UNITED NATIONS, United States: UN member states on Thursday approved a treaty targeting cybercrime, the body’s first such text, despite fierce opposition from human rights activists who warned of potential surveillance dangers.
After three years of negotiations and a final two-week session in New York, members approved the United Nations Convention Against Cybercrime by consensus, and it will now be submitted to the General Assembly for formal adoption.
“I consider the documents... adopted. Thank you very much, bravo to all!” Algerian diplomat Faouzia Boumaiza Mebarki, chairwoman of the treaty drafting committee, said to applause.
The committee was set up, despite US and European opposition, following an initial move in 2017 by Russia.
The new treaty would enter into force once it has been ratified by 40 member nations and aims to “prevent and combat cybercrime more efficiently and effectively,” notably regarding child sexual abuse imagery and money laundering.
But its detractors — an unusual alliance of human rights activists and big tech companies — denounce it as being far too broad in scope, claiming it could amount to a global “surveillance” treaty and be used for repression.
The adopted text stipulates that, in investigating any crime punishable by a minimum of four years’ imprisonment under national law, a member state may ask the authorities of another country for any electronic evidence linked to the crime, and also request data from an Internet service provider.
UN approves its first treaty targeting cybercrime
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UN approves its first treaty targeting cybercrime
US top court lets Trump revoke legal status for 500,000 migrants
WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major victory Friday in his immigration crackdown, giving his administration the green light to revoke the legal status of half a million migrants from four Caribbean and Latin American countries.
The decision puts 532,000 people who came from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to the United States under a two-year humanitarian “parole” program launched by former president Joe Biden at risk of deportation.
And it marked the second time the highest US court has sided with Trump in his aggressive push to deliver on his election pledge to deport millions of non-citizens, through a series of policy announcements that have prompted a flurry of lawsuits.
But the opinion sparked a scathing dissent from two justices in the liberal minority who said the six conservatives on the bench had “plainly botched” their ruling and undervalued the “devastating consequences” to those potentially affected.
The revoked program had allowed entry into the United States for two years for up to 30,000 migrants a month from the four countries, all of which have dismal human rights records.
But as Trump takes a hard line on immigration, his administration moved to overturn those protections, winning a ruling from the Supreme Court earlier this month that allowed officials to begin deporting some 350,000 Venezuelans.
The latest case resulted from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem canceling an 18-month extension of the temporary protected status of the migrants, citing in particular the “authoritarian” nature of Nicolas Maduro’s government in Venezuela.
The department gave them 30 days to leave the country unless they had legal protection under another program.
“The court has plainly botched this assessment today,” Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor wrote in their dissent.
The justices said the migrants face being wrenched from family and returning to potential danger in their native countries — or opting to stay and risking imminent removal.
“At a minimum, granting the stay would facilitate needless human suffering before the courts have reached a final judgment regarding the legal arguments at issue, while denying the government’s application would not have anything close to that kind of practical impact,” Jackson said.
None of the other justices gave reasons for their decision, and the court was not required to make the vote public.
The district court that barred the administration from revoking the migrants’ status had argued that it was unlawfully applying a fast-track deportation procedure aimed at illegal immigrants to non-citizens protected by government programs.
At the Supreme Court, Justice Department lawyers said the “district court has nullified one of the administration’s most consequential immigration policy decisions” by issuing the stay.
The high court’s decision means the Trump administration can go ahead with its policy change, even as the litigation on the merits plays out in lower courts.
Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants, evoking an “invasion” of the United States by hordes of foreign criminals.
Among other measures, he invoked an obscure wartime law to fly more than 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador.
But his program of mass deportations has been thwarted or restricted by numerous court rulings, including from the Supreme Court and notably on the grounds that those targeted should be able to assert their due process rights.
And the administration has been berated over its efforts to restrict immigration from poor countries with human rights concerns like Afghanistan and Haiti, while accepting white South African refugees amid baseless claims that they face “genocide.”
The Trump administration systematically accuses judges who oppose his immigration decisions of plundering his presidential national security powers.
UK ban on disposable vapes goes into effect
- Those caught flouting the ban will face a £200 fine
LONDON: A ban on disposable vapes goes into effect across the UK on Sunday in a bid to protect children’s health and tackle a “throwaway” culture.
“For too long, single-use vapes have blighted our streets as litter and hooked our children on nicotine,” junior environment minister Mary Creagh said.
She said the government was calling “time on these nasty devices” — a type of e-cigarette which are very popular with young people — and banning sales of single-use vapes or their supply in a crackdown on UK corner shops and supermarkets.
Those caught flouting the ban will face a £200 fine, while repeat offenders risk up to two years in prison.
Young people and children in particular have been attracted to cheap and colorful disposable vapes, which have snazzy flavours such as mint, chocolate, mango or watermelon, since they were introduced in the UK in 2021.
