Gaza Now's Arabic channel has more than 300,000 followers on social media channel X, formerly known as Twitter, and a large following on the encrypted chat platform Telegram.
Included in the sanctions are firms Al-Qureshi Executives and Aakhirah Ltd., and their director Aozma Sultana, who are alleged to have partnered on multiple fundraising efforts alongside Gaza Now.
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The sanctions were imposed in collaboration with the U.K.’s Office of Foreign Sanctions Implementation.
Treasury Under Secretary Brian Nelson said in a statement that the U.S. and its partners "will continue to leverage our tools to disrupt Hamas’ ability to facilitate further attacks.”
Palestinians in Gaza begin Ramadan with hunger worsening and no end in sight to the Israel-Hamas war
A representative for Gaza Now and Ayash were not immediately available. The sanctions block access to U.S. property and bank accounts and prevent those designated from doing business with Americans.
Cargo ship had engine maintenance in port before it collided with Baltimore bridge, officials say
The cargo ship that lost power and crashed into a bridge in Baltimore underwent “routine engine maintenance” in port beforehand, the U.S. Coast Guard said Wednesday, as divers recovered the bodies of two of six workers who plunged into the water when it collapsed. The others were presumed dead, and officials said search efforts had been exhausted.
Investigators on Wednesday began collecting evidence from the vessel that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge the previous day. The bodies of the two men were located in the morning inside a red pickup submerged in about 25 feet (7.6 meters) of water near the bridge’s middle span, Col. Roland L. Butler Jr., superintendent of Maryland State Police, announced at an evening news conference.
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He identified the men as Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, who was from Mexico and living in Baltimore, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, who was from Guatemala and living in Dundalk, Maryland.
The victims, who were part of a construction crew fixing potholes on the bridge, were from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, Butler said.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore addressed their families in Spanish during the news conference, saying, “Estamos contigo, ahora y siempre,” which means, “we are with you, now and always.”
All search efforts have been exhausted, and based on sonar scans, authorities “firmly” believe the other vehicles with victims inside are encased in superstructures and concrete from the collapsed bridge, Butler said. Divers are to return to search for remains once the waters are clear of debris.
U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath said authorities had been informed that the ship was going to undergo the maintenance.
“As far as the engine goes, we were not informed of any problems with the vessel," he said. “We were informed that they were going to conduct routine engine maintenance on it while it was in port. And that’s the only thing we were informed about the vessel in that regard.”
Baltimore bridge collapses after powerless cargo ship rams into support column; 6 presumed dead
The investigation ramped up as the Baltimore region reeled from the sudden loss of a major transportation link that's part of the highway loop around the city. The disaster also closed the port, which is vital to the city's shipping industry.
Officials with the National Transportation Safety Board boarded the ship to recover information from its electronics and paperwork and to do interviews with the captain and other crew members, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said during a separate news conference. Twenty-three people, including two pilots, were on the ship when it crashed, she said.
The vessel was also carrying 56 containers of hazardous materials including corrosives, flammables and lithium ion batteries, Homendy said. She added that some containers were breached, and that a sheen on the water from those materials would be handled by authorities.
The agency also is reviewing the voyage data recorder recovered by the Coast Guard and building a timeline of what led to the crash, which federal and state officials have said appeared to be an accident.
The ship’s crew issued a mayday call early Tuesday, saying they had lost power and steering just minutes before striking one of the bridge’s columns.
At least eight people initially went into the water, and two of them were rescued Tuesday, officials said.
The debris complicated the search, according to a Homeland Security memo described to The Associated Press by a law enforcement official. The official was not authorized to discuss details of the document or the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Gov. Moore said the divers faced dangerous conditions.
“They are down there in darkness where they can literally see about a foot in front of them,” Moore said, adding that they were also trying to navigate mangled metal.
One missing worker, a 38-year-old man from Honduras who came to the U.S. nearly two decades ago, was described by his brother as entrepreneurial and hard-working. He started last year with the company that was doing the bridge maintenance.
Video showed the ship moving at what Maryland’s governor said was about 9 mph (15 kph) toward the 1.6-mile (2.6-kilometer) bridge. Traffic was still crossing the span, and some vehicles appeared to escape with only seconds to spare. The crash caused the bridge to break and fall into the water within seconds.
