Rubio to make debut in Panama as Trump threatens to take canal

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Updated 01 February 2025
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Rubio to make debut in Panama as Trump threatens to take canal

  • Marco Rubio’s travel comes the same day that Trump’s promised tariffs on the three largest US trading partners – Canada, Mexico and China – are set to come into effect
  • Rubio will travel later to four other small Latin American countries for an agenda focused on migration, a highly unusual first trip for the top US diplomat

WASHINGTON: Marco Rubio heads Saturday to Panama on his debut trip abroad as US secretary of state as he looks for how to follow up on President Donald Trump’s extraordinary threat to seize the Panama Canal.
Rubio’s travel comes the same day that Trump’s promised tariffs on the three largest US trading partners – Canada, Mexico and China – are set to come into effect, another step showing a far more aggressive US foreign policy.
Rubio will travel later to four other small Latin American countries for an agenda focused on migration, a highly unusual first trip for the top US diplomat, whose predecessors were more likely to start the job with language of cooperation with major allies.
Trump has refused to rule out military force to seize the Panama Canal, which the United States handed over at the end of 1999, saying that China has exerted too much control through its investment in surrounding ports.
In his inaugural address, Trump said that the United States will be “taking it back” – and he refused to back down Friday.
“They’ve already offered to do many things,” Trump said of Panama, “but we think it’s appropriate that we take it back.”
He alleged that Panama was taking down Chinese-language signs to cover up how “they’ve totally violated the agreement” on the canal.
“Marco Rubio is going over this talk to the gentleman that’s in charge,” Trump told reporters.
Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino, generally considered an ally of the United States, has ruled out opening negotiations after complaining to the United Nations about Trump’s threat.
“I cannot negotiate, much less open a process of negotiations on the canal,” Mulino said Thursday.
The issue “is sealed. The canal is Panama’s,” Mulino said.
Mulino’s government, however, has ordered an audit of CK Hutchison Holdings, the Hong Kong company that operates ports on both sides of the canal.
It remains to be seen if or how Rubio carries out the threat. Some experts believe that Trump was simply applying pressure and could declare a win by the United States ramping up investment in the canal – an outcome that most Panamanians would welcome.
Rubio has played down the military option but also not contradicted his boss.
“I think the president’s been pretty clear he wants to administer the canal again. Obviously, the Panamanians are not big fans of that idea,” Rubio told SiriusXM radio in an interview before the trip.
He acknowledged that Panama’s government “generally is pro-American” but said that the Panama Canal is a “core national interest for us.”
“We cannot allow any foreign power – particularly China – to hold that kind of potential control over it that they do. That just can’t continue,” Rubio said.
The canal remains the crucial link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and coasts, with 40 percent of US container traffic going through it.
Trump administration officials said they were blaming not Mulino but previous Panamanian president Juan Carlos Varela who in 2017 – during Trump’s first term as president – moved to sever ties with Taiwan in favor of China.
“It wasn’t just a diplomatic recognition. He literally opened the floodgates and gave strategic assets throughout the Canal Zone to China,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, the US special envoy on Latin America.
He charged that Panama unfairly raised costs for US ships while also seeking assistance from the United States for canal upkeep. Panama attributes rising costs to the effects of a drought, exacerbated by climate change.
Trump has quickly made clear he will exercise swift pressure to bend other countries to his will, especially on his signature issue of deporting undocumented immigrants.
On Sunday, he threatened major tariffs against Colombia to force its president to back down after he insisted that repatriated migrants be treated in a more dignified way.


Visa’s 24/7 war room takes on global cybercriminals

Updated 13 sec ago
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Visa’s 24/7 war room takes on global cybercriminals

  • The warning signs are clear: anything that seems too good to be true online is suspicious, and romance opportunities with strangers from distant countries are especially dangerous

ASHBURN, United States: In the heart of Data Center Alley — a patch of suburban Washington where much of the world’s Internet traffic flows — Visa operates its global fraud command center.
The numbers that the payments giant grapples with are enormous. Every year, $15 trillion flows through Visa’s networks, representing roughly 15 percent of the world’s economy. And bad actors constantly try to syphon off some of that money.
Modern fraudsters vary dramatically in sophistication.
To stay ahead, Visa has invested $12 billion over the past five years building AI-powered cyber fraud detection capabilities, knowing that criminals are also spending big.
“You have everybody from a single individual threat actor looking to make a quick buck all the way to really corporatized criminal organizations that generate tens or hundreds of millions of dollars annually from fraud and scam activities,” Michael Jabbara, Visa’s global head of fraud solutions, told AFP during a tour of the company’s security campus.
“These organizations are very structured in how they operate.”
The best-resourced criminal syndicates now focus on scams that directly target consumers, enticing them into purchases or transactions by manipulating their emotions.
“Consumers are continuously vulnerable. They can be exploited, and that’s where we’ve seen a much higher incidence of attacks recently,” Jabbara said.