In 2024, nearly five million disposable vapes were thrown away each week, according to Material Focus, an independent UK-based non-profit.
More than 40 tons of lithium, a key metal used in the technology industry, was discarded each year along with single-use vapes — enough to power 5,000 electrical vehicles, the NGO said.
Fire services have also warned about the risk of discarded vapes catching light among household rubbish.
“Every vape has potential to start a fire if incorrectly disposed of,” said Justin Greenaway, commercial manager at electronic waste processing company SWEEEP Kuusakoski.
The new law, first proposed by the previous Conservative government, also aims to stem a rise in vaping.
“This new law is a step toward reducing vaping among children, while ensuring products are available to support people to quit smoking,” said Caroline Cerny, deputy chief executive for health charity Action on Smoking and Health .
A recent ASH survey said 11 percent of adults vape, or about 5.6 million people, and 18 percent of 11 to 17 year olds — about 980,000 under-18s. Among vapers, some 52 percent of young adults aged between 18 to 24 preferred single-use vapes.
The long-term health risks of vaping remain unclear.
E-cigarettes do not produce tar or carbon monoxide, two of the most harmful elements in tobacco smoke. But they do still contain highly addictive nicotine.
The upcoming ban has already led to a fall in disposable vapes. According to ASH, the use of disposables by 18-24-year-old vapers fell from 52 percent in 2024 to 40 percent in 2025.
The UK ban follows similar European moves. Belgium and France became the first EU countries to ban sales of disposable vapes.
Ireland is also preparing to introduce new restrictions.
But critics have argued many users will simply switch to refillable or reusable vaping devices, which will limit the impact on nicotine consumption.
And industry experts say the ban could lead to more illegal products entering the UK market.
The bill “only makes it illegal to sell disposable vapes — it does not prohibit their use,” warned Dan Marchant, director of Vape Club, the UK’s largest online vape retailer.
“We risk a surge of illegal and potentially dangerous items flooding the black market.”
Musk put a spotlight on federal spending, but cut less than he wanted
- Musk, whose last day spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency is Friday, slashed his goal for savings from $2 trillion to $1 trillion to finally only $150 billion
Elon Musk's effort to dramatically cut government spending is expected to fall far short of his grand early pronouncements, and perhaps even his most modest goals.
It didn't have to be that way.
According to experts across the ideological spectrum, a major problem was a failure to deploy people who understood the inner workings of government to work alongside his team of software engineers and other high-wattage technology talent.
Even that might not have achieved Musk’s original target of $2 trillion, which is roughly the size of the entire federal deficit.
Musk, whose last day spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency is Friday, slashed his goal for savings from $2 trillion to $1 trillion to finally only $150 billion.
The current DOGE results put Musk's efforts well short of President Bill Clinton's initiative to streamline the federal bureaucracy, which saved the equivalent of $240 billion by the time his second term ended. The effort also reduced the federal workforce by more than 400,000 employees.
It also seems clear that Musk was unable to change the overall trajectory of federal spending, despite eliminating thousands of jobs. The Yale Budget Lab, in an analysis of Treasury data, shows money is flowing out of government coffers at an even faster pace than the previous two years.
“It was an impossible goal they were trying to achieve. They kept lowering the standards of success," said Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "A more knowledgeable DOGE team wouldn’t have made insane promises that would be impossible to keep. They set themselves up for failure.”
At a White House event with Trump on Friday, Musk said his team would stay in place and renewed the goal of reaching at least $1 trillion in cost savings.
“This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning. The DOGE team will only grow stronger over time. It’s permeating throughout the government,” Musk said in the Oval Office, wearing a black blazer over a T-shirt emblazoned with “The Dogefather.” “We do expect over time to achieve the $1 trillion.” The early evidence suggests that the goal will be exceedingly difficult to reach.
By relying chiefly on information technology experts, Musk ended up stumbling through Washington and sometimes cutting employees vital to President Donald Trump’s own agenda.
Immigration judges were targeted at the same time the administration was trying to accelerate deportations of people in the U.S. illegally. Likewise, technologists with the Bureau of Land Management were purged from the Department of Interior, despite their significance to clearing the way for petroleum exploration, a Trump administration priority.
In many cases, fired employees were rehired, adding administrative costs to an effort aimed at cutting expenditures.
Had Musk’s team been staffed with experts on what positions are required under federal law to continue efforts such as drilling and immigration enforcement, it could have avoided similar mistakes across multiple departments, Nowrasteh said.
“I just think there were a lot of unforced errors that a more knowledgeable DOGE team would have avoided,” Nowrasteh said.
Grover Norquist, president and founder of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, had a more favorable perspective on Musk's work, saying it should be judged not only by the total dollars saved but his ability to spotlight the issues.
“When you find the problem, you don’t know how far the cancer has spread. You just found a cancer cell,” Norquist said.
