Israeli President Isaac Herzog signaled Sunday that he would not grant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a pardon at this stage, saying efforts to reach a plea deal should be exhausted before he considers clemency in the prime minister’s long-running corruption trial.
Herzog’s office said the president believes an agreement between Netanyahu’s defense team and prosecutors would be the “proper and correct solution” and that talks should be pursued “outside the walls of the court” before the pardon request itself is addressed. Herzog’s position means no pardon decision is expected soon.
Netanyahu, who is on trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, submitted a pardon request in November. He denies wrongdoing and says the cases against him are politically driven. The trial began in 2020, making him Israel’s first sitting prime minister to stand trial while in office. He is due back in court this week as proceedings resume.
The decision places Herzog between two heavy political pressures. Netanyahu’s supporters argue that ending the trial would reduce national division and allow the prime minister to focus on Israel’s security crises. His opponents say a pardon should not be granted unless Netanyahu admits guilt and leaves political life. The Justice Ministry’s Pardons Department has also warned that halting an ongoing trial would be an exceptional and legally problematic step, especially without a conviction, admission of guilt, or remorse.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly urged Herzog to pardon Netanyahu, including during the recent Iran war, when the trial was temporarily paused. Herzog has maintained that any decision must be made under Israeli law and without outside pressure.
Herzog’s move now shifts attention toward possible mediation between Netanyahu’s lawyer, Amit Hadad, and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, whose relationship with the cabinet is deeply strained. The political calendar adds urgency: Israel’s next election is due by the end of October 2026.
CIA Ran MK-ULTRA Experiments on Prisoners of War in U.S. Custody, Declassified Docs Confirm
Korean prisoners of war in the 1950s were subjected to early MK-ULTRA experiments while in American custody, according to recently declassified CIA documents which confirm these experiments for the first time.
The only reporting that previously referenced Koreans being used as guinea pigs for these experiments was journalist John Marks’s landmark 1979 book, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate.” Using CIA documents, Marks traced the now-infamous MK-ULTRA project to its start, when it was known as Project Bluebird. In the book, Marks describes how, in October 1950, 25 unnamed North Korean POWs were chosen as the first test subjects to receive “advanced” interrogation techniques, with the overt goal of “controlling an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation.”
While MK-ULTRA is best known for its invasive experimentation — like LSD dosing and torture — the documents confirm Korean POWs were the unwitting subjects of less splashy attempts at mind control, like being subjected to polygraph tests, with plans for other invasive testing.
The declassified documents, which the National Security Archive released between December 2024 and April 2025, are available through a special collection titled “CIA and the Behavioral Sciences: Mind Control, Drug Experiments and MK-ULTRA.” The National Security Archive website states that the collection “brings together more than 1,200 essential records on one of the most infamous and abusive programs in CIA history.”
The first reference to “Project Bluebird” in the NSA’s collection is an office memorandum from April 5, 1950. Addressed to CIA Director Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, the document lays out the project’s goals, required training, and budget, all while emphasizing that knowledge of Project Bluebird “should be restricted to the absolute minimum number of persons.”
The memo includes detailed plans for interrogation teams trained to utilize the polygraph, various drugs, and hypnotism “for personality control purposes.” These teams were to be made up of three people: a doctor (ideally a psychiatrist), a hypnotist, and a polygraph technician. The memo clarifies that while the doctor and technician would need to undergo approximately five months of training, the Inspection and Security Staff’s own department hypnotist could be made available immediately. In a later memo from February 2, 1951, there are inquiries into acquiring six “hypospray” devices: experimental instruments designed to covertly inject sedatives through the skin via “jet injection.” There’s a request to investigate modification of a “tear gas pencil” and other “devices of unestablished action,” such as the “German ‘Scheintot’ [sic] (appearance of death) pistol.”
