Batman and Robin have taken a break from fighting crime in Gotham City to swoop on low-level scammers swindling tourists in the center of London.Footage shared by the Metropolitan Police on Friday showed undercover officers disguised in the superhero costumes tackling a man who was running a street entertainment game similar to “three-card monte” near Parliament. The police said the game was an illegal gambling operation.In the video, filmed by the police during an operation in February, the officer dressed as Batman could be seen running along Westminster Bridge wearing the character’s traditional mask, flanked by Robin in a comic…
Author: usaeverydaylife
For the two men at the forefront of a trade war that has begun to rupture ties between the world’s biggest economies, the question has become who will blink first.On one side is President Trump, who unleashed a disruptive plan to transform the modern global trading system with tariffs — only to back down hours after it took effect, pausing the import duties for every country but China.On the other side is Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, who has a well-earned reputation for refusing to yield. He stuck to China’s tight Covid restrictions long past the point where they were…
View of the headquarters of the Bank of Japan in Tokyo.Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty ImagesTOKYO, April 13 (Reuters) – Japan must strengthen the yen, such as by helping boost the country’s industrial competitiveness, as the currency’s weakness has pushed up households’ living costs, the ruling party’s policy chief said on Sunday.Ahead of trade talks with the U.S., Itsunori Onodera, chair of the Liberal Democratic Party’s Policy Research Council, also said Japan should not intentionally sell its U.S. Treasury holdings, the largest outside the United States, in retaliation against tariffs levied by President Donald Trump.”As a U.S. ally, the…
When military leaders from roughly 50 nations met in Brussels on Friday to discuss aid shipments to Kyiv, one was noticeably absent: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.Instead of attending the gathering, the 27th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, in person, Mr. Hegseth dialed in and participated virtually.It was the first time since the group’s creation three years ago that the Pentagon’s top civilian was not physically present for an in-person meeting of the group, as the Trump administration treats Ukraine less like a partner and moves closer to Russia.President Trump promised on the campaign trail to settle the war…
As China faces off with the United States over a punishing trade war, it is under pressure to shore up its friendships around the world, starting with its neighbors in Southeast Asia. But its relations there are complicated.China’s leader, Xi Jinping, will be testing these ties this week as he visits Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia in the hope of blunting the effect of huge tariffs imposed by President Trump on Chinese exports to the United States.Mr. Xi is likely to cast China as a reliable global partner in contrast to the unpredictable United States of President Trump, whose on-again, off-again…
Britain has watched President Trump’s tariffs with a mix of shock, fascination and queasy recognition. The country, after all, embarked on a similar experiment in economic isolationism when it voted to leave the European Union in 2016. Nearly nine years after the Brexit referendum, it is still reckoning with the costs.The lessons of that experience are suddenly relevant again as Mr. Trump uses a similar playbook to erect walls around the United States. Critics once described Brexit as the greatest act of economic self-harm by a Western country in the post-World War II era. It may now be getting a…
President Trump has big ambitions for the global trading system and is using tariffs to try to rip it down and rebuild it. But the European Union is taking action after action to make sure the continent is at the center of whatever world comes next.As one of the globe’s biggest and most open economies, the E.U. has a lot on the line as the rules of trade undergo a once-in-a-generation upheaval. Its companies benefit from sending their cars, pharmaceuticals and machinery overseas. Its consumers benefit from American search engines and foreign fuels.Those high stakes aren’t lost on Europe.Ursula von…
To hear President Vladimir V. Putin tell it, Russia’s economy has thrived despite Western sanctions, becoming more self-sufficient and reorienting toward new markets.But there is one company that Russian officials make no secret about missing: Boeing.The aviation giant’s planes play a critical role in Russia’s economy, connecting its far-flung cities. Until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Boeing sold and maintained planes in Russia and operated a major design center there. It also bought much of its titanium, a key material for modern jets, from Russia.As President Trump pursues a striking rapprochement with Moscow, the company has emerged as…
As Buchanan saw it, the great struggle of the 21st century wasn’t a geopolitical battle between East and West, or freedom and oppression. It was a cultural battle between traditionalists and the secular, multicultural, global elite. In this context, America’s crusade to spread democracy was bound to lead it astray. “If communism was the god that failed the Lost Generation,” he wrote in the early ’90s, “democracy, as ideal form of government, panacea for mankind’s ills, hope of the world, may prove the Golden Calf of this generation.”Buchanan had a following, but he was very much on the margins of…
The city of Machala is dotted with posters of Ecuador’s two presidential candidates, their smiling faces looking out over shuttered businesses and streets that empty out after 6 p.m. because of rival gangs that torment the city.Machala, a port city south of Guayaquil, is a microcosm of the challenges facing the South American country — including chronic unemployment and a security crisis driven by a surge in drug violence — that many voters say are their biggest concerns ahead of the runoff election on Sunday.The election pits the incumbent, President Daniel Noboa, the heir to a billionaire banana magnate who…
