TheTimeKnife

The administration of President Donald Trump has declared South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool a persona non grata in the United States.

In a social media post on Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Rasool was “no longer welcome in our great country”.

“Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates POTUS,” Rubio wrote, using the acronym for President of the United States.

“We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA.”

Rubio linked his remarks to an article by the right-wing media outlet Breitbart, wherein Rasool is quoted as saying Trump mobilised a “supremacist instinct” and “white victimhood” as a “dog whistle” during the 2024 elections.

Chinese stocks jumped on Friday after Beijing promised new measures to help consumers, defying a Wall Street sell-off and pushing the country’s main stock index into positive territory for the year.

Chinese authorities announced late on Thursday that they would hold a press conference on “boosting consumption” on Monday. This helped push the country’s CSI 300 benchmark 2.4 per cent higher. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index climbed 2.2 per cent.

The CSI 300 is up 1.8 per cent year to date and the Hang Seng has gained 19.4 per cent since the start of the year, while Wall Street’s S&P 500 is down 6.1 per cent.

An arcane budgetary sleight of hand is poised to take central stage in the US debate over tax and spending cuts. Magic tricks can at least entertain, and sometimes even inspire awe. But the budget trick is, in the words of Congressman David Schweikert, oversight chief for the tax-writing House ways and means committee, just “a fraud”.

Most of the tax cuts passed by Republicans during President Donald Trump’s first term, in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), which raised deficits by $1.7tn, are set to expire at the end of 2025. Republicans placed the time bomb in their own legislation to reduce the reported cost of the package — and how much they could be accused of adding to the national debt. The expiry was also necessary to clear the procedural hurdle for “reconciliation”, which allows new budget-related laws to avoid a filibuster in the Senate only if they would do nothing to increase deficits after the first 10 years.

But now the bomb has exploded. Without new legislation, current law requires tax rates to return to their pre-TCJA levels. Maintaining the current policy would cost nearly $5tn in lost revenue over the next 10 years.

The Trump administration is slashing long-standing areas of research funded by the National Institutes of Health, claiming they no longer align with the agency's priorities.

The latest target?

Millions of dollars in NIH grants for studying vaccine hesitancy and how to improve immunization levels. It's work that's particularly relevant as a measles outbreak grips the Southwest amidst diminishing vaccination rates.

In recent weeks, scientists around the country have begun receiving letters stating their existing grants — money already awarded to them in a competitive process — were being cut.

Myanmar's junta chief, Min Aung Hlaing, visited Moscow for high-level talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week.

It was Min Aung Hlaing's fourth visit to Russia since he took power in a 2021 coup, but last week's visit was the first official visit at the invitation of Putin, who hailed his ties with the junta, and lauded a 40% increase in bilateral trade last year.

Both Myanmar's junta and Russia are subject to international sanctions over human rights violations committed during both countries' respective ongoing wars.

Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington who focuses on Southeast Asian politics, called the talks a "diplomatic win" for the junta leader, but downplayed the significance of the nuclear energy agreement.

"There have been four such agreements before, and none have been implemented, not even close. Yes, the junta is facing acute energy shortages, but the regime has neither the security over its territory, the skilled manpower, or finances for even a small modular reactor," he told DW.

As part of the exchange in Moscow, Myanmar agreed to open two new consulates in St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk. Myanmar and Russia also signed an agreement for the construction of a small-scale nuclear plant in Myanmar.

The Canadian government has announced plans to ease sanctions on Syria as the interim government in Damascus seeks international support.

Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly on Wednesday said Ottawa would provide 84 million Canadian dollars ($59m) in new funding for humanitarian assistance. It would also allow funds to be sent through certain banks, such as the Central Bank of Syria, she said.

As she watched her 5-month-old son lying in intensive care, wires and tubes crisscrossing his tiny body, Uyanga cursed her hometown Ulaanbaatar and its chronic pollution.

The toxic smog that settles over the Mongolian capital every winter has been a suffocating problem for more than a decade that successive governments have failed to dispel.

There are wisps of hope in a resurgent grassroots movement and a promised official push to action.

But the statistics are grim.

Respiratory illness cases have risen steadily, with pneumonia the second leading cause of death for children under the age of 5.

Angola says that it convinced all combatants in DR Congo's conflict to come to the table on March 18th for direct peace talks. Luanda has been trying to mediate a ceasefire as M23 rebels, backed by Rwanda, have advanced through eastern DR Congo this year. Kinshasa says that over 8500 people have been killed by the militia since January and had refused to negotiate with the M23. On Tuesday, its only response was to say it had taken note of Angola's efforts.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is preparing to lay off more than 1,000 workers as part of the Trump administration's mandate for agencies to prepare "reductions in force," according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The cuts are fueling concerns that NOAA's ability to deliver lifesaving services, such as weather forecasting, storm warnings, climate monitoring and fishery oversight, will be hampered. The concerns are especially acute as hurricane and disaster season looms.

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that President Trump’s firing of the head of a board that resolves disputes between federal employees and the government was unlawful.

U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan’s ruling in favor of Susan Grundmann, the Democratic-appointed chair of the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), is the latest to push back on Trump’s efforts to consolidate control over independent agencies in an expanded view of presidential power.

The Bosnian Prosecutor’s Office has ordered police to arrest Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik and two of his aides for what it called an attack on the constitutional order.

The decision taken on Wednesday comes after Dodik, along with Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic and Parliament Speaker Nenad Stevandic, failed to answer two summons for questioning.

A federal appeals court has tossed an Amarillo woman's death sentence after it found that local prosecutors had failed to reveal that their primary trial witness was a paid informant.

With a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals last week sent Brittany Marlowe Holberg's 1998 murder conviction back down to the trial court to decide how to proceed.

Holberg has been on death row for 27 years. In securing her conviction in 1998, Randall County prosecutors heavily relied on testimony from a jail inmate who was working as a confidential informant for the City of Amarillo police. That informant recanted her testimony in 2011, but neither a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals or a federal district court found that prosecutors had violated Holberg's constitutional right to a fair trial.