The project’s proposed budget of $65,515 accounted for team salaries and equipment like syringes, towels, and film cameras. The budget also allots $18,000 for “Transportation,” and while the actual offshore locations are redacted, a write-up of a CIA meeting held one year later specifically notes a “project in Japan and Korea in which the Army had used a polygraph operator along with a team of psychiatrists and psychologists on Korean POWs.”
Although the initial proposal for Project Bluebird mostly emphasized the potential for “personality control,” it’s clear that CIA officials were also interested in broader, more ambitious outcomes. One document summarizing a “special meeting” between U.S., British, and Canadian intelligence services notes the CIA’s desire to research “the psychological factors causing the human mind to accept certain political beliefs” and “determining means for combatting communism,” “‘selling’ democracy,” and preventing the “penetration of communism into trade unions.” Another meeting held on May 9, 1950, called for “the Surgeon General of the Army to place on the search list of the Nuremberg Trials papers request for information on drugs, narcoanalysis, and special interrogation techniques.”
There were requests for other tests that, at the time, were deemed “impossible for security reasons.” According to a memo from September 18, 1951, this included “experiments on the outside with SI inducted over the telephone.” The writer explains that this over-the-phone hypnosis has, so far, been “universally successful,” however testing along agency lines was yet to be approved.
One declassified memo emphasizing the importance of the project gets more detailed, citing “specific problems which can only be resolved by experiment, testing and research.” Unlike the lists of supplies necessary for Project Bluebird, the “specific problems” officials hoped to explore in the experiments offer a uniquely intimate perspective into the bureau’s interests. A few examples of these “problems” include:
“Can we create … an action contrary to an individual’s basic moral principles?”
“Could we seize a subject and in the space of an hour or two … have him crash an airplane, wreck a train, etc.?”
“Can we ‘alter’ a person’s personality? How long will it hold?”
“Can we guarantee total amnesia under any and all conditions?”
This last question surrounding drug-induced amnesia would prove incredibly relevant months later, when the first team of Project Bluebird technicians arrived in Japan to carry out initial tests. According to Marks, these men “tried out combinations of the depressant sodium amytal with the stimulant benzedrine on each of four subjects, the last two of whom also received a second stimulant, picrotoxin.” The team was attempting to induce a state of medically administered amnesia, and according to their reports, the experiments proved successful enough to pursue further tests. Two months later, according to Marks’s book, the Project Bluebird team began testing more “advanced” interrogation techniques on 25 North Korean prisoners of war in Japan.
Notably absent from these declassified documents is any proof that similar experiments were undertaken by enemies of the U.S. The central animating myth behind MK-ULTRA and Project Bluebird is the narrative of the American soldier who returned home after months of imprisonment by enemy forces, only to be revealed as a hypnotized double agent. Throughout the Korean War, American moviegoers were screened films starring and narrated by future president Ronald Reagan. These films showed American troops being psychologically tortured by Chinese and North Korean soldiers until dangerous, anti-democratic ideals were implanted in their minds without their knowledge.
The knowledge most Americans have about these experiences are based on a work of fiction: Richard Condon’s 1959 political thriller, “The Manchurian Candidate.” In Condon’s book (and its two film adaptations), an American soldier returns home with a secret, one that he himself isn’t even aware of. While held captive by North Korean and Chinese soldiers, the American POW was brainwashed by enemy troops, unknowingly turning him into a sleeper assassin with the goal of being “activated” to kill a presidential nominee.
Throughout these declassified documents are numerous reminders that the Korean War’s label as “The Forgotten War” serves, in part, as intentional obfuscation.
As Project Bluebird transformed into Project Artichoke and later MK-ULTRA, the CIA’s goals seemed to shift into one of beating the enemy at their own game. Essentially, programs surrounding psychological experiments were deemed necessary evils after our own troops were coming home hypnotized and transformed by our enemies. While this narrative offers a convenient excuse for why the CIA developed programs like Bluebird in the first place, one declassified document tells a different story.
