|
Hello, I'm Eileen McHugh with the BBC News.
Canada has become the latest Western power to announce plans to recognize a Palestinian state. The Prime Minister, Mark Carney, said the dramatic policy shift would happen in September as long as the Palestinian Authority carried out democratic reforms and held elections without Hamas. He said the prospect of a two-state solution was being steadily eroded. "For decades, it was hoped that this outcome would be achieved as part of a peace process built around a negotiated settlement between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. Regrettably, this approach is no longer tenable." France and Britain have made similar announcements in the past week as international pressure builds on Israel to reach a ceasefire in Gaza. Israel has condemned the moves, calling them a reward for terrorism. President Trump has stepped up his diplomatic assault on the government of Brazil's left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He's signed an executive order which brings total tariffs on Brazilian goods to 50 percent. It follows an announcement from the U.S. Treasury imposing financial sanctions on the senior Brazilian judge overseeing the criminal case for coup plotting against Brazil's former president, Jair Bolsonaro. Ione Wells is in São Paulo. There is a lot of concern among producers. Brazil's the biggest producer of coffee, of orange juice, two things that the U.S. buys a lot of. It also sells a lot of steel products, of oil. And some Bolsonaro supporters support this move. They think that he's the victim of a witch hunt as well. But there are some analysts who think this could actually backfire to Bolsonaro, particularly because, for example, some agriculture producers who may have previously supported Bolsonaro could well turn against him if they start to get hit economically by the tariffs that this feud has introduced. Donald Trump has said the United States will impose a 15 percent tariff on imports from South Korea as part of a new trade deal. In a post on social media, the president described the agreement as "full and complete." He said Seoul would invest more than $300 billion in American projects. His South Korean counterpart, Lee Jae-myung, said the deal eliminated uncertainty. The U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, has kept interest rates unchanged at 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent. The widely expected decision comes despite an unprecedented barrage of criticism from Donald Trump, who wants to see them slashed. The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, spoke to journalists. "We will continue to determine the appropriate stance of monetary policy based on the incoming data, the evolving outlook and the balance of risks. Changes to government policies continue to evolve and their effects on the economy remain uncertain. Higher tariffs have begun to show through more clearly to prices of some goods, but their overall effects on economic activity and inflation remain to be seen." World News from the BBC. The tsunami threat from one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded appears to have largely passed, although some Pacific areas are still braced for danger. In South America, Chile's tsunami warning is at its highest level. Ecuador's Galapagos Islands have ordered a precautionary evacuation in some areas. Belgium says it has asked the International Criminal Court to look into war crimes accusations against two visiting Israelis. The two unnamed individuals, one an Israeli soldier and the other a civilian, traveled to Belgium for a music festival earlier this month. The accusations against them, which haven't been revealed in detail, were made by a Belgium-based pro-Palestinian group. TikTok has removed a video by the businesswoman and beauty influencer Huda Kattan in which she promoted conspiracy theories about Israel. In the video, posted to her 1.7 million followers on Sunday, the Iraqi-American accused Israel of being responsible for every world war, as well as al-Qaeda's September 11 attack in 2001 and the attack by Hamas in October 2023. More than seven decades after a group of bronze jars were discovered in an ancient Grecian shrine near Pompeii, scientists say the sticky substance inside has finally been identified as honey. Previous investigations of the residue, which had been preserved in darkness for 2,500 years, concluded it was animal or vegetable fat. Luciana Da Costa Carvalho from Oxford University led the research. "I burned a little bit of the residue and what that enabled me to do was to have an idea also of the chemical composition. And then we analyzed samples from the surface and in one of those surface samples there were some sugar degradation products. So this was like the first hint that there was sugar in there. And actually, the vial that I used to burn the residue even smelled a little bit of burnt sugar." BBC News. |