LONDON: King Charles III and the Princess of Wales both plan to attend the United Kingdom’s annual ceremony honoring fallen service personnel on Sunday, a sign that the royal family is slowly returning to normal after a year in which two of the most popular royals were sidelined by cancer.
Remembrance Sunday is a totemic event in the UK, with the king leading senior royals, political leaders and envoys from the Commonwealth countries that fought alongside Britain in the two world wars in laying wreaths at the Cenotaph, the Portland stone memorial in central London that serves as the focal point for honoring the nation’s war dead.
The presence of both Charles, who is the commander in chief of the military, and Kate signals that normal royal service has been restored — at least for one day.
“They are showing respect to us, as we’ve shown to them by serving,” said Victor Needham-Crofton, 91, an army veteran who served during the Suez Crisis of 1956 and later in Kenya.
Charles was diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer in February, forcing him to step away from public appearances for two months as he focused on his treatment and recovery. Just a few weeks later, Kate announced her own cancer diagnosis, which sidelined her for much of the year as she underwent chemotherapy.
The king has been in good form in recent months and recently completed a taxing trip to Australia and Samoa. Kate, who made her first post-diagnosis public appearance during the monarch’s birthday parade in June, is slowly returning to public duties.
Prince William, Kate’s husband and the heir to the throne, reflected this week on the strain that the cancer scare has placed on the royal family.
“I’m so proud of my wife, I’m proud of my father, for handling the things that they have done,” William told reporters on Thursday as he wrapped up a four-day trip to South Africa. “But from a personal family point of view, it’s been, yeah, it’s been brutal.”
Charles’ ceremonial role as commander in chief of the armed forces is a holdover from the days when the monarch led his troops into battle. But the link between the monarchy and the military is still very strong, with service members taking an oath of allegiance to the king and members of the royal family supporting service personnel through a variety of charities. Charles and William both served on active duty in the military before taking up full-time royal duties.
On Sunday, Charles will lay a wreath of poppies at the base of the Cenotaph. William will leave his own floral tribute – featuring the Prince of Wales’ feathers and a new ribbon in Welsh red.
Kate will watch from a balcony of the nearby Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, as is tradition.
All will be present for the culmination of the event, when 10,000 military veterans march past the memorial and lay their own wreaths honoring fallen comrades.
While the Cenotaph is the focus of the national remembrance service, communities throughout the UK will hold their own ceremonies on Sunday.
Needham-Crofton, who served with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers before a truck accident ended his military career, plans to attend a local service in Eastbourne on the south coast of England.
He has spent much of his time honoring veterans and trying to help them, including 20 years as a volunteer for the Taxi Charity for Military Veterans. Like some of his army tasks, raising cash was rather grueling as it involved standing in front of London subway stations collecting coins to help fund the group’s efforts.
“I like to respect all the veterans and do what I can for them,’’ he told The Associated Press. “It’s a brotherhood really. Even if you don’t know a veteran that you meet, you feel a kinship toward them. That is very important to me. I shall be like that for the rest of my life.’’
King Charles III and Kate will attend remembrance events as both royals slowly return to duty
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King Charles III and Kate will attend remembrance events as both royals slowly return to duty
- King Charles III and the Princess of Wales both plan to attend the United Kingdom’s annual ceremony honoring fallen service personnel on Sunday.
Immigration judge denies bond for Tufts University student from Turkiye, her lawyers say
The lawyers asked the judge to order her to be brought to the state by Friday
VERMONT, USA: An immigration judge denied bond for a Tufts University student from Turkiye who has been detained by authorities in Louisiana for three weeks over what her lawyers say is apparent retaliation for an op-ed piece she co-wrote in the student newspaper.
Meanwhile, Rumeysa Ozturk’s lawyers filed a new request with a federal judge in Vermont considering whether to take jurisdiction of her detention case. The lawyers asked the judge to order her to be brought to the state by Friday and hold a hearing next week. They said that would allow better communication with her legal team and a doctor to evaluate her. They say Ozturk has suffered five asthma attacks in detention.
Lawyers for Ozturk, 30, had asked an immigration judge that she be released on bond as her immigration case proceeds. That judge denied her request Wednesday, the same day Ozturk had a hearing, they said in a statement released Thursday morning.
The Department of Homeland Security presented one document to support their opposition to Ozturk’s bond request: a one-paragraph State Department memo revoking her student visa, her lawyers said in the new court filing.
The memo says that Ozturk’s visa was revoked on March 21 following an assessment that she had been involved in associations ”‘that may undermine US foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization’ including co-authoring an op-ed that found common cause with an organization that was later temporarily banned from campus.”
Ozturk’s lawyers said the immigration judge denied bond based on the “untenable conclusion that Ms. Ozturk was both a flight risk and a danger to the community.”
Messages seeking comment Thursday were emailed to the department and to ICE.
Ozturk, a doctoral student studying child development, was taken by immigration officials as she walked along a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville on March 25. After being taken to New Hampshire and then Vermont, she was put on a plane the next day and moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, Louisiana.
Ozturk is among several people with ties to American universities whose visas were revoked or have been stopped from entering the US after they were accused of attending demonstrations or publicly expressed support for Palestinians. A Louisiana immigration judge has ruled that the US can deport Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil based on the federal government’s argument that he poses a national security risk.
Ozturk’s lawyers are challenging the legal authority for ICE’s detention. They also have asked US District Judge William Sessions in Vermont, where her detention case was transferred after lawyers first petitioned for her release in Massachusetts, to take jurisdiction of it and release her.
Sessions, who held a hearing Monday, has not ruled yet.
“The government’s entire case against Rümeysa is based on the same one-paragraph memo from the State Department to ICE that just points back to Rümeysa’s op-ed,” Marty Rosenbluth, one of Ozturk’s attorneys, said in a statement.