Norquist said it’s up to Congress to take the baton and set up a permanent structure to continue where Musk is leaving off.
“I just think it’s going to be seen five to 10 years from now as something very big and very permanent,” Norquist said, “and that was done only because of a guy like Musk, who can come in and shake things up.”
Elaine Kamarck, a key figure in Clinton's government efficiency effort, said its efforts were guided by more modest fiscal targets than DOGE. The initiative was led by Vice President Al Gore, and it was aimed at making the government more responsive to people who used it, and focused heavily on updating antiquated hiring and purchasing procedures.
It took years and carried into Clinton’s second term.
“We went about it methodically, department by department and, yes, used some outside analysts, but they were seasoned government civil servants who knew about government in general,” Kamarck said.
Clinton’s effort saved $136 billion by the end of Clinton’s second term, the equivalent of more than $240 billion today, and contributed to budget surpluses for each of the final four fiscal years he was in office.
Kamarck said she expects what she called Musk's “chaotic” approach will reveal mistakes or oversights that could create crises down the road, such as a transportation problem, response to a natural disaster, or delivery of entitlement benefits.
“These are the things that really hurt presidents, and they are increasing the probability that something is going to happen,” Kamarck said.
Trump says Macrons ‘are fine’ after plane row video
- “I spoke to him. He’s fine. They’re fine. They’re two really good people. I know them very well,” said Trump
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said Friday that Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte were “fine,” after a viral video appeared to show her shoving the French president’s face on a trip to Vietnam.
“Make sure the door remains closed,” the three-times married Trump quipped to reporters when asked if he had any “world leader to world leader marital advice” for Macron about the video.
“That was not good,” added Trump, who was holding a joint press conference with billionaire Elon Musk in the Oval Office.
The incident was filmed just as the door of the French presidential plane swung open after landing in Hanoi on Sunday.
It showed Brigitte Macron, 72, sticking out both her hands and giving her husband’s face a shove. Macron, 47, appeared startled but quickly recovered and turns to wave through the open door.
The 78-year-old US president, who has long had a “bromance” with his French counterpart, said he had been in touch with him since.
“I spoke to him. He’s fine. They’re fine. They’re two really good people. I know them very well,” added Trump.
“I don’t know what that was all about.”
Macron himself denied on Monday that the couple had been having a domestic dispute. He blamed disinformation campaigns for trying to put false meaning on the footage.
Musk, who was marking his departure from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, meanwhile took the chance to joke at Macron’s expense.
Asked about a black eye he was sporting, the tycoon replied “I wasn’t anywhere near France” to the apparent puzzlement of a reporter who asked him to explain the comment.
Musk then said it was his son who caused the injury with a punch.
Biden says ‘I’m feeling good’ after cancer diagnosis
- The veteran Democrat told reporters he had decided on a treatment regime
WILMINGTON, US: Former US President Joe Biden told reporters Friday he was feeling “optimistic” about the future after delivering his first public remarks since revealing he had an aggressive form of prostate cancer.
“Well, the prognosis is good. You know, we’re working on everything. It’s moving along. So, I feel good,” Biden, 82, said after an event in Delaware belatedly marking Monday’s Memorial Day federal holiday.
Biden’s office announced earlier this month he is battling prostate cancer with a Gleason score of nine, which places him in the most severe category.
The veteran Democrat told reporters he had decided on a treatment regime, adding that “the expectation is, we’re going to be able to beat this.”
“It’s not in any organ, my bones are strong, it hasn’t penetrated. So I’m feeling good,” he said.
The mental and physical health of the former president, the oldest person ever to hold the office, was a dominant issue in the 2024 election.
After a disastrous debate performance against Trump, Biden ended his campaign for a second term.
When Biden’s office announced his diagnosis, they said the cancer had spread to his bones.
But Biden told reporters: “We’re all optimistic about the diagnosis. As a matter of fact, one of the leading surgeons in the world is working with me.”
The political row over Biden’s aborted candidacy has become a major scandal since the release of the book “Original Sin” — which alleges that Biden’s White House covered up his cognitive decline while he was in office.
The ex-president was asked about the controversy and responded with sarcasm, joking that “I’m mentally incompetent and I can’t walk.”
He said he had no regrets about initially running for a second term, and that his Democratic critics could have challenged him but chose not to “because I’d have beaten them.”
In earlier formal remarks in New Castle, Delaware, Biden spoke of his presidency as his greatest honor, and called for better treatment of veterans.
But he saved his most poignant comments to mark the 10th anniversary on May 30 of his son, National Guard veteran Beau Biden, dying of brain cancer at the age of 46.
“For the Bidens, this day is the 10th anniversary, the loss of my son Beau, who spent a year in Iraq,” said Biden, who had attended a memorial service for his son earlier in the day.
“And, to be honest, it’s a hard day.”
