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A man from Malibu has been convicted of scamming investors and Hollywood stars out of more than $20 million through false claims about his celebrity app’s business performance.

Bernhard Eugen Fritsch, the founder and CEO of StarClub Inc., a Santa Monica-based tech company, was held accountable for an elaborate fraud that fueled his lavish lifestyle, Fox News Digital has learned.

Fritsch, 63, was found guilty by a jury on Thursday of one count of wire fraud after it was revealed that he lied to investors about the financial success and future potential of his tech company, according to the Department of Justice. 

He falsely promised that the company’s app, StarSite, would help celebrities and social media influencers monetize their brand endorsements. 

Instead of using the funds for the app’s development, Fritsch spent millions on luxury cars, yachts, and a multimillion-dollar Malibu mansion, the press release stated. 

From 2014 to 2017, Fritsch raised over $20 million, pitching StarClub as a game-changer for the entertainment industry. He claimed the app would allow celebrities to easily post branded content on social media, generate revenue from advertising and share profits with influencers.

As Fritsch pitched the StarClub offering to investors, he made several false and fraudulent claims, including that his company was on the verge of entering commercial deals with, or obtaining investments and buyout offers from major media companies such as Disney – that StarClub earned $15 million in revenue in 2015.

Instead of using the funds to expand the company or improve its technology, Fritsch purchased luxury cars like a McLaren and a Rolls-Royce, renovated his multimillion-dollar Malibu home and even made costly upgrades to his yacht.

Law enforcement seized the yacht, McLaren and the Rolls-Royce, and they are subject to forfeiture proceedings.

One victim invested more than $20 million in StarClub over the course of two years, based on Fritsch’s false statements, according to the Department of Justice. 

This victim also introduced Fritsch to other victims who invested millions of additional funds in the company. Prosecutors estimate that Fritsch caused at least approximately $25 million in victim losses because of his scheme.

Sources close to Fox News Digital have learned that Hollywood celebrities, including Enrique Iglesias and Tyrese Gibson, may be involved in this high-profile scheme. 

In 2014, singer and actor Tyrese hosted a private party for StarClub Inc. Actresses including Caitlin O’Connor, Elise Neal, rapper Trinidad James and model Khadija Neumann attended the star-studded event.

Meanwhile, Fritsch has been sued in Los Angeles County Superior Court three times over allegations of fraudulent financial schemes. 

Music executive Haqq Islam and his company sued StarClub and Fritsch in 2013, claiming breach of contract and fraud, according to The Los Angeles Times. 

Islam alleged that Fritsch owed him $750,000 for luring Hollywood stars such as Jessica Simpson to meet with Fritsch and consider participating in StarClub’s business ventures, according to reporting by Courthouse News Service.

Reps for Tyrese, Iglesias and Simpson did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

The jury found Fritsch not guilty of a second wire fraud count. He remains free on bond.

A sentencing hearing is scheduled for Fritsch in the upcoming months. Fritsch faces a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

Warren Buffett went on the record Friday to deny social media posts after President Donald Trump shared on Truth Social a fan video that claimed the president is tanking the stock market on purpose with the endorsement of the legendary investor.

Trump on Friday shared an outlandish social media video that defends his recent policy decisions by arguing he is deliberately taking down the market as a strategic play to force lower interest and mortgage rates.

“Trump is crashing the stock market by 20% this month, but he’s doing it on purpose,” alleged the video, which Trump posted on his Truth Social account.

The video’s narrator then falsely states, “And this is why Warren Buffett just said, ‘Trump is making the best economic moves he’s seen in over 50 years.’”

The president shared a link to an X post from the account @AmericaPapaBear, a self-described “Trumper to the end.” The X post itself appears to be a repost of a weeks-old TikTok video from user @wnnsa11. The video has been shared more than 2,000 times on Truth Social and nearly 10,000 times on X.

Buffett, 94, didn’t single out any specific posts, but his conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway outright rejected all comments claimed to be made by him.

“There are reports currently circulating on social media (including Twitter, Facebook and Tik Tok) regarding comments allegedly made by Warren E. Buffett. All such reports are false,” the company said in a statement Friday.

CNBC’s Becky Quick spoke to Buffett Friday about this statement and he said he wanted to knock down misinformation in an age where false rumors can be blasted around instantaneously. Buffett told Quick that he won’t make any commentary related to the markets, the economy or tariffs between now and Berkshire’s annual meeting on May 3.

While Buffett hasn’t spoken about this week’s imposition of sweeping tariffs from the Trump administration, his view on such things has pretty much always been negative. Just in March, the Berkshire CEO and chairman called tariffs “an act of war, to some degree.”

