Elon Musk says “terrorism” was behind a fire at a Rome Tesla dealership that reduced 17 vehicles to burned out shells. The cause of the fire is under investigation but occurred the same day dealerships in at least two other countries were vandalised.
The United States has imposed sanctions on six Chinese and Hong Kong officials to punish China for its ongoing crackdown on democracy advocates in the financial hub, which was returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
The US Department of State announced the sanctions on Monday. They target prominent figures, including Hong Kong Police Commissioner Raymond Siu Chak-yee and Secretary for Justice Paul Lam for playing a role in efforts to “intimidate, silence and harass 19 pro-democracy activists”.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X that Beijing had “broken its promises” after pledging to allow the territory a high degree of autonomy, “depriving Hong Kongers of freedoms” and engaging in “acts of transnational repression targeting activists on US soil”.
. @StateDept’s latest Hong Kong Policy Act Report demonstrates that Beijing has broken its promises to the people of Hong Kong. The United States is imposing sanctions on six individuals for undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy, depriving Hong Kongers of freedoms, and in being…
The sanctions, marking a rare foray into human rights by the administration of President Donald Trump, will block any interests held by the six individuals in the US and generally criminalise financial transactions with them under US law.
They also target Dong Jingwei, a former senior official at China’s main civilian intelligence agency who is now the director of Beijing’s Office for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong, along with senior security and police officials Sonny Au, Dick Wong, and Margaret Chiu.
Beijing promised a separate system for Hong Kong when Britain handed over the financial hub in 1997.
But it then went on to launch major crackdowns on dissent, imposing draconian national security rules after large and at times destructive protests in favour of democracy swept the city in 2019.
The State Department’s latest Hong Kong Policy Act Report, published on Monday, pointed to two laws – the Beijing-imposed 2020 National Security Law and the Hong Kong government’s Safeguarding National Security Ordinance – which it said had been used to “aggressively” prosecute pro‑democracy and media freedom advocates.
Targets included the two former chief editors of the now-defunct independent news outlet Stand News – Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam – who were last year jailed on charges of conspiring to publish seditious publications.
Chinese and Hong Kong authorities said the National Security Law – which punishes subversion, collusion with foreign forces and terrorism with up to life in prison – has brought stability to the Chinese-controlled territory since the 2019 protests.
The six sanctioned officials were targeted in line with a US law that champions Hong Kong democracy.
A French court found Marine Le Pen guilty of embezzlement, ordering a five-year ban on running for office and two years of electronic tracking. Her far-right National Rally party must now decide on a new candidate for the 2027 presidential elections.
A blast at a mine in Spain’s northern Asturias region has killed at least five workers and injured four others, according to local emergency services.
The accident occurred Monday morning at the Cerredo mine in Degana, some 450km (280 miles) northwest of Madrid, killing five people from the neighbouring Leon region ranging from the ages of 32 to 54 years old.
Adriana Lastra, a representative of the central government in Asturias, told reporters at the scene that initial indications showed the blast may have been caused by methane forming an explosive mixture in the mine, a phenomenon known as firedamp.
“Police are already investigating what happened, they are already at the scene”, said Lastra.
The injured were taken to hospitals in nearby cities, two of them by helicopter, suffering burns and, in one case, a head injury.
As news of the blast spread, workers ‘ families flocked to the site, which was surrounded by police and emergency services vehicles.
“It’s scandalous. Companies used to guarantee safety, but they are doing it less and less”, Jose Antonio Alvarez, a relative of one the miners who died, told regional newspaper El Comercio.
Local newspaper La Voz de Asturias said the mine is owned by a recently created local company called Blue Solving, which was trying to repurpose the site for the extraction of “high-performance minerals” for industrial use.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez sent his “sincere condolences” to the families of the victims and wished a “speedy recovery” to the injured, in a message posted on X.
The head of the regional government of Asturias, Adrian Barbon, declared two days of mourning “as a sign of respect for the deceased”.
United States President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs on the auto sector have made one thing clear, experts say: The US is no longer a beacon of free market trade, and businesses need to switch to the reality of “America first”.
On Wednesday, Trump announced 25 percent tariffs from this Thursday on all cars, light trucks and auto parts imported into the US, a move experts called “devastating” for the industry.
Almost half of the 16 million cars sold in the US last year were imported with a total value exceeding $330bn, according to news reports quoting Goldman Sachs analysts.
It is not clear whether the tariffs will go into effect as laid out in Trump’s latest announcement or if there will be exceptions or any rollback.
“But one thing we know for sure”, said Ilhan Geckil, senior economist at the Anderson Economic Group (AEG), is that “Trump’s policies are protectionist and not free market and free trade the way that the US has done]things] for decades. Now that’s shifting. … That’s the new rule, and companies have to play accordingly and will have to increase business presence in the US”.
Some car manufacturers, including South Korea’s Hyundai and Kia, have announced plans to boost production in the US.
While that gives the impression that Trump is right to argue tariffs will force manufacturers to produce more in the US, the full picture is more complicated, Geckil said.
“The US really is the best in terms of the size of the market” and accounts for nearly 25 percent of global auto sales, Geckil said, explaining why automakers do not want to lose access to the US market.
But the reason a lot of manufacturing moved out of the US was to take advantage of lower prices and cheaper goods.
Bringing manufacturing back to the US will lead to higher prices for their products, hitting demand, he said.
“Prices are going to go up significantly, and that will have a spillover effect”, Geckil said, adding that he expects to see higher sticker prices within a month or so of the tariffs kicking in.
“A $50, 000 vehicle will become a $75, 000 to $80, 000 vehicle in a couple of years, and that price hike is going to stay there forever”, he said.