In a 1983 witness testimony from CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb, who led the MK-ULTRA experiments, he recalls receiving confirmation that, after thorough investigation, there was no evidence any American POWs were subjected to drug-induced hypnosis at any point during the Korean War. “As I remember it,” Gottlieb said, “[The report] basically said that they felt that the techniques the Chinese and/or the Koreans used were not esoteric. … [They] didn’t depend upon sophisticated techniques used in drugs and other more technical means.” Additionally, a 1952 memo to Allen Dulles reinforces the CIA’s willingness to fund these experiments without any proof that enemy countries were undergoing similar research: “We cannot accept this lack of evidence as proof.”
In one of the more revealing moments from the entire collection of documents, the CIA’s Morse Allen recounts a conversation with an agency employee about the effectiveness of interrogating individuals through hypnosis. “Individuals under hypnotism will give information,” Allen writes, “but … it could not always be regarded as accurate, since fantasy and even hallucinations are present in certain hypnotic states.” Reading the lengthy budgetary sheets for drugs, syringes, polygraph machines, and hypnotists, paired with the details of Marks’s book, one’s imagination begins trying to fill in the gaps, drifting into fantasy. It’s an experience uniquely fitting for research into the CIA’s pursuit of technology aimed at erasing facts, experiences, and memories.
Throughout these declassified documents are numerous reminders that the Korean War’s label as “The Forgotten War” serves, in part, as intentional obfuscation. People, histories, and crimes are rarely forgotten on accident, and what these disclosures clearly demonstrate is that there remains a world of difference between the forgetting of history and its swift, coordinated erasure.
Microsoft bets big on AI in Australia with $18 billion investment
Microsoft ( said on Thursday that it will invest A$25 billion ($17.9 billion) in Australia by the end of 2029 to boost computing and artificial intelligence capacity, betting on growing demand for the technology in the country.
The U.S. tech giant’s latest investment reflects rising demand for AI technologies and positions Australia as a key growth market.
Microsoft said the investment will support the expansion of its Azure AI supercomputing and cloud infrastructure, strengthen cybersecurity and promote AI skills development across the country.
“Australia has an enormous opportunity to translate AI into real economic growth and societal benefit,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, currently visiting Sydney as part of the company’s global AI tour, said in a statement. He described the initiative as Microsoft’s largest investment in Australia to date.
Microsoft and its Big Tech rivals Alphabet , Amazon and Meta will collectively invest about $650 billion to scale up AI-related infrastructure this year, according to Bridgewater Associates.
“This is a serious vote of confidence in Australia as a tier-one AI market,” eToro Analyst Josh Gilbert said.
“For a long time, the AI capex conversation has been a U.S. story, with occasional nods to Japan, Singapore, and even the Middle East. The fact that Microsoft is now putting this kind of capital behind Australia, alongside similar moves across the globe, shows the region is squarely in the AI build-out plan,” Gilbert added.
The investment also comes at a time when Microsoft faces growing competition in AI assistants, with its Copilot tool competing against offerings such as Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini. The Windows maker has been racing to improve Copilot to drive better adoption.
Microsoft also announced plans to expand its commercial cloud and AI, including graphics processing unit offerings, for Australian customers by more than 140% by the end of 2029.
For Microsoft, the investment “is about defending Azure’s turf, locking in enterprise customers, and buying distribution in a market where the AI race is still wide open,” eToro’s Gilbert added.
The latest commitment builds on Microsoft’s A$5 billion investment in 2023 aimed at expanding its hyperscale cloud computing and AI infrastructure in Australia.
“More training, better technology and new opportunities for Australians to get ahead. That’s what the massive AI investment Microsoft announced today will mean for Australia,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a post on X.
The Australian government welcomed the announcement, and said it will collaborate with Microsoft to forecast infrastructure needs and strengthen the country’s energy systems.
Syria holds public trial for Assad’s cousin over crimes against civilians
Atef Najib, a cousin of ousted President Bashar al-Assad and former political security chief in Syria’s Daraa city, appeared on Sunday before the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus, Al-Ikhbariya television reported, Anadolu reports.
