Category World News

Trump lashes out at ‘PAST supporters’ over ‘Epstein Hoax’

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United States President Donald Trump continues to feud with supporters disappointed by his handling of information about deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, calling them “weaklings” and labelling the controversy a “hoax” concocted by his political enemies.

In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump accused Democrats of attempting to capitalise on growing anger over his administration’s efforts to distance itself from conspiracies that many on the US right, including Trump and his allies, have fuelled for years.

“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘b*******,’ hook, line, and sinker,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

“Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!” he added.

A protester holds a photo of US President Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier accused of sexually abusing young girls, and reading ‘child rapist’ during a ‘Make America Great Again’ rally at Minges Coliseum in Greenville, North Carolina, on July 17, 2019 [Nicholas Kamm/AFP]

The post underscores growing schisms within the US right over the Trump administration’s insistence that there was nothing untoward about Epstein’s death by suicide in prison, and that the disgraced financier never had a “client list” of powerful figures tied to child sex abuse.

“I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,” Trump said.

Speculation about Epstein’s connections to political and economic elites, and the possibility of an “Epstein List” of clients subject to blackmail, is not exclusive to the US right, and has become a symbol of wider popular belief that powerful people who commit abuses are unlikely to face consequences.

After Epstein died by suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex abuse charges, the circumstances around his death immediately drew scepticism and became a source of widespread conspiracies.

But those conspiracies have become a matter of particular obsession for the US right, who have used them to advance a dark vision of corrupt and venal elites who need to be rooted out and brought to justice, and were often fused with wider calls for extrajudicial actions against their perceived political enemies, especially prominent Democrats.

Trump administration officials such as FBI Director Kash Patel, Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, former proponents of such theories, teased action and new revelations when they first entered the administration.

Asked about the Epstein files during a TV interview in February, Bondi said they were “sitting on my desk right now to review”.

The administration made an about-face when the Department of Justice released a memo last week concluding that Epstein’s death was a suicide and he never had a “client list”. In the time since, Trump has expressed increasing annoyance towards those on the US right who have continued to question those details, including some who have said that Trump’s own relationship with Epstein may explain the reversal.

“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” Trump snapped at a reporter last week. “This guy’s been talked about for years.”

But Trump’s insistence that his supporters stop talking about Epstein may in fact be pushing many to double down.

At trial, Meta investors, Zuckerberg face off on alleged data violations

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An $8bn trial, pitting Meta Platforms shareholders against Mark Zuckerberg and other current and former company leaders, over claims they illegally harvested the data of Facebook users in violation of a 2012 agreement with the United States Federal Trade Commission, is under way.

The trial kicked off on Wednesday with a privacy expert for the plaintiffs, Neil Richards of Washington University Law School, who testified about Facebook’s data policies.

“Facebook’s privacy disclosures were misleading,” he told the court.

Jeffrey Zients, White House chief of staff under former President Joe Biden and a Meta director for two years starting in May 2018, is expected to take the stand later on Wednesday in the non-jury trial before Kathaleen McCormick, chief judge of the Delaware Chancery Court.

The case will feature testimony from Zuckerberg and other billionaire defendants, including former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, venture capitalist and board member Marc Andreessen, as well as former board members Peter Thiel, Palantir Technologies cofounder, and Reed Hastings, cofounder of Netflix.

A lawyer for the defendants, who have denied the allegations, declined to comment.

McCormick, the judge who rescinded Elon Musk’s $56bn Tesla pay package last year, is expected to rule on liability and damages months after the trial concludes.

Cambridge Analytica scandal

The case began in 2018, following revelations that data from millions of Facebook users was accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct political consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump’s successful US presidential campaign in 2016.

The FTC fined Facebook $5bn in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, saying the company had violated a 2012 agreement with the FTC to protect user data.

Shareholders want the defendants to reimburse Meta for the FTC fine and other legal costs, which the plaintiffs estimate total more than $8bn.

In court filings, the defendants described the allegations as “extreme” and said the evidence at trial will show Facebook hired an outside consulting firm to ensure compliance with the FTC agreement and that Facebook was a victim of Cambridge Analytica’s deceit.

Meta, which is not a defendant, declined to comment. On its website, the company has said it has invested billions of dollars into protecting user privacy since 2019.