“Over time, they are a tax on goods. I mean, the tooth fairy doesn’t pay ’em!” Buffett said in the news interview with a laugh. “And then what? You always have to ask that question in economics. You always say, ‘And then what?’”

During Trump’s first term, Buffett opined at length in 2018 and 2019 about the trade conflicts that erupted, warning that the Republican’s aggressive moves could cause negative consequences globally.

“If we actually have a trade war, it will be bad for the whole world … everything intersects in the world,” Buffett said in a CNBC interview in 2019. “A world that adjusts to something very close to free trade … more people will live better than in a world with significant tariffs and shifting tariffs over time.”

Buffett has been in a defensive mode over the past year as he rapidly dumped stocks and raised a record amount of cash exceeding $300 billion. His conglomerate has a big U.S. focus and has large businesses in insurance, railroads, manufacturing, energy and retail.

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Prince Andrew’s links to an alleged Chinese spy were detailed in documents released Friday by British courts, which included a statement from a former close aide to the prince about the duke’s line of communication to China’s president Xi Jinping.

The 10-page statement from Dominique Hampshire in May of 2024 was part of a tranche of documents released by the courts following a request from numerous British media organizations regarding Prince Andrew’s relationship to the alleged spy, Yang Tengbo. The documents are part of Yang’s appeal of his exclusion from the UK in December, which he lost.

Yang reportedly forged a close relationship with the prince and was the co-founder of Pitch@Palace China, which expanded the duke’s Pitch@Palace initiative into China.

In a tribunal hearing in December that upheld the earlier decision to bar Yang from the UK, it was revealed that Yang was authorized to act on Prince Andrew’s behalf during business meetings with potential Chinese investors in the UK.

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman told parliament in December she took the decision to ban Yang from the UK “because his presence posed a threat to our national security” and was “based on the advice of MI5,” the UK’s domestic security agency.

Yang has denied any wrongdoing.

Hampshire also said Yang helped Prince Andrew draft letters to Xi discussing the Eurasia Fund, something Yang had described in his written evidence to the tribunal as a way to “upgrade” the duke’s Pitch@Palace initiative “into an investment-type business, or a fund.” He was also tasked with talking to “relevant people” in China, per British press agency PA.

“The royal household, including the late queen, were fully aware of this communication – it was certainly accepted and it may be fair to say it was even encouraged – it was an open channel of communication that was useful to have,” Hampshire said in the statement.

Hampshire said he met twice with Prince Andrew and King Charles over the six months prior to giving his witness statement to discuss “what the duke can do moving forwards in a way that is acceptable to His Majesty.” Those talks included discussing the Eurasia Fund, according to PA.

Buckingham Palace said Friday that King Charles has met with Prince Andrew together with Hampshire over the past year to discuss proposals for independent funding, but Yang was never mentioned.

The relationship between the prince and Yang came about shortly after the duke’s disastrous 2019 BBC interview on his relationship with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which Hampshire said led to his belief that the prince’s reputation was “irrecoverable.”

“This was a common feeling within the royal household, despite what the duke thought may happen. It was very clear internally within the royal household that we would have to look at options for the duke’s future away from royal duties,” Hampshire said in his witness statement, according to British news agency PA.

According to PA, Hampshire also said he never saw a “red flag” with Yang (who also went by the name Chris), and emphasized Yang “categorically does not have a close relationship with the duke.”

“Chris, of course, doesn’t have the duke’s telephone number or his email address and does not have the ability to talk directly to the duke on his own – ever. This is normal practice and Chris’s relationship with the duke is the same as numerous others,” he said, according to PA.

He also said Andrew “fully complied” with advice to end all contact with Yang.

Hampshire said in a separate statement on Friday that he left the royal household in 2022 and no longer provides advice to Andrew, according to PA.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

The White House is showing its true colors on Ukraine.

While imposing biting trade tariffs on 185 countries this week, the Trump administration quietly lifted travel sanctions on one of Vladimir Putin’s closest advisers so he could come to Washington for talks.

Kirill Dmitriev is the Russian president’s money man as head of the country’s sovereign wealth fund. He was making the first visit by a Russian official to the US capital since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

This was the latest sign that President Donald Trump dreams of a new US business relationship with Russia — even as he launches a trade war against the wealthier and more diverse economies of US allies.

But the visit was not the only tell about Trump’s position this week.

The president also laid into Zelensky, accusing him of sabotaging the latest draft of a long-delayed agreement that would give the US access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals. This is a “deal” that no Ukrainian president could ever agree to. Its new iteration would give the US veto power over a new board that would decide how the assets are exploited. It also states that Ukraine would not benefit from any revenues until US recoups all its assistance to the war effort — a figure that Trump — vastly inflating the truth – says is north of $350 billion.