The warning signs are clear: anything that seems too good to be true online is suspicious, and romance opportunities with strangers from distant countries are especially dangerous.
“What you don’t realize is that the person you’re chatting with is more likely than not in a place like Myanmar,” Jabbara warned.
He said human-trafficking victims are forced to work in multi-billion-dollar cyber scam centers built by Asian crime networks in Myanmar’s lawless border regions.
The most up-to-date fraud techniques are systematic and quietly devastating.
Once criminals obtain your card information, they automatically distribute it across numerous merchant websites that generate small recurring charges — amounts low enough that victims may not notice for months.
Some of these operations increasingly resemble legitimate tech companies, offering services and digital products to fraudsters much like Google or Microsoft cater to businesses.
On the dark web, criminals can purchase comprehensive fraud toolkits.
“You can buy the software. You can buy a tutorial on how to use the software. You can get access to a mule network on the ground or you can get access to a bot network” to carry out denial-of-service attacks that overwhelm servers with traffic, effectively shutting them down.
Just as cloud computing lowered barriers for startups by eliminating the need to build servers, “the same type of trend has happened in the cybercrime and fraud space,” Jabbara explained.
These off-the-shelf services can also enable bad actors to launch brute force attacks on an industrial scale — using repeated payment attempts to crack a card’s number, expiry date, and security code.
The sophistication extends to corporate-style management, Jabbara said.
Some criminal organizations now employ chief risk officers who determine operational risk appetite.
They might decide that targeting government infrastructure and hospitals generates an excessive amount of attention from law enforcement and is too risky to pursue.

To combat these unprecedented threats, Jabbara leads a payment scam disruption team focused on understanding criminal methodologies.
From a small room called the Risk Operations Center in Virginia, employees analyze data streams on multiple screens, searching for patterns that distinguish fraudulent activity from legitimate credit card use.
In the larger Cyber Fusion Center, staff monitor potential cyberattacks targeting Visa’s own infrastructure around the clock.
“We deal with millions of attacks across different parts of our network,” Jabbara noted, emphasizing that most are handled automatically without human intervention.
Visa maintains identical facilities in London and Singapore, ensuring 24-hour global vigilance.

 


BRICS nations slam US tariffs, but avoid naming Trump

Updated 55 min 41 sec ago
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BRICS nations slam US tariffs, but avoid naming Trump

  • The bloc is divided about much, but found common cause when it comes to Trump and his stop-start tariff wars
  • Trump has now warned he will impose unilateral levies on partners unless they reach “deals” by August 1

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil: BRICS leaders at a summit on Sunday took aim at US President Donald Trump’s “indiscriminate” import tariffs.
The 11 emerging nations — including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — account for about half the world’s population and 40 percent of global economic output.
The bloc is divided about much, but found common cause when it comes to the mercurial US leader and his stop-start tariff wars — even if they avoided naming him directly.
Voicing “serious concerns about the rise of unilateral tariff” measures, BRICS members said the tariffs risked hurting the global economy, according to a summit joint statement.
They also offered symbolic backing to fellow member Iran, condemning a series of military strikes on nuclear and other targets carried out by Israel and the United States.
In April, Trump threatened allies and rivals alike with a slew of punitive duties, before offering a months-long reprieve in the face of a fierce market sell-off.
Trump has now warned he will impose unilateral levies on partners unless they reach “deals” by August 1.
In an apparent concession to US allies, the summit declaration did not criticize the United States or its president by name at any point.

Conceived two decades ago as a forum for fast-growing economies, the BRICS have come to be seen as a Chinese-driven counterbalance to US and western European power.
But as the group has expanded to include Iran, Saudi Arabia and others, it has struggled to reach meaningful consensus on issues from the Gaza war to challenging US global dominance.
BRICS nations, for example, collectively called for a peaceful two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict — despite Tehran’s long-standing position that Israel should be destroyed.
An Iranian diplomatic source said his government’s “reservations” had been conveyed to Brazilian hosts. Still, Iran stopped short of rejecting the statement outright.

Xi Jinping, Putin skip summit

The political punch of this year’s summit has been depleted by the absence of China’s Xi Jinping, who skipped the meeting for the first time in his 12 years as president.
The Chinese leader is not the only notable absentee. Russian President Vladimir Putin, charged with war crimes in Ukraine, also opted to stay away, participating via video link.
He told counterparts that BRICS had become a key player in global governance.
The summit also called for regulation governing artificial intelligence and said the technology could not be the preserve of only rich nations.
The commercial AI sector is currently dominated by US tech giants, although China and other nations have rapidly developing capacity.
 