The lawsuit is considered the first of its kind to go to trial that alleges that board members consciously failed to oversee their company. Known as a Caremark claim, such lawsuits are often described as the hardest to prove in Delaware corporate law. However, in recent years, Delaware courts have allowed a growing number of these claims to proceed.

Boeing’s current and former board members settled a case with similar claims in 2021 for $237.5m, the largest ever in an alleged breach of oversight lawsuit. The Boeing directors did not admit to wrongdoing.

The Meta trial comes four months after Delaware lawmakers overhauled the state’s corporate law to make it harder for shareholders to challenge deals struck with controlling shareholders like Zuckerberg. The bill, which did not address Caremark claims, was drafted after the state’s governor met with representatives of Meta.

Most publicly traded companies are incorporated in the state, which generates more than a quarter of the state’s budget revenue. Meta, which was reportedly considering leaving Delaware earlier this year, is still incorporated in the state.

Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital fund co-founded by Andreessen, said earlier this month that it was reincorporating in Nevada from Delaware and encouraged other companies to do the same. The company cited the uncertainty of the state’s courts and referenced the Musk pay ruling.

Andreessen is expected to testify on Thursday.

In addition to privacy claims at the heart of the Meta case, plaintiffs allege that Zuckerberg anticipated that the Cambridge Analytica scandal would send the company’s stock lower and sold his Facebook shares as a result, pocketing at least $1bn.

Defendants said evidence will show that Zuckerberg did not trade on inside information and that he used a stock-trading plan that removes his control over sales and is designed to guard against insider trading.

Second Israeli Ultra-Orthodox party quits government

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A key partner in Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition says it is quitting, leaving the Israeli prime minister with a razor thin majority in parliament.

The Ultra-Orthodox Shas party said on Wednesday that it was leaving the cabinet in protest against lawmakers’ failure to guarantee future exemption from military conscription for religious students.

“Shas representatives … find with a heavy heart that they cannot stay in the government and be a part of it,” said the group in a statement.

Shas, which has long served as a kingmaker in Israeli politics, said it wouldn’t work to undermine the government once outside it and could vote with it on some laws. It also wouldn’t support its collapse.

The departure of Shas comes one day after another ultra-Orthodox party, United Torah Judaism (UTJ),  resigned from the government over the same issue, which has sparked an explosive debate in the country after more than 21 months of war with Hamas in Gaza.

However, unlike the UTJ, a Shas spokesman said the party was not leaving the parliamentary coalition, leaving Netanyahu with a slim majority.

While ultra-Orthodox seminary students have long been exempt from mandatory military service, many Israelis are angered by what they see as an unfair burden carried by the mainstream who serve.

The joint move by Shas and UTJ comes just before Parliament starts a three-month summer recess on July 27, giving the Prime Minister several months of little to no legislative activity to bring the parties back into the fold.

‘Cruel and criminal persecution’

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders say full-time devotion to holy scriptures study is sacrosanct and fear their young men will steer away from religious life if they are drafted into the military.

Last year the Supreme Court ordered an end to the exemption. Parliament has been trying to work out a new conscription bill, which has so far failed to meet the demands of both Shas and UTJ.

Religious Services Minister Michael Malkieli, a member of Shas, said on Wednesday that rabbis were angered after Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein reneged on promises regarding the bill, according to a report in the Times of Israel.

Malkieli, reading from a statement by the Council of Torah Sages, also hit out at action taken by the IDF and attorney general to pursue draft dodgers, describing the move as “nothing less than cruel and criminal persecution against yeshiva students”.

The rupture is not expected to usher in immediate elections or undermine efforts to secure a possible Gaza ceasefire.

Across 100 kilometres, they walk where Srebrenica’s dead once ran

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​​On the third and final day, Dizdarevic and most of those around him could not contain their emotions as they reached Potocari, the site of the memorial to Srebrenica victims.

In the grassy valley dotted with row upon row of white marble tombstones, are the remnants of the gray slab concrete buildings where the UN Dutch battalion had been stationed to protect Bosniaks during the war.

But in July 1995, the battalion was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces, leading to the bloodshed that ensued.

Reaching the site where thousands were brutally killed brought “overwhelming sadness” to Dizdarevic.

“It was very emotional,” he said.

But Dizdarevic was also awash with relief – not only from the physical toll of the march being over, but also from the emotional weight of having walked in the footsteps of victims who never made it to safety.