A last-minute warning from the ship allowed police just enough time to stop traffic on the highway. One officer parked sideways across the lanes and planned to drive onto the bridge to alert a construction crew once another officer arrived. But he did not get the chance as the powerless vessel barreled into the bridge.
Attention has also turned to the container ship Dali and its past.
Synergy Marine Group, which manages the ship, said the impact happened while it was under the control of one or more pilots, who are local specialists who help guide vessels safely in and out of ports.
The ship, which was headed from Baltimore to Sri Lanka, is owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd., and Danish shipping giant Maersk said it had chartered the vessel.
The vessel passed foreign port state inspections in June and September 2023. In the June 2023 inspection, a faulty monitor gauge for fuel pressure was rectified before the vessel departed, Singapore’s port authority said in a statement Wednesday.
The ship was traveling under a Singapore flag, and officials there said they will conduct their own investigation in addition to supporting U.S. authorities.
The sudden loss of a highway that carries 30,000 vehicles a day and the disruption of the vital port will affect not only thousands of dockworkers and commuters but also U.S. consumers who are likely to feel the impact of shipping delays.
“A lot of people don’t realize how important the port is just to everything,” said Cat Watson, who used the bridge to get to work every day and lives close enough that she was awakened by the collision. “We’re going to be feeling it for a very long time.”
The Port of Baltimore is a busy entry point for new vehicles made in Germany, Mexico, Japan and the United Kingdom, along with coal and farm equipment.
Ship traffic has been suspended indefinitely. Windward Maritime, a maritime risk-management company, said its data shows a large increase in ships that are waiting for a port to go to, with some anchored outside Baltimore or nearby Annapolis.
At the White House, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the Biden administration was focused on reopening the port and rebuilding the bridge, which was completed in 1977. But he avoided putting a timeline on those efforts. He noted that the original bridge took five years to construct.
Buttigieg also planned to meet Thursday with supply chain officials.
Barges, including some with cranes, were on their way to Baltimore to help remove the wreckage, Gilreath said.
Homendy said the NTSB investigation could take 12 to 24 months but the agency may issue urgent safety recommendations sooner. A preliminary report should come in two to four weeks.
“It’s a massive undertaking for an investigation,” Homendy said. “It’s a very tragic event.”
From 1960 to 2015, there were 35 major bridge collapses worldwide due to ship or barge collisions, according to the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure.
US diplomat in India summoned over comments on Kejriwal's Arrest
The Indian government has strongly protested statements made by a US State Department spokesperson regarding Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's recent arrest in connection with suspected liquor policy scam.
The External Affairs Ministry summoned Gloria Berbena, the US Acting Deputy Chief of Mission, for a 40-minute meeting at its Delhi office on Wednesday afternoon, reports NDTV.
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The MEA issued a brief statement immediately afterwards, warning of "unhealthy precedents" and "unwarranted aspersions."
"States are expected to be respectful of the sovereignty and internal affairs of others, and this responsibility is even more so in case of fellow democracies. It could otherwise end up setting unhealthy precedents," said the ministry statement.
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"India's legal processes are based on an independent judiciary which is committed to objective and timely outcomes. Casting aspersions on that is unwarranted," it said.
On Tuesday, the US State Department said it is watching news of Kejriwal's arrest and urged New Delhi to guarantee "a fair and timely legal process" for the incarcerated Aam Aadmi Party chief, said the report.
The US State Department's remarks come only days after Germany's Foreign Office stated that Kejriwal, like any other Indian citizen facing allegations, is entitled to a fair and impartial trial.
The Indian government responded sharply to the remarks, summoning the German ambassador and labelling the Foreign Office spokesperson's remark as "blatant interference in internal affairs."
"We see such remarks as interfering in our judicial process and undermining the independence of our judiciary," the External Affairs Ministry said, "Biased assumptions are most unwarranted."
The Enforcement Directorate arrested Arvind Kejriwal last week in connection with the alleged liquor policy scam, which has engulfed his AAP and sparked violent demonstrations from the opposition ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
783 million people face chronic hunger. Yet the world wastes 19% of its food, UN says
The world wasted an estimated 19% of the food produced globally in 2022, or about 1.05 billion metric tons, according to a new United Nations report.
The U.N. Environment Programme's Food Waste Index Report, published Wednesday, tracks the progress of countries to halve food waste by 2030.
The U.N. said the number of countries reporting for the index nearly doubled from the first report in 2021. The 2021 report estimated that 17% of the food produced globally in 2019, or 931 million metric tons (1.03 billion tons), was wasted, but authors warned against direct comparisons because of the lack of sufficient data from many countries.