The outlet broadcast video footage showing Najib in the defendant’s cage, after he had been brought to the court in the Syrian capital.
“The first trials of transitional justice in Syria include a detainee (Atef Najib) and defendants who are fugitives from justice,” the channel quoted an unnamed judge in the court as saying.
Among those fugitives were Assad, his brother and commander of the notorious Fourth Division Maher Assad , former Defense Minister Fahd Jassem al-Freij, former military intelligence chief in Daraa Laith al-Ali, and former military intelligence chief in Suwayda province Wafiq Nasser.
The judge announced the adjournment of the session until May 10.
Najib, who was arrested in January last year, graduated from the Military Academy before joining the intelligence services, where he held various positions, including the Political Security Branch in Daraa.
He is accused of being one of the first to carry out violations against civilians in Daraa, the birthplace of the 2011 uprising.
He is also blamed for the arrest and torture of children in Daraa who had written anti-regime slogans on walls, an incident that sparked initial protests in Syria.
In December 2024, Assad, who ruled Syria for nearly 25 years, fled to Russia, bringing an end to the Baath Party’s decades of rule that began in 1963. A transitional administration led by President Ahmad al-Sharaa was formed in January 2025.
New robotic control software avoids jamming their joints
Switching from one smartphone to another is mostly a smooth procedure. You log into your accounts and your apps, preferences, and contacts should sync to the new hardware. But in the world of robotics, swapping an old robotic arm for a newer model has meant setting everything up from scratch.
To fix that, a team of researchers at the Swiss École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has developed what they call Kinematic Intelligence, a framework that makes switching robots work more like switching smartphones. They describe their system in a recent Science Robotics paper.
Demonstrating skills
For years, roboticists have been working on getting robots to learn from demonstration—teaching them new skills by showing them what to do, rather than writing lines of code. The idea is to remotely control or physically guide the robot’s arm to teach it a task like wiping a table, stacking boxes, or welding a car component. The problem is that most of these taught skills end up tied to the specific robot the training was done with.
But robotics is advancing quickly. “The robots have different designs, and nowadays there are new designs being proposed—that brings its own set of challenges,” said Sthithpragya Gupta, a roboticist at EPFL and lead author of the study. If a new robot has slightly longer links, a different joint orientation, or a more complex configuration, that learned behavior instantly breaks and the new robot will likely flail, freeze, or crash if attempting it.
“With new designs come different capabilities and constraints,” said Durgesh Haribhau Salunkhe, an EPFL roboticist and co-author of the study. “The problem is to adapt to these constraints and capabilities—to faithfully replicate the actions demonstrated by a human.” Today, making the leap from one robot body to another usually means starting from scratch and retraining the whole system.
The danger zone
When a robot moves through space to complete a task, it must constantly calculate how to bend its joints to keep its end-effector (a robotic equivalent of a hand) on the right path. The robot has to avoid hitting a physical limit, or worse, a singularity, which in robotics is a mathematical danger zone: a physical configuration where the robot’s joints align in such a way that it temporarily loses a degree of freedom. “In such positions, the robot’s motion may become unstable or [you] may lose control of the robot,” Gupta said.
In human terms, it works roughly like locking the elbows as they get fully straightened when pushing something heavy, which makes the arms unable to perform side-to-side movements for a moment.
Transferring skills from one robot to another is hard because differently structured robots usually have a different topology of singularities. When a robot’s algorithm blindly follows a path and hits a singularity, the math controlling its joints will fail. The robot might try to spin a joint at infinite speed, for instance, resulting in a sudden, unsafe movement. Gupta’s team solved this by giving the robots a deep, innate mathematical awareness of their own physical limitations. This Kinematic Intelligence, as they call it, lets a user demonstrate a skill just once, and have it executed safely by an entirely different type of robot.
And (surprisingly, these days) Kinematic Intelligence was built in an AI-free manner.