“It was very important for every one of us to finish this march,” he said.

“This remembrance should lead to a prevention of potential future genocide.”

As he and his companions set up one final camp in Potocari, before the memorial event there the next day on the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, Dizdarevic pondered what justice for its victims looks like.

“The search for justice … is a very difficult process … Even more difficult is that the Serbian society … [is] very in favour of this genocide,” he said.

“I am afraid that Serbian society – they did not undergo this catharsis [of] saying, ‘Yes, we did this and we are guilty, sorry.’ [On the] contrary, they are very proud of it … or they deny it.”

In the years since, the International Court of Justice and courts in the Balkans have sentenced almost 50 Bosnian Serb wartime officials collectively to more than 700 years in prison for the genocide.

But many of the accused remain unpunished, and genocide denial is rampant, especially among political leaders in Serbia and the Serb-majority entity of Republika Srpska.

Milorad Dodik, the entity’s current leader, whose image appears on billboards flashing the three-finger salute, a symbol of Serb nationalism, has dismissed the Srebrenica genocide as a “fabricated myth”.

The group arrived in Potocari a day before the 30th anniversary event [Urooba Jamal/Al Jazeera]

Still, Dizdarevic has held on to hope, a feeling renewed during the march as he watched countless young people take part, many of them born after the Bosnian war.

“What is, for me, very important, [is] that the young men and women who participate in this march understand … they should play an active role in the prevention of future genocide by creating a positive environment in their societies,” he said.

On July 11, the day after the march ended, Dizdarevic and his group joined thousands in Potocari to mark the sombre anniversary, where the remains of seven newly identified victims were laid to rest.

There, they stood in solemn silence as the coffins were lowered into freshly dug graves, soon to be marked with new marble headstones, joining the more than 6,000 others already laid to rest.

World reacts to Israeli attacks on Syria’s Damascus

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Israel has launched several air strikes in the heart of the Syrian capital, Damascus, as clashes continued in the southwestern city of Suwayda after a truce between government forces and Druze armed groups collapsed.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israeli forces struck near the entrance to the Syrian Ministry of Defence on Wednesday, hours after he had demanded Syrian government forces withdraw from Suwayda.

Another strike hit near the presidential palace, on the outskirts of the city.

At least one person was killed and 18 others were wounded in the attacks, Syrian state media reported, citing the Ministry of Health.

The attacks on Syria’s capital come amid continuing unrest in the city of Suwayda, where local Sunni Bedouin tribes have been engaged in fierce clashes in recent days with fighters from Syria’s Druze minority, whom Israel views as a potential ally in Syria and claims to be intervening to protect.

Damascus deployed its forces to the city on Tuesday and declared a ceasefire, but the fighting quickly resumed.

Here is how the world is reacting to Israel’s attacks on Damascus:

United States

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US was “very concerned” about the escalation in violence.

“We’re going to be working on that issue … I just got off the phone with the relevant parties. We’re very concerned about it, and hopefully, we’ll have some updates later today. But we’re very concerned about it,” Rubio said

Turkiye

Turkiye’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the attacks and said they were an attempt to sabotage Syria’s efforts to achieve peace, stability and security.

“The Syrian people have a historic opportunity to live in peace and integrate with the world,” the ministry said.

“All stakeholders who support this opportunity should contribute to the Syrian government’s efforts to restore peace.”

Omer Celik, spokesperson for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s governing AK Party, also condemned the attacks.

“Israel’s attacks pose a security threat to the entire region and the world,” Celik wrote on X.

GCC

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – condemned the attacks in the “strongest terms”.

In a statement, GCC Secretary-General Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi said the Israeli attacks were a “flagrant violation” of Syria’s sovereignty, “a breach of international laws and norms, and a serious threat to regional security and stability”.

Albudaiwi reiterated the GCC’s support for Syria’s territorial integrity, adding that the continuation of Israeli attacks constituted an “irresponsible escalation” and disregarded international efforts to achieve stability in Syria and the region.

Norway

The Norwegian foreign minister said that Israel’s recent strikes could undermine efforts towards a peaceful transition of power in Syria.

“Deeply concerned about recent Israeli airstrikes and rising domestic tensions. The escalation risks undermining efforts towards a peaceful, Syrian-owned transition,” Espen Barth Eide wrote on X.