That, in turn, will eventually lead to job losses, contrary to Trump’s stated goal of protecting American workers, Geckil said.
As per an earlier estimate by AEG, tariff proposals floated by Trump in February would raise the price of a car assembled in the US, Canada and Mexico from $4, 000 to $10, 000 for most vehicles and $12, 000 or more for electric vehicles (EVs)
The estimate did not include the impact of retaliatory tariffs that other countries might impose.
In addition, Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminium, which kicked in on March 12, are expected to increase prices of conventional engine vehicles by $250 to $800 and those of EVs by $2, 500 or more, AEG previously said.
AEG said the measures unveiled on March 26 would be “much more costly” for European- and Asian-manufactured cars than its previous estimate and potentially more expensive or less expensive for North American-produced vehicles.
Ford CEO Jim Farley told employees in an email on Friday that “the impacts of the tariffs are likely to be significant across our industry – affecting automakers, suppliers, dealers and customers”, the Reuters news agency reported. He gave the warning even though about 80 percent of Ford vehicles sold in the US are assembled domestically.
One reason auto tariffs have such a wide-ranging impact is because the industries of different countries are so deeply intertwined.
In North America, the US and Canadian auto industries have been broadly integrated since the 1965 signing of a pact that facilitated the duty-free movement of vehicles and parts, said David Adams, president and CEO of Global Automakers of Canada.
That was followed by free trade agreements in 1989 and 1994 that bound the industries of the two countries and that of Mexico more closely together.
Over the years, the three countries have built up specialisations for certain auto parts, partly driven by costs, Adams said.
For instance, the Canadian dollar is typically lower than the US dollar and since Canada has a public healthcare system, employers usually do not have to bear health insurance costs for their workers, making it cheaper to do some work in Canada over the US.
For a vehicle made in Canada, half the parts would come from the US, and for one made in Mexico, 30 percent to 35 percent of its parts would be from the US on average.
“By tariffing Canadian vehicles you’re effectively tariffing American suppliers”, Adams told Al Jazeera.
Since Canada and Mexico – and all other nations that the latest tariffs apply to – are likely to retaliate, prices will almost certainly spiral further.
“We don’t want to cut off our nose to spite our face, but what we’re looking at hurts everybody. … Because of the high degree of integration, the impact will be to a same degree on both sides”, Adams said.
The tariffs on auto parts, which do not apply to components deemed to be “US content”, complicate things even further.
In car production, raw materials are typically turned into a component in one jurisdiction before being folded into a larger component or components elsewhere. It is common for parts to cross borders three to five times per vehicle.
In practice, this means the tariff burden may vary wildly for different companies and different vehicles.
“It is highly confusing and complex”, Adams said.
“Trump’s desire seems to be not to have a Canadian auto sector. But that would cost $50bn to $60bn to relocate everything to the US. This is not a short-term proposition. We’re ultimately looking for a long-term solution that creates stability not just in the auto sector but in the North American economy, so we can focus on doing business”.
That solution needs to include Mexico because a globally competitive auto industry needs a low-cost region for carrying out the most labour-intensive parts of the manufacturing process, Adams said.
“Part of the current challenge is that]Trump] is looking at the auto industry from a myopic view of the auto sector as an American industry rather than a North American industry”, he said.
Adding to the uncertainty hanging over the sector is Trump’s pledge to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on all countries and specific duties on Canada and Mexico over their alleged failure to stem the flow of fentanyl and undocumented immigrants into the US.
Some of Trump’s claimed rationale for the tariffs is based on “false” information, given that little fentanyl flows from Canada to the US, said Brett House, an economics professor at Columbia University’s Business School.
In her work at hospitals or in-home healthcare, Parker explained she has often talked to patients about the importance of vaccines. Some listen. Many don’t.
While Parker has seen plenty of misinformation and disinformation over the years, she said the COVID-19 pandemic made matters worse.
“There was a petri dish there just waiting for that mess to proliferate”, she said in reference to vaccine scepticism.
“And then the right wind came along, and it blew those spores all over the place: the spores of ignorance and misinformation”.
Rekha Lakshmanan observed something similar. She is the chief strategic officer for The Immunization Partnership, a Houston-based nonprofit that aims to eradicate preventable diseases.
She argued that Texas has long been a site of vaccine misinformation. But the pandemic “made the nation catch up with Texas”.
False rumours flooded the internet, warning that vaccines could alter DNA or render people infertile. Some conspiracy theories even posited that the vaccine could be used for implanting chips into patients ‘ bodies for surveillance.
Not all vaccine sceptics believe the misinformation. The way Lakshmanan sees it, vaccine hesitancy falls on a continuum. At the far end, there are those who cannot be convinced to get a vaccine, regardless of the data you present. Unfortunately, she said, that’s the loudest group.
Yet, others can be convinced.
“You have to take a step back and see that there’s a bigger part of that continuum that’s parents, and they just have questions”, Lakshmanan said.
She explained that parents are often sifting through reams of misinformation, trying to understand what is real and what isn’t.
For example, the anti-vaccine organisation Children’s Health Defense recently published a website that bore a striking resemblance to materials published by the CDC.
But its site was riddled with disinformation about vaccines. Kennedy, who served as a leader at Children’s Health Defense before joining the government, ultimately ordered the organisation to take the site down.
“The challenge with misinformation is that it could look legit”, Lakshmanan said, “which is why we have to approach these conversations with empathy”.
That includes arguments about “parents ‘ rights”, which she says is entirely misleading. Anti-vaccine leaders like Kennedy have accused the government of forcing vaccination on parents.