Desperate search for missing girls as death toll in Texas floods jumps to 78

Updated 51 min 45 sec ago
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Desperate search for missing girls as death toll in Texas floods jumps to 78

  • Texas public safety chief fears the death toll could rise farther as forecasters warned of new deluges
  • Trump brushes off concerns his administration’s w ide-ranging cuts to weather forecasting had left local warning systems worse-off

HUNT, Texas: Rescuers in Texas raced against time Sunday to find dozens of missing people, including children, swept away by flash floods that killed at least 78 people, with forecasters warning of new deluges.
US President Donald Trump said he would “probably” visit the southern state on Friday.
The president brushed off concerns his administration’s wide-ranging cuts to weather forecasting and related federal agencies had left local warning systems worse-off.
Instead, Trump described the flash floods as a “100-year catastrophe” that “nobody expected.”
At least 40 adults and 28 children were killed in the worst-hit Kerr County in central Texas, Sheriff Larry Leitha said, while at least ten more people were killed by flooding in nearby areas.

 

“You will see the death toll rise today,” warned Texas public safety chief Freeman Martin at a press conference.
“Across the state, in all the areas affected by flooding, there are 41 known missing,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said.
As questions grew about why warnings did not come sooner or people were not evacuated earlier in the area popular with campers, Trump said the situation was a “Biden setup.”
“That was not our setup,” Trump told reporters on Sunday, adding that he would “not” hire back meteorologists when probed about staff and budget cuts at the National Weather Service (NWS).
Asked about whether he would change his plans to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he responded: “FEMA is something we can talk about later.”
Trump, who previously said disaster relief should be handled at the state-level, also signed a major disaster declaration that freed up resources for Texas.

In central Texas, some 17 helicopters joined the search for missing people, including ten girls and a counselor from a riverside Christian summer camp where about 750 people had been staying when disaster struck.
In a terrifying display of nature’s power, the rain-swollen waters of the Guadalupe River reached treetops and the roofs of cabins in Camp Mystic as girls slept overnight Friday, washing away some of them and leaving a scene of devastation.

Blankets, teddy bears and other belongings at the camp were caked in mud. Windows in the cabins were shattered, apparently by the force of the water.
The National Weather Service (NWS) warned Sunday that slow-moving thunderstorms threatened more flash floods over the saturated ground of central Texas.
Governor Abbott warned that heavy rainfall could “lead to potential flash flooding” in Kerrville and surrounding areas, as officials warned people against going near the swollen river and its creeks.
The flooding began at the start of the Fourth of July holiday weekend as months’ worth of rain fell in a matter of hours, much of it coming overnight as people slept.
The Guadalupe surged around 26 feet (eight meters) — more than a two-story building — in just 45 minutes.

Flash floods, which occur when the ground is unable to absorb torrential rainfall, are not unusual in this region of south and central Texas, known colloquially as “Flash Flood Alley.”

A drone view shows flooded houses, following torrential rains that unleashed flash floods along the Concho River in San Angelo, Texas, US, on July 4, 2025, in this screen grab obtained from a social media video. (Patrick Keely via REUTERS )

Scientists say that in recent years human-driven climate change has made extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and heat waves more frequent and more intense.
Officials said while rescue operations were ongoing, they were also starting the process of debris removal.
“There’s debris all over the place that makes roads impassable, that makes reconstruction projects unachievable,” Abbott said.
People from elsewhere in Texas converged on Kerr County to help look for the missing.
Texans also started flying personal drones to help look but local officials urged them to stop, citing a danger for rescue aircraft.
One of the searches focused on four young women who were staying in a house that was washed away by the river. Adam Durda and his wife Amber, both 45, drove three hours to help.
“There was a group of 20-year-olds that were in a house that had gotten washed away,” Durda told AFP. “That’s who the family requested help for, but of course, we’re looking for anybody.”
Justin Morales, 36, was part of a search team that found three bodies, including that of a Camp Mystic girl caught up in a tree.
“We’re happy to give a family closure and hopefully we can keep looking and find some of the... you know, whoever,” he told AFP.
“Help give some of those families closure. That’s why we’re out here.”


Trump calls Musk’s formation of new party ‘ridiculous’ and confusing

Updated 28 min ago
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Trump calls Musk’s formation of new party ‘ridiculous’ and confusing

  • Musk said his “America Party” is needed to fight the Republican/Democrat Uniparty, which he blamed for the country's worsening debt crisis
  • Trump's response: Musk unhappy with new US tax-cut and spending measure, which takes away green-energy credits for Tesla’s electric vehicles

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump called Elon Musk’s plans to form a new political party “ridiculous,” saying Musk could have fun with his new project but that the United States functions best under a two-party system.
A day after Musk escalated his feud with Trump and announced the formation of a new US political party, the Republican president was asked about it before boarding Air Force One in Morristown, New Jersey, as he returned to Washington upon visiting his nearby golf club.
“I think it’s ridiculous to start a third party. We have a tremendous success with the Republican Party. The Democrats have lost their way, but it’s always been a two-party system, and I think starting a third party just adds to confusion,” Trump told reporters. “It really seems to have been developed for two parties. Third parties have never worked, so he can have fun with it, but I think it’s ridiculous.”
Musk announced on Saturday that he is establishing the “America Party” in response to Trump’s tax-cut and spending bill, which Musk said would bankrupt the country.
"What the heck was the point of @DOGE if he’s just going to increase the debt by $5 trillion??" Musk posted on his X platform.