Seeking certainty
Traditionally, engineers have dealt with singularities through software fixes. They built inverse models, complex mathematical formulas that work backward from the target position of the robot’s end-effector to map all the joint positions required to get it there. Then, they just slapped on safety filters or corrections to prevent the robot from getting itself into trouble.
Some of the newer, data-driven AI approaches take less effort and expertise but require access to every robot that the control software will be used on during the training phase. “Also, there is this probabilistic or black box nature of AI wherein it can do something incoherent, which can be potentially catastrophic,” Gupta said. His team wanted certainty, not probabilities, so they took a different approach.
Instead of trying to correct for a robot’s mechanical constraints after the training, they embedded these constraints directly into the control policy from the beginning. They focused on three-revolute robots—basically robotic arms with three joints—which act as the foundational building blocks for many of the commercial robots we see today. Through an algebraic analysis of the robots’ parameters, such as the lengths of their links and the offsets of their joints, the team mapped out exactly where the singularities lie within their joint space. These singularities, combined with the hard limits of the joints, slice the robot’s possible movement space into feasible regions the researchers call aspects.
By looking at the topology of these aspects, the researchers classified three-revolute robots (those with three joints) into six categories. This way, once they knew which of these six categories a specific robot falls into, they instantly knew the exact structure of its physical limitations—a complete map of its danger zones.
Armed with this map, the Kinematic Intelligence framework enables robots to go around their singularities using a strategy the team calls a track cycle. Based on its category classification, the robot knows its physical limits, which prevents it from crashing and dynamically redirects the movement to safely slide or traverse along the edge of the singularity boundary. The robot carefully follows this boundary until it finds a safe configuration where it can re-enter the nominal path to finish the task.
When the team made sure the math behind their idea was correct, they put their framework to the test on various machines. And it worked.
Robotic teamwork
The experimental setup included a compact 6-DoF Duatic DynaArm with tight joint limits, a 7-DoF KUKA LWR IIWA 7 with moderate limits, and a 7-DoF Neura Robotics Maira M with much more relaxed boundaries. With these machines, the researchers built a mock multi-robot assembly line where three different robotic arms cooperated to complete a sequence of tasks. At the beginning, a human performed a single demonstration of three skills in sequence. “We demonstrated a task where you push something off a conveyor belt, pick it up and put it on a workbench, and then pick it up again and throw it into a basket,” Gupta said. All these actions were then distributed among the robots so that each robot performed one of them: the DynaArm did the pushing, the KUKA did the picking and placing, and the Neura did the picking and throwing.
Even though the pushing and throwing motions forced the robots into excursions near the boundaries of their physical workspaces, and the pick-and-place maneuver demanded complex internal mathematical checks, all three machines were able to learn a functional policy via a single human demonstration. “And then we said, you know what, let’s shuffle these robots around,” Gupta said.
Without any retraining, the team swapped the robots’ locations and tasks. It turned out their Kinematic Intelligence made it possible to complete the sequence when KUKA was responsible for pushing, the DynaArm for throwing, the Neura for picking and placing, and in all other possible configurations. “The key challenge for now is to take this technology to the industrial assembly floor,” Gupta said. He admitted, though, that there are several details the team still has to figure out.
Plug-and-play robotics
While the Kinematic Intelligence framework guarantees mechanically safe motion, it currently lacks the advanced sensing and context-sensitive decision-making required for unpredictable environments. While the researchers acknowledge that the system flawlessly handles a robot’s internal physical constraints like singularities and joint limits, it is not yet equipped to inherently understand the nuances of the objects it interacts with. For example, the system cannot currently distinguish between moving a full container, which requires slow, careful handling, and an empty one, which can be moved quickly. What’s more, it requires the integration of high-level cognitive safety checks to integrate human commands with common sense, such as knowing not to grab a knife when asked to prepare coffee.
Another hurdle to overcome before Kinematic Intelligence can transition from controlled laboratory experiments to factory floors is the integration of advanced environmental sensing, which would enable robots to safely navigate dynamic spaces where humans are constantly and unpredictably moving around. Additionally, while the software framework has already been validated on current industrial robots, its deployment in more sensitive fields like medicine is currently bottlenecked by hardware limitations.