The report is co-authored by UNEP and Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), an international charity.
Researchers analyzed country data on households, food service and retailers. They found that each person wastes about 79 kilograms (about 174 pounds) of food annually, equal to at least 1 billion meals wasted worldwide daily.
Most of the waste — 60% — came in households. About 28% came from food service, or restaurants, with about 12% from retailers.
“It is a travesty,” said co-author Clementine O’Connor, the focal point for food waste at UNEP. “It doesn’t make any sense, and it is a complicated problem, but through collaboration and systemic action, it is one that can be tackled.”
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The report comes at a time when 783 million people around the world face chronic hunger and many places facing deepening food crises.
Food waste is also a global concern because of the environmental toll of production, including the land and water required to raise crops and animals and the greenhouse gas emissions it produces, including methane, a powerful gas that has accounted for about 30 percent of global warming since pre-industrial times.
Food loss and waste generates 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. If it were a country, it would rank third after China and the U.S.
Fadila Jumare, a Nigeria-based project associate at Busara Center for Behavioral Economics who has studied prevention of food waste in Kenya and Nigeria, said the problem further disadvantages many people who are already food insecure and cannot afford healthy diets.
“For humanity, food waste means that less food is available to the poorest population,” said Jumare, who wasn't involved in the report.
Brian Roe, a food waste researcher at Ohio State University who wasn't involved with the report, said the index is important to tackling food waste.
“The key takeaway is that reducing the amount of food that is wasted is an avenue that can lead to many desirable outcomes — resource conservation, fewer environmental damages, greater food security, and more land for uses other than as landfills and food production,” said Roe, who wasn’t involved in the report.
The report showed notable growth in coverage of food waste in low- and middle-income countries, the authors said. But it may fall to wealthier nations to lead in international cooperation and policy development to reduce food waste, they said.
The report said many governments, regional and industry groups are using public-private partnerships to reduce food waste and its contributions to climate and water stress. Governments and municipalities collaborate with businesses in the food supply chain, whereby businesses commit to measure food waste.
The report said food redistribution — including donating surplus food to food banks and charities — is significant in tackling food waste among retailers.
One group doing that is Food Banking Kenya, a nonprofit that gets surplus food from farms, markets, supermarkets and packing houses and redistributes it to schoolchildren and vulnerable populations. Food waste is an increasing concern in Kenya, where an estimated 4.45 million tons of food is wasted every year.
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“We positively impact the society by providing nutritious food and also positively impact the environment by reducing the emission of harmful gases,” said John Mukuhi, the group's co-founder and executive director.
The report’s authors said they found that the differences in per capita household food waste between high-income and lower-income countries were surprisingly small.
Richard Swannel, a co-author and director of Impact Growth at WRAP, said that shows food waste “is not a rich world problem. It's a global problem.”
“The data is really clear on this point: that here is a problem right around the world and one that we could all tackle tomorrow to save ourselves money and reduce environmental impact," he said.
Trump selling Bibles for $59.99 as he faces mounting legal bills
Former President Donald Trump is now selling Bibles as he runs to return to the White House.
Trump, who became the presumptive Republican nominee earlier this month, released a video on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday urging his supporters to buy the “God Bless the USA Bible,” which is inspired by country singer Lee Greenwood’s patriotic ballad. Trump takes the stage to the song at each of his rallies and has appeared with Greenwood at events.
“Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless the USA Bible,” Trump wrote, directing his supporters to a website selling the book for $59.99.
The effort comes as Trump has faced a serious money crunch amid mounting legal bills while he fights four criminal indictments along with a series of civil charges. Trump was given a reprieve Monday when a New York appeals court agreed to hold off on collecting the more than $454 million he owes following a civil fraud judgment if he puts up $175 million within 10 days. Trump has already posted a $92 million bond in connection with defamation cases brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of sexual assault.
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“All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” Trump said in the video posted on Truth Social. “I’m proud to endorse and encourage you to get this Bible. We must make America pray again.”
Billing itself as “the only Bible endorsed by President Trump!” the new venture’s website calls it “Easy-to-read” with “large print” and a “slim design” that “invites you to explore God’s Word anywhere, any time.”
Besides a King James Version translation, it includes copies of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegiance, as well as a handwritten chorus of the famous Greenwood song.
