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Oct 9, 2026 - World

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s odyssey to Greece was described as a rousing success until the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle tried to shake down a Donald Trump donor, according to The Hill.The Journal reported late Wednesday that Guilfoyle asked Eric Deters, a Kentucky businessman and Trump supporter, to wire $100,000 to pay her American Express bill days before her July 2025 Senate confirmation hearing. “It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express that’s all that will show,” she allegedly texted him, CBS News reported. Deters says he never paid. He told CBS the request was a “quid pro quo,” while Guilfoyle called his claim “completely false.” Her lawyer, Jesse Binnall, has disputed the messages’ authenticity.The Hill spoke to one person deeply involved in U.S.-Greek relations, who requested anonymity and called the chaos around Guilfoyle a “clown show” that “tainted” a successful Rubio visit. The person said her conduct is unlikely to damage long-standing ties between Washington and Athens, but that it reinforced the idea that U.S. foreign policy is for sale and that closeness to Trump’s family and allies equals access. “It says, ‘we’re the merchants,’” the person said.Rubio was forced to address the issue, which took him off message, with the Hill reporting it appeared to have blindsided members of the Trump administration.“Our job is not to respond every time someone decides to give the media something without any advance warning, without having any chance to look at it and see what’s in there,” he told reporters while complaining that the story was “not the gospel."The allegations follow a Journal report last month that Guilfoyle promoted the business interests of a Greek construction and energy company and let its lobbyist into private diplomatic meetings. She has denied wrongdoing.Democrats have seized on the new report. “Reports coming out regarding Amb. Guilfoyle’s conduct are deeply concerning and suggest potentially corrupt influences on U.S. foreign policy,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) said in a statement to The Hill. “I have already demanded answers from Secretary Rubio regarding her conduct and will continue to press for transparency and accountability. As I have said before, if these allegations are accurate, Amb. Guilfoyle is unfit to represent the United States abroad and should be removed from her position.”

Oct 9, 2026 - World

A federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump’s first administration illegally sent asylum seekers to wait in Mexico, where they faced “persecution, torture, and possibly death.”U.S. District Judge Jesus G. Bernal of the Central District of California issued the 40-page ruling Wednesday in a lawsuit over the Migrant Protection Protocols, the policy better known as “Remain in Mexico.” A redacted version of the ruling was unsealed Friday, Politico reporter Kyle Cheney reported on X.Two legal aid groups, the Immigrant Defenders Law Center and Jewish Family Service of San Diego, sued in 2020 along with several asylum seekers, according to the ruling.The Trump administration launched the policy in January 2019, requiring many asylum seekers who arrived from Mexico to wait there while their cases moved through U.S. immigration courts, the ruling said. The Department of Homeland Security placed 66,985 people in that first version.The government said it created the program to address what it called a migration crisis at the southern border and to stop what officials viewed as abuse of the asylum system. But human rights groups documented more than 1,000 instances of violence against people in the program, including murder, torture, rape and kidnapping.“DHS concluded that MPP 1.0 enrollees awaiting their court hearings in Mexico ‘were subject to extreme violence and insecurity at the hands of transnational criminal organizations,’” Bernal wrote.Bernal ruled that the program broke a federal law requiring agencies to reasonably justify their decisions, because officials did not fully consider conditions in Mexico before launching it.“Yet, there is no evidence that Defendants considered the conditions in Mexico prior to implementing MPP 1.0,” the judge said.Bernal also ruled that the policy violated the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of a full and fair hearing for people facing deportation.“Defendants’ removal of MPP 1.0 enrollees to Mexico where they … ‘face[d] persecution, torture, and possibly death’ deprived them of this right,” Bernal wrote. “Where noncitizens face dangerous conditions, it would be ‘untenable’ to expect them to litigate their immigration case under such conditions."The policy also violated asylum seekers’ right under federal law to be represented by a lawyer, the judge ruled. Only about 7% of people in the program had attorneys, compared with 80% of asylum seekers in immigration court overall, according to immigration court records cited in the ruling.The judge further found that the program violated the First Amendment rights of the legal aid groups and asylum seekers at immigration hearing sites, where attorneys got at most one hour with clients before court and could not speak with people who had not hired them.“The Government fails to point to any evidence in the record, or even make any argument that the restrictions ‘fulfill[] a legitimate need,’” Bernal wrote.The Trump administration reinstated the policy in January 2025, according to the ruling. Bernal paused the revived version in April, but a federal appeals court later limited the pause to the Immigrant Defenders Law Center’s current and future clients.Bernal ordered the government to propose within 21 days how it will notify asylum seekers covered by the lawsuit, after formally voiding the original program’s policies and guidance.

Oct 9, 2026 - World

Committee recognises work of South African who chaired UN commission that concluded Israel was guilty of genocide in GazaThe Nobel peace prize has been awarded to Navi Pillay, the South African former UN human rights chief who chaired the UN commission that concluded Israel was guilty of genocide in Gaza.The Norwegian Nobel committee said Pillay, who is serving as a judge at the international court of justice (ICJ), has “shown that legal measures can help prevent acts of war and violence”. Continue reading...

Oct 9, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump made no personal mention of his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday morning, but he did share comments made by one of his impeachment lawyers.While this year’s honoree, Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, 85, a South African jurist and former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, poked fun at the American president in her initial comments, telling admirers, “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump,” the president held his tongue.Instead, on Truth Social, he posted a statement from attorney Doug Schoen, who served on Trump's defense team during his second Senate impeachment trial in February 2021.According to Schoen, the Nobel committee made a huge mistake.“Today the Nobel Committee shamed itself beyond repair and demeaned the once great Nobel Peace Prize by giving it to the UN’s Navi Pillay,” he complained. “Pillay is an unabashed hater of America and Israel. In her position she celebrated terrorists and rewarded Hamas. She conducted a phony ‘investigation’ claiming to find that Israel committed genocide and urging prosecution. She has no credibility in any normal sphere and has never done a thing to foster peace. Just the opposite.”“But what could be expected from a committee that previously gave the once coveted peace prize to Yasser Arafat?” he raged.“President Trump gave us the Abraham Accords, which the world said would be impossible and is now expanding them! He brought home the hostages when all seemed hopeless! He is making best efforts to end the Russia/Ukraine war, to stop Iran, the number one sponsor of international terrorism, and he is trying to rebuild Gaza despite the terrorists’ best efforts to control it. The list goes on and on. These are the kinds of things the Nobel Peace Prize was intended to recognize and reward!!!” he wrote.

Oct 9, 2026 - World

‘The climate issue is the security issue,’ says Turkish minister at Pacific pre-Cop summit in FijiWealthy countries should spend far more on dealing with the climate crisis than the 5% of GDP promised by Nato members for defence because “the climate issue is the security issue”, the host of the next UN summit has said.But, in comments that are likely to prove contentious, the Cop31 president-designate, Murat Kurum, hedged on whether countries should try to repeat a previous agreement to “transition away from fossil fuels” – the primary cause of the climate crisis – when they meet in Turkey next month. Continue reading...