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Apr 28, 2026 - World

A pivotal Wednesday Supreme Court hearing on the limits of Donald Trump’s immigration policies will contain a wild card in the form of how Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett will vote due to personal considerations.According to a report from the Washington Post, the case in question will dig deep into Donald Trump’s efforts to end temporary immigration protections for Haitians and if it holds up under constitutional scrutiny.For Barrett, she will have to weigh her personal feelings when deciding which side of the argument she agrees with.The justice and her husband, Jesse, adopted a child from Haiti in part because, as Barrett later recounted, “There were so many children in need," the Post is reporting before adding, "Vivian, then 14 months old, became Barrett’s second child around 2005. John Peter, flown out of Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake, became her fourth oldest. Barrett’s other kids — she has seven in all — are her biological children.""The Supreme Court will decide whether Trump can revoke temporary protected status for Haitian migrants, all of whom received that designation specifically because of the 2010 earthquake and its devastating aftermath," the report added.Legal scholars argue her personal connection to Haiti is impossible to ignore. "She's a human being, and it's hard to imagine it not spilling over in some fashion," said Neal Devins, a professor at William & Mary Law School who has researched Supreme Court justice behavior, told the Post.Devins cautioned, "Barrett's connection to Haiti is likely to be just one of an array of factors playing into her thinking, including her allegiance to originalist legal interpretation and the conservative legal tradition from which she comes."International adoption experts say personal bonds to a child's home country run deep, the report notes, adding that the adoption process itself requires extensive bonding visits with children in their native countries. "Adoptive parents typically build a strong connection with their child's native country," adoption experts explained to the Post's Julian Mark.Devins suggested Barrett may be conflicted between her judicial philosophy and her personal experience. "I think she wants her legacy to be one of being a law-oriented justice. That said, she may appreciate this case differently."The report notes Barrett has previously discussed Haiti's severe conditions. While she declined to comment on the pending case, the justice has publicly spoken about the difficult circumstances her adopted children endured in Haiti and the challenges they faced.

Apr 28, 2026 - World

Customs officials say group allegedly hid 5kg of ‘kush’ in false walls of bags on return from Bangkok holidayTwenty-two Buddhist monks are in Sri Lankan police custody after customs officials found 110kg of high-grade cannabis concealed in their luggage, the largest ever drug bust at Colombo’s main international airport.The group, mostly junior monks in training from temples across Sri Lanka, were alleged to have “carried about five kilos of the narcotic concealed within false walls in their luggage”, according to a Sri Lanka customs spokesperson. Continue reading...

Apr 28, 2026 - World

“There’s a day of reckoning coming.”That is the opinion of a prominent oil industry executive who is predicting a major surge in prices at the gas pump as Donald Trump’s war on Iran, and the accompanying closure of the Strait of Hormuz, drags on.As oil prices surge and supply dwindles globally, energy experts predict a catastrophic price shock that could decimate Republican chances in the midterms, reports Politico's Scott Waldman and Eli Stoklos.According to Dan Pickering, chief investment officer at Pickering Energy Partners, when summer driving season begins, gas prices will deliver a shock that "hits people in the face." "It will be painful because I can tell you that the stock market's ignoring this," he said.The timing will likely be politically toxic, the report notes, with another spike in prices predicted around Memorial Day potentially dealing a fatal blow to Republican chances for holding onto the House next year, as Americans' confidence in the economy continues to drop.A senior administration official dismissed expert warnings about the looming crisis, telling Politico: "Everyone feels like we can hopefully get back to even lower prices at the gas pump. That's always the goal. So everyone is very sober about the uptick in gas prices, but everyone feels confident that we can get it down before the end of the year." Rosemary Kelanic, director of the Middle East Program at the Defense Priorities think tank, isn't buying the White House spin, and suggested Trump's optimistic messaging is backfiring. "By talking down the market so effectively, when the price spike becomes inevitable, it's going to hurt way worse because we'll have lost weeks or even months of time where producers could have been ramping up output," she told Politico.There are also oil industry complaints about Trump's optimistic spin on the crisis.Oil and gas executives are openly frustrated with Trump's market-manipulating rhetoric," the report notes with one insider complaining that the president "sends conflicting signals to operators who cannot plan rigs and capital budgets when prices swing wildly based on tweets." "Our hypothesis is [that] the paper market is being manipulated. This will likely lead to an even worse supply and demand imbalance and higher prices in the medium term (next 12 months)," the executive added.

Apr 27, 2026 - World

Pakistan officials dismiss Afghan media reports and official statements about strikes on university in Kunar province as ‘blatant lie’Mortars and missiles fired from Pakistan on Monday struck a university and civilian homes in north-eastern Afghanistan, killing seven people and wounding at least 85, Afghan officials said.Pakistan denied the accusation of targeting a university. Continue reading...

Apr 27, 2026 - World

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday warned that the United States is being “humiliated” by Iran and risks getting trapped in a quagmire there like it did in Afghanistan and Iraq.“The Iranians are clearly stronger than expected and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either,” Merz told students at the Carolus-Magnus-Gymnasium in Marsberg, North Rhine-Westphalia. “The problem with conflicts like this is always: You don’t just have to get in, you have to get out again. We saw that very painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years. We saw it in Iraq.”“At the moment, I do not see what strategic exit the Americans will choose, especially since the Iranians are clearly negotiating very skillfully—or very skillfully not negotiating,” the Christian Democratic Union leader continued. “An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, particularly by the so-called Revolutionary Guards.”US President Donald Trump on Saturday abruptly canceled a planned trip by special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Islamabad, Pakistan to negotiate a ceasefire with Iranian officials after prior talks ended without an agreement.Nearly two months of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran have killed more than 3,400 people, at least 2,100 of them civilians—including 503 women, 413 children, 91 health workers, and 9 journalists, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.The Lebanese Health Ministry said Monday that the death toll from Israeli bombing of its northern neighbor has topped 2,500, including hundreds of women and children. At least 14 people were killed on Sunday by Israeli strikes, despite a US-brokered ceasefire.The head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society said Saturday that the organization has submitted evidence of US and Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which in 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes—including murder and forced starvation—in Gaza, where more than 250,000 people have been killed or injured since October 2023.Merz said Monday that the US-Israeli war on Iran is harming his country.“It is at the moment a pretty tangled situation,” he said. “And it is costing us a great deal of money. This conflict, this war against Iran, has a direct impact on our economic output.”Merz said that Germany was still open to deploying minesweeping warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has blocked almost all international shipping. However, the chancellor said such a move would only come after fighting stops.The German leader also told students at the school that their country must assume a greater leadership role within the European Union.“If we were to unite more effectively and do more together,” he said, “we could be at least as strong as the United States of America.”Some observers asserted that the US isn’t the only country being humiliated, pointing to Germany’s support for Israel, which is rooted in deep-seated guilt over the country’s systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews during the Nazi-era Holocaust.In addition to brutally cracking down on pro-Palestine protests and suppressing speech critical of Israel’s obliteration of Gaza, Germany initially planned to intervene in the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also in The Hague.However, Berlin said last month that it will not intervene in the ICJ case in support of Israel so that it can better focus on its own defense in a separate case before the tribunal filed by Nicaragua accusing Germany of enabling Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza via arms sales.