The Bible is just the latest commercial venture that Trump has pursued while campaigning.
Last month, he debuted a new line of Trump-branded sneakers, including $399 gold “Never Surrender High-Tops,” at Sneaker Con in Philadelphia. The venture behind the shoes, 45Footwear, also sells other Trump-branded footwear, cologne and perfume.
Trump has also dabbled in NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, and last year reported earning between $100,000 and $1 million from a series of digital trading cards that portrayed him in cartoon-like images, including as an astronaut, a cowboy and a superhero.
He has also released books featuring photos of his time in office and letters written to him through the years.
The Bible’s website states the product “is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign.”
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“GodBlessTheUSABible.com is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Ventures LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates,” it says.
Instead, it says, “GodBlessTheUSABible.com uses Donald J. Trump’s name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.”
CIC Ventures LLC, a company that Trump reported owning in his 2023 financial disclosure, has a similar arrangement with 45Footwear, which also says it uses Trump’s “name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.”
A Trump spokesperson and God Bless the USA Bible did not immediately respond to questions about how much Trump was paid for the licensing deal or stands to make from each book sale.
Trump remains deeply popular with white evangelical Christians, who are among his most ardent supporters, even though the thrice-married former reality TV star has a long history of behavior that often seemed at odds with teachings espoused by Christ in the Gospels.
When he was running in 2016, Trump raised eyebrows when he cited “Two Corinthians” at Liberty University, instead of the standard “Second Corinthians.”
When asked to share his favorite Bible verse in an interview with Bloomberg Politics in 2015, he demurred.
“I wouldn’t want to get into it. Because to me, that’s very personal,” he said. “The Bible means a lot to me, but I don’t want to get into specifics.”
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When he was president, law enforcement officers aggressively removed racial justice protesters from a park near the White House, allowing Trump to walk to nearby St. John’s Church, where he stood alone and raised a Bible. The scene was condemned at the time by the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.
Before he ran for office, Trump famously hawked everything from frozen steaks to vodka to a venture named Trump University, which was later sued for fraud.
Brazil, France presidents announce plan to invest $1.1 billion in the Amazon rainforest
The Brazilian and the French presidents on Tuesday announced a plan to invest 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in the Amazon, including parts of the rainforest in neighboring French Guiana.
The two countries’ governments said in a joint statement the money will be spread over the next four years to protect the rainforest. It will be a collaboration of state-run Brazilian banks and France’s investment agency. Private resources will also be welcomed, Brazil and France said.
French President Emmanuel Macron and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are meeting this week to revive the relationship between the countries after years of frictions with former President Jair Bolsonaro, deepen cooperation to protect the rainforest and boost trade.
Macron started his three-day visit to Brazil in the Amazon city of Belem, where he met his long-time ally Lula. The French president then took a boat to the Combu island to meet with Indigenous leaders.
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Both Macron and Lula saw a protest by Greenpeace Brazil with banners that read “No oil in the Amazon.” Brazil’s government has contemplated allowing the tapping of oil in a region close to the Para state, where Belem lies.
Lula said during a speech that Macron’s visit is part of a global effort to beef up rainforest protections.
“We want to convince those who have already deforested that they need to contribute in an important way to countries that still have their forests to keep them standing,” Lula said in a speech next to the French president.
Macron’s office prior said to the trip that a potential European trade deal with the South American bloc Mercosur won’t be on the agenda. The French president is an opponent of such an agreement as long as South American producers don’t respect the same environment and health standards as Europeans, after farmers raised concerns during protests across France and Europe.
The French president decorated Indigenous leader Raoni Metuktire with the prestigious Legion of Honor medal for efforts at conserving the rainforest.
“You were in Europe and I promised to come here to your forest and be with your people in this forest that is coveted,” Macron told the Indigenous leader, according to French radio RFI. “President Lula and I have a common cause for one of our friends in this land that belongs to you.”
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Lula and Macron will seek to “set a common course” to fight both climate change and poverty, Macron’s office said, as Brazil is to host the summit of the Group of 20 leading economies in Rio de Janeiro in November and UN climate talks in Belem next year.
On Wednesday, Macron and Lula will launch a diesel-powered submarine built in Brazil with French technology at the Itaguai shipyard outside Rio de Janeiro. The French president will then head to metropolis Sao Paulo to meet with Brazilian investors. On Thursday, the French president will head to Brasilia to again meet with Lula.