Ozturk was one of four students who wrote an op-ed in the campus newspaper, The Tufts Daily, last year criticizing the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Ozturk’s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process. They said they didn’t know for hours where she was after she was taken. They said they were unable to speak to her until more than 24 hours after she was detained. Ozturk herself said she unsuccessfully made multiple requests to speak to a lawyer.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said last month, without providing evidence, that investigations found that Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group.
Russia says certain countries trying to ‘derail’ its talks with US
- “There are a lot of people, structures, countries trying to derail our dialogue with the United States,” Dmitriev said
- “There is very active propaganda against Russia in the United States on various mass media”
MOSCOW: Russia’s top economic negotiator said Thursday that certain countries were trying to “derail” Moscow’s talks with the United States, as the two sides work toward normalizing ties.
President Donald Trump has upended US foreign policy since his return to the White House in January, reaching out directly to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in an attempt to broker a ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict.
US and Russian officials have met multiple times since, including on restoring embassy staffing levels after years of diplomatic expulsions, but Trump’s efforts to broker a Ukraine truce have so far failed to bear fruit.
“There are a lot of people, structures, countries trying to derail our dialogue with the United States,” Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, told reporters.
“There is very active propaganda against Russia in the United States on various mass media. So it is very important to convey the Russian position directly,” he added.
Dmitriev did not say which countries he was referring to, but Moscow has redirected much of its criticism over the Ukraine conflict toward Europe since Trump took office, accusing the EU and UK of being the main obstacles to peace.
Dmitriev’s comments came moments before French President Emmanuel Macron, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US envoy Steve Witkoff began a meeting in Paris on crafting a Ukraine ceasefire.
More than 130 students in US join federal lawsuit over revoked visas
- The students allege the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency abruptly and illegally terminated their status
- The initial complaint was filed by 17 students on April 11 in the state of Georgia
WASHINGTON: More than 130 international students across the United States have joined a federal lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of unlawfully canceling their visas, jeopardizing their legal status in the country, court documents show.
The students allege the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency abruptly and illegally terminated their status in the government’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) database, putting them at risk of arrest, detention and deportation.
The initial complaint was filed by 17 students on April 11 in the state of Georgia.
Since then, 116 more have joined them as the administration of US President Donald Trump pursues a wide-ranging immigration crackdown that has targeted foreign students, among many others.
Across campuses in the United States, international students have been scrambling as they have discovered their visas have been revoked, often for little or no reason, according to court documents and media reports.
The Georgia lawsuit names US Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons as defendants and seeks to reinstate the revoked visas.
In the complaint, which does not identify the students by name “due to fear of retaliation,” the summaries offered for each of the 17 original cases reveal seemingly arbitrary cancelations, with each plaintiff giving their best guess as to what may have prompted them to be targeted.
Some pointed to minor traffic infringements, such as John Doe 2, a Chinese citizen pursuing an engineering doctorate at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
He was notified by his school that his visa was revoked after a criminal records check, but the violation was not specified. The student believes it may have been related to a traffic offense that was closed and, according to the filing, he has no other criminal history.
Another of the students, an Indian national at New York Institute of Technology, said he had been found not guilty of shoplifting, and the case was dismissed.
“Over the past week, visa revocations and SEVIS terminations have shaken campuses across the country,” the complaint says.
“The SEVIS terminations have taken place against the backdrop of numerous demands being made of universities by the federal government and threats of cutting off billions of dollars in federal funding.”
The suit also noted that students’ removal from the government database could jeopardize the individuals’ ability to reenter the United States in the future.
Bulgarian government survives a no-confidence vote over corruption
- The government condemned the motion as an attempt to derail Bulgaria’s plan to adopt the euro at the beginning of 2026
- Rampant corruption has marred everyday life in Bulgaria for years
SOFIA: Bulgaria’s government on Thursday survived a second no-confidence motion in parliament in as many weeks.
The motion tabled by the Mech party and backed by two other nationalist and pro-Russia groups accused the government of failing to effectively combat rampant graft and bribery. It was defeated in a 130-72 vote in the 240-seat parliament. The government’s coalition Cabinet is led by the center-right GERB party.
The government condemned the motion as an attempt to derail Bulgaria’s plan to adopt the euro at the beginning of 2026, which would consolidate its European integration.
Contrary to its declared priority to stand up against corruption, the pro-Western opposition PP-DB did not support the motion, citing an upcoming European Commission report on Bulgaria’s bid to join the eurozone as a reason to avoid destabilizing the government.
“Any vote of no confidence before Bulgaria’s entry into the eurozone is not a vote to topple the government, but a vote to stop its pro-European course,” said PP-DB legislator Venko Sabrutev.
Rampant corruption has marred everyday life in Bulgaria for years, with dishonest public procurement, unregulated lobbying, vote buying and property fraud. Tackling graft has been complicated by the state of the judiciary, which is widely criticized for being beholden to the interests of politicians.
Russia’s top court lifts terror group designation on Afghanistan’s Taliban
- The move was a diplomatic victory for the Taliban
- Taliban delegations have attended various forums hosted by Russia
MOSCOW: Russia’s Supreme Court on Thursday lifted a ban on Afghanistan’s Taliban, who were designated as a terrorist group more than two decades ago.
The move was a diplomatic victory for the Taliban, who were put on Russia’s list of terrorist organizations in 2003, making any contact with them punishable under Russian law.
At the same time, Taliban delegations have attended various forums hosted by Russia as Moscow has sought to position itself as a regional power broker.
The court’s ruling on a request by the Prosecutor General’s office followed last year’s adoption of a law stipulating that the official designation as a terrorist organization could be suspended by a court.