“If we talk deploying this technology in medical scenarios, I believe in the next five years we will see mechanically safer robots that should make this possible,” Salunkhe said. “Our framework can be immediately translated to such new designs, so we’re waiting for these robots now.”
Scientist’s Chilling Warning Before Death Ignites Explosive Cover-Up Fears: ‘I DIDN’T KILL MYSELF’
A dead scientist. A haunting warning. And a trail of secrets that some believe reaches all the way into America’s most classified UFO programs.
This isn’t a movie plot — it’s the real-life mystery of 34-year-old Alabama researcher Amy Eskridge… and the story is getting darker by the day.
Eskridge, a rising figure in advanced propulsion and anti-gravity research, was officially ruled a suicide in 2022 after being found with a gunshot wound to the head.
But critics say that explanation doesn’t add up — not even close.
Before her death, Eskridge allegedly sent a spine-chilling message that now reads like a warning from beyond the grave.
“If you see any report that I killed myself, I most definitely did not.”
Let that sink in.
The message, reportedly sent to former intelligence officer Franc Milburn, didn’t stop there. She also insisted she hadn’t overdosed — and hadn’t harmed anyone else — as if she knew exactly what narrative might follow her death.
And then there’s the video.
In resurfaced footage that’s now circulating online, Eskridge reportedly speaks about terrifying encounters and claims she feared she was being targeted — not just professionally, but physically and psychologically. According to Milburn, she even showed him disturbing images of her own hands, appearing discolored, which she believed were evidence of some kind of attack.
🇺🇸 Anti-gravity researcher Amy Eskridge was found shot dead… ruled a suicide.
One month earlier, she texted a friend: “If you see any report that I killed myself, I most definitely did not.”
Friends say none of it sounds like the behavior of someone planning to take their own life.
So what was she really afraid of?
That’s where the story takes a sharp turn into even murkier territory.
Eskridge wasn’t just any scientist. She was working on fringe-level propulsion concepts — the kind often whispered about in connection with UFO technology and next-generation aerospace breakthroughs.
And she’s not alone.
At least 10 scientists and researchers tied to sensitive nuclear, aerospace, or UFO-related projects have reportedly died or vanished under mysterious circumstances in recent years. No official link has been confirmed — but the pattern has conspiracy watchers on high alert.
Even Donald Trump has raised eyebrows, calling the case “pretty serious stuff” as pressure mounts for answers.
Now the feds are involved.
The FBI has launched a probe into Eskridge’s death, while lawmakers on Capitol Hill are demanding transparency from agencies including the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, NASA, and the FBI itself.
And just as the mystery deepens, the government is cracking open the vault.
Earlier this year, Trump ordered the release of long-classified files on UFOs, extraterrestrial life, and unexplained aerial phenomena — a move that has only intensified speculation about what’s been hidden for decades.
Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett, who has been briefed behind closed doors, dropped a bombshell of his own.
“If the public heard what I’ve heard, they’d be up at night,” he warned.
Up at night.
Still not enough? Brace yourself.
Former Congressman Matt Gaetz has claimed he was told — in a non-classified setting — about alleged “hybrid breeding programs” involving humans and extraterrestrials operating on U.S. soil.
Yes, really.
He admits he couldn’t verify it. But in a story already filled with dead scientists, secret research, and government silence, even unproven claims are pouring gasoline on an already raging fire.
So what actually happened to Amy Eskridge?
A tragic suicide — or something far more sinister?
Right now, the answers remain buried in a maze of classified files, conflicting accounts, and chilling final words that refuse to be ignored.
And if more truths come out… this could be just the beginning.