In response, investment firm Azoria Partners, which had planned to launch a fund tied to Musk’s electric automaker Tesla , said it was delaying the venture because the party’s creation posed “a conflict with his full-time responsibilities as CEO.”
Musk, who served as a top adviser to Trump on downsizing and reshaping the federal government during the first few months of his presidency, said his new party would in next year’s midterm elections look to unseat Republican lawmakers in Congress who backed the sweeping measure known as the “big, beautiful bill.”

Speaking on the CNN program “State of the Union” on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the boards of directors at Musk’s companies — Tesla and rocket firm SpaceX — probably would prefer him to stay out of politics.
“I imagine that those boards of directors did not like this announcement yesterday (Saturday) and will be encouraging him to focus on his business activities, not his political activities,” Bessent said.
Musk spent millions of dollars underwriting Trump’s 2024 re-election effort and, for a time, regularly showed up at the president’s side in the White House Oval Office and elsewhere. Their disagreement over the spending bill led to a falling out that Musk briefly tried unsuccessfully to repair.
The bill, which cuts taxes and ramps up spending on defense and border security, passed last week on party-line votes in both chambers of Congress. Critics have said it will damage the US economy by significantly adding to the federal budget deficit.
Trump has said Musk is unhappy because the measure, which Trump signed into law on Friday, takes away green-energy credits for Tesla’s electric vehicles. The president has threatened to pull billions of dollars Tesla and SpaceX receive in government contracts and subsidies in response to Musk’s criticism.

INVESTOR REBUKE
Musk’s announcement of a new party immediately brought a rebuke from Azoria Partners, which said on Saturday it will postpone the listing of its Azoria Tesla Convexity exchange-traded fund. Azoria was set to launch the Tesla ETF this week.
Azoria CEO James Fishback posted on X several critical comments about the new party and reiterated his support for Trump.
“I encourage the Board to meet immediately and ask Elon to clarify his political ambitions and evaluate whether they are compatible with his full-time obligations to Tesla as CEO,” Fishback said.
On Sunday, Fishback added on X, “Elon left us with no other choice.”
The Democratic Party appeared to welcome the rift between Trump and Musk.
“Trump’s MAGA party is splitting at the seams in the wake of his nightmare budget bill,” said Abhi Rahman, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee. “Republicans are waking up and facing the reality that they just signed their own pink slips, and are desperate for someone else to blame.”

 


Texas officials face scrutiny over response to catastrophic

A drone view shows the swollen San Gabriel River, in Georgetown, Texas, US, on Saturday. (Reuters)
Updated 06 July 2025
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Texas officials face scrutiny over response to catastrophic

  • The destructive fast-moving waters that began before sunrise Friday in the Texas Hill Country killed at least 43 people in Kerr County, authorities said Saturday, and an unknown number of people remained missing

KERRVILLE: Before heading to bed before the Fourth of July holiday, Christopher Flowers checked the weather while staying at a friend’s house along the Guadalupe River. Nothing in the forecast alarmed him. Hours later, he was rushing to safety: He woke up in darkness to electrical sockets popping and ankle-deep water. Quickly, his family scrambled nine people into the attic. Phones buzzed with alerts, Flowers recalled Saturday, but he did not remember when in the chaos they started.
“What they need is some kind of external system, like a tornado warning that tells people to get out now,” Flowers, 44, said.
The destructive fast-moving waters that began before sunrise Friday in the Texas Hill Country killed at least 43 people in Kerr County, authorities said Saturday, and an unknown number of people remained missing. Those still unaccounted for included 27 girls from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along a river in Kerr County where most of the dead were recovered.
But as authorities launch one of the largest search-and-rescue efforts in recent Texas history, they have come under intensifying scrutiny over preparations and why residents and youth summer camps that are dotted along the river were not alerted sooner or told to evacuate.
The National Weather Service sent out a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies — a rare alert notifying of imminent danger.
Local officials have insisted that no one saw the flood potential coming and have defended their actions.
“There’s going to be a lot of finger-pointing, a lot of second-guessing and Monday morning quarterbacking,” said Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, whose district includes Kerr County. “There’s a lot of people saying ‘why’ and ‘how,’ and I understand that.”