Month: April 2025
Putin’s Political Personality – Google Search https://t.co/4pEJPAHtNW https://t.co/rJvmVScmh8
— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) April 28, 2025
County councils across England are being elected on 1 May, along with four regional mayors. Find out which areas are voting and search for your own
In many other years, the first set of local elections with a new government and prime minister in place would be scrutinised keenly as a judgment on the PM’s performance so far. This year the runes will be harder to read because so many of the councils that are up are Conservative councils in Conservative areas. Few of the big cities are up, although some university cities and towns will be voting.
In contrast, the results will probably be read as judgment on the performance of the new Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch. The last time these council seats were contested, in most cases, was in 2021, when the Conservatives under Boris Johnson were riding high in the polls on “the vaccine boost”, and before the partygate scandal started to dent their popularity.
‘China and the US are not conducting consultations or negotiations on tariff issues,’ foreign ministry spokesperson says
President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Monday directing the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security to identify within a month the cities and states that are not complying with federal immigration laws, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Last week, a federal judge blocked Trump’s administration from withholding federal funding from more than a dozen so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown.
Canadians prepared to go the polls in an election overshadowed by fury at Trump’s threats to the country’s sovereignty and fears over his escalating trade war.
Donald Trump appears to have warmed to Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the two presidents met at the Vatican, with the US leader emerging from talks with a plea for Vladimir Putin: “stop shooting”. Trump on Sunday said Zelenskyy “wants to do something good” for Ukraine and is “working hard”, adding he was also “surprised and disappointed” that Russia continued to strike Ukraine after discussions between his peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Putin.
While speaking to reporters, Trump hinted at a two-week deadline to strike or at least make progress on a peace deal. Trump has previously threatened to walk away from negotiations if a swift agreement is not reached.
More than 300 law enforcement officers from at least 10 federal agencies raided an illegal after-hours nightclub in Colorado Springs early on Sunday, arresting more than 100 people authorities said were undocumented immigrants and seizing guns, cocaine, meth and pink cocaine. More than a dozen active-duty military members were detained as well, authorities said.
The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said “there is a path” to an agreement with China over tariffs after he had interactions with his Chinese counterparts last week in Washington, but he continued to defend Trump’s trade plan as “strategic uncertainty” amid accusations the White House was sending mixed signals over its policy.
Trump’s private golf resort in South Florida will next week host one of the world’s leading purveyors of chlorine dioxide, a potentially life-threatening form of industrial bleach that is claimed without evidence to be a cure for cancer, Covid and autism.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and New Jersey senator Cory Booker were holding a sit-in protest and discussion on Sunday on the steps of the US Capitol in opposition to the Republicans’ proposed budget plan. Billed as an “Urgent Conversation with the American People”, the livestreamed discussion comes before Congress’s return to session on Monday, where Democrats hope to stall Republicans’ economic legislative agenda.
Two suspects have been arrested in connection with the theft last week of the US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s purse as she ate at a Washington DC restaurant, officials said on Sunday. Noem’s purse was nabbed on Easter Sunday and reportedly contained about $3,000 in cash and her keys, driver’s license, passport and homeland security badge. The homeland security department said Noem had cash in her purse to pay for gifts, dinner and other activities for her family on Easter.
Trump said he would restore Columbus Day in full and shirk Joe Biden’s practice of celebrating an Indigenous People’s Day in parallel to the public holiday. “I’m bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes,” he wrote on social media, accusing Democrats of trying to “destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much.”