Gunfire Erupts at White House Correspondents’ Dinner, President Trump Evacuated
Gunfire disrupted the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday night at the Washington Hilton, triggering panic inside one of Washington’s most high-profile annual gatherings and prompting the Secret Service to evacuate President Donald Trump, senior officials, and hundreds of attendees. Authorities said the suspect, identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, was taken into custody and that the president was not harmed.
The shooting unfolded as journalists, administration officials, and public figures were gathered in the ballroom. Witnesses described confusion as initial sounds were mistaken for dropped equipment before security personnel rushed in and ordered people to take cover. Some attendees ducked under tables as agents moved quickly to secure the room and escort senior officials out.
Law enforcement officials said at least one officer was struck but protected by a bullet-resistant vest and is expected to recover. Investigators believe Allen acted alone, though a motive had not been publicly established by early Sunday morning Israel time. AP and Reuters described him as a California tutor and computer programmer with an academic background in engineering and computer science.
The incident has raised immediate questions about security at the Washington Hilton, which, unlike the White House complex, relies on layered but less centralized protection for large public events. Authorities are expected to review how the attacker was able to approach or access the area.
Among those caught in the chaos was Erika Kirk, the widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. She reportedly took cover under a table during the shooting and later appeared visibly shaken as she was escorted out. Witness accounts said she was crying and said, “I just want to go home.”
The dinner was effectively halted as security teams swept the area. It remains unclear whether the event will be rescheduled as officials continue investigating Allen’s background, his route into the hotel, and whether any security failures contributed to the breach.
Mass rescue operation by Libyan authorities: over 400 migrants saved from 10 boats
Libya’s eastern-based coast guard of the Libyan National Army rescued at least 404 migrants on board 10 boats after they had “faced harsh conditions at sea,” the Tobruk Red Crescent said.
Tobruk is a coastal city in eastern Libya near the border with Egypt.
The Red Crescent in the city said the migrants are from different nationalities.
Pictures posted by the Red Crescent on Facebook showed their volunteers providing first aid, food and blankets to the migrants.
Libya is a transit route for migrants, many of them from sub-Saharan Africa, risking their lives to flee to Europe across desert and sea in the hope of escaping conflict and poverty.
On Monday, 10 migrants were confirmed to have died after their boat capsized off Tobruk, and 31 were still missing, according to three Libyan sources and the International Organization for Migration. Six bodies were recovered on Saturday after washing ashore.
On April 1, the National Bureau of Statistics of China released the latest GDP rankings for the country’s various provinces and municipalities. The data showed consistent growth across major metropolises, but also revealed a significant geographic shift in the Chinese economy.
The data ranked Jiangsu and Zhejiang first and third, respectively, among Chinese provinces by GDP per capita, while Guangdong ranked fourth. Yet 20 years ago, Guangdong held an undisputed first place, with Zhejiang and Jiangsu a distant third and fourth.
The shift is even more apparent at the city level. In 2005, nine cities from Guangdong appeared in the top 25 by GDP per capita, compared with five from Jiangsu and two from Zhejiang.
Twenty years later, only three Guangdong cities remain in that group, while Jiangsu and Zhejiang have grown to seven and four, respectively.
To be sure, all three provinces remain among the most developed regions in China. Since the late 1970s, China’s economic reforms have relied heavily on manufacturing and export-led growth, fueling a regional inequality that persists today and favors its eastern seaboard.
Guangdong pioneered this model, with Shenzhen (ranked No. 1 in 2005, No. 6 in 2025) and Zhuhai (No. 3 in 2005, No. 16 in 2025) leveraging their proximity to Hong Kong and Macao, respectively, to become successful special economic zones.
Guangzhou (No. 8 in 2005, No. 22 in 2025) also used its status as the province’s capital and largest city to establish itself as a major manufacturing and trading hub.
That manufacturing success spurred the formation of innovative local firms, including Huawei in telecommunications, DJI in drones, Tencent in digital services and BYD in batteries and electric vehicles.
While these firms continue to make their mark in China and abroad, the country’s cutting-edge startup scene has shifted further north. China’s latest five-year plan, released March 12, makes the new centers of gravity clear.
In artificial intelligence and robotics, Zhejiang’s capital Hangzhou leads with local champions DeepSeek and Unitree, backed by hometown tech giant Alibaba.
In biomanufacturing, national champion WuXi Biologics has facilities in Hangzhou, Jiangsu’s Suzhou (No. 25 in 2005, No. 7 in 2025), and neighboring Wuxi (No. 11 in 2005, No. 5 in 2025).
The divergence in high-tech entrepreneurship may partly be explained by the presence of top educational institutions.
Last March, The Economist profiled Zhejiang University, concluding that its presence is instrumental in turning Hangzhou into a startup hub — much as Stanford has done for Silicon Valley.
Indeed, various university rankings consistently place both Zhejiang University and Nanjing University — located in Jiangsu’s capital Nanjing (No. 31 in 2005, No. 11 in 2025) — alongside several universities in nearby Shanghai and Anhui province, in the top 10, while Guangdong has no entries.
The educational advantage Jiangsu and Zhejiang hold over Guangdong has centuries-old roots. Since the Southern Song Dynasty, Jiangnan — the region encompassing the southern bank of the Yangtze River, spanning parts of Jiangsu and Zhejiang — has been China’s premier cultural and economic hub, parlaying strength in agricultural productivity and trade into artistic and intellectual achievement.
In contrast, Lingnan, which encompasses modern-day Guangdong, was historically open to seaborne trade but remained culturally distant from the rest of the country due to its geographic isolation.
Both regions have strong commercial traditions, but Jiangnan’s intellectual heritage may give it an edge in producing the talent needed to push the technological frontier.
As Jiangsu and Zhejiang forge ahead economically, they may once again become China’s cultural center as well. In the 1980s and ’90s, Cantonese pop culture spread across China, buoyed by Hong Kong’s prosperity, giving the province’s native tongue unprecedented cachet.
But that prestige has declined markedly as Hong Kong’s economic standing has diminished. Meanwhile, Shanghai’s rise as an economic powerhouse has elevated the profile of Jiangnan’s local vernacular as a countercultural force — the formerly marginalized language is reasserting itself in the public sphere against the nationwide push for Mandarin.
Of course, it is not a foregone conclusion that the broader economic and cultural shift from Guangdong to Jiangsu and Zhejiang will continue. Much will depend on the success of individual entrepreneurs and their firms, wherever they may be located.
And global demand for Chinese goods and services can shift quickly, shaped by ongoing restrictions on Chinese imports worldwide. But in any case, examining regional differences serves as a reminder that China is far from monolithic in its future economic trajectory.
Over 2,490 killed in Lebanon in Israeli attacks since March 2
Lebanon said Saturday that five people were killed and six others wounded over the past 24 hours, raising the death toll from Israeli attacks to 2,496 killed and 7,725 injured since March 2, Anadolu reports.
The figures were published in a report by the Lebanese Cabinet’s Disaster Risk Management Unit, as reported by the National News Agency (NAA).
The update comes as Israel continues to violate a temporary ceasefire in Lebanon that began on April 17.
The previous official toll stood at 2,491 killed and 7,719 injured, in addition to more than 1 million displaced, before the updated figures were released.
READ: UK, Finland condemn ‘unacceptable’ Israeli attacks on journalists in Lebanon
The unit did not provide further details on how the figures were calculated.
According to field sources and local media, authorities continue to recover bodies of victims killed before the ceasefire took effect, while the rise in injuries is attributed to data updates and newly reported cases from recent days.
On April 17, US President Donald Trump announced a 10-day ceasefire in Lebanon between Israel and Lebanon, later extending it on Thursday by an additional three weeks.
Since March 2, Israel has continued to violate the fragile ceasefire, resulting in casualties and widespread destruction, while Hezbollah has responded by targeting Israeli military positions in southern Lebanon and Israeli communities.
READ: Israeli army warns civilians against returning to southern Lebanon villages despite ceasefire