These draconian conditions show an attempt to plunder Ukraine’s resources and to force the war’s violated victim to pay a form of reparations to a third party — the United States.

All of this is unfolding as Trump’s attempt to end the war — which he once insisted he could do in 24 hours — is foundering. Two supposed breakthroughs touted by the White House, a halt to attacks on energy installations and a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, are stalled. And Russia’s new demands on regaining access to international banking and trade would need buy-in from America’s skeptical allies in Europe.

But US concessions keep coming. The temporary lifting of Dmitriev’s pariah status is just the latest.

“With the Trump administration, we are now in the realm of thinking about what is possible,” Dmitriev said.

US media got excited last weekend when Trump offered rare criticism of Putin, telling NBC he was “pissed off” that he’d questioned Zelensky’s legitimacy. Less notice was taken when Trump smoothed over hard feelings while telling reporters on Air Force One that he believed Putin wanted peace. “I don’t think he is going to back on his word,” he said, adding: “I’ve known him for a long time.”

But it’s becoming obvious that Trump doesn’t know Putin as well as he thinks he does. Frantic and futile administration diplomacy on Ukraine has made clear that the Russian leader is doing what Moscow always does, talking and fighting at the same time and dragging out the peace process, such as it is, to further Russia’s position on the battlefield.

“For a war to end, at least one of the parties must change their war aims,” said Hein Goemans, a professor of political science at the University of Rochester and a specialist in end-stage conflicts. “Russia hasn’t really changed its war aims,” Goemans said, following an initial reassessment when its blitzkrieg failed to take Kyiv and topple Zelensky.

Then as now, Putin wants to lock in control of captured eastern regions, to crush Ukraine’s aspirations of assimilating with the west, and to oust Zelensky and install a pro-Moscow leader. Putin’s warnings that the “root causes” of the war must be addressed is also code for a NATO pullback in Eastern Europe.

Perceptions that Putin doesn’t want to end the war anytime soon were bolstered this week when he called up another 160,000 men. And the US military’s top commander in Europe Gen. Christopher Cavoli called Russia a “chronic threat” and “growing threat, one that is willing to use military force to achieve its geopolitical goals.”

The most charitable interpretation of the White House position is that it hasn’t yet twigged about these vital dynamics in the peace talks. A darker one is that it has, doesn’t really care, and wants to embrace Putin anyway.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

A British woman was found guilty Friday of breaching a buffer zone outside a UK abortion clinic, in a case that attracted concern from the Trump administration over “freedom of expression” in the country.

Livia Tossici-Bolt, 64, from Bournemouth, a town on the southern English coast, was convicted of two charges of breaching the Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO), legislation prohibiting protests near abortion services, on two days in March 2023.

Tossici-Bolt, an anti-abortion campaigner and retired medical scientist, held a sign outside a Bournemouth abortion clinic reading, “Here to talk, if you want.”

District judge Orla Austin told Poole Magistrates’ Court that Tossici-Bolt “lacks insight that her presence could have a detrimental effect on the women attending the clinic, their associates, staff and members of the public,” British news agency PA Media reported.

The judge added that “although it’s accepted this defendant held pro-life views, it’s important to note this case is not about the rights and wrongs about abortion but about whether the defendant was in breach of the PSPO (Public Spaces Protection Order).”

Tossici-Bolt’s case attracted attention from the US State Department at a time when Washington has voiced concerns over free speech in the UK and other European countries.

“U.S.-UK relations share a mutual respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. However, as Vice President Vance has said, we are concerned about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom,” America’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights & Labour (DRL), a bureau of the US State Department, wrote on X on Sunday, ahead of the ruling.

The DRL added that one of its advisers had met with Tossici-Bolt, and that it was “monitoring” her case.

US Vice-President JD Vance has previously criticized UK policies including safe access zones around abortion clinics, saying they restrict freedom of speech. During a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, Vance cited the example of a man arrested for praying near an abortion clinic.

“In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” he told the conference.

The UK government has pushed back at Vance’s suggestion, denying that the issue could jeopardize efforts to strike a trade deal with an administration that has imposed sweeping tariffs.

“The (prime minister) has been clear, including during his visit to the White House … that the UK has had free speech in this country for a long time and we are proud of that,” UK PM Keir Starmer’s spokesperson, Jonathan Reynolds, said on Tuesday.

Britian introduced safe access buffer zones around abortion clinics in the UK on October 31. The law applies within a 150-meter radius of the abortion service provider.

“The right to access abortion services is a fundamental right for women in this country, and no one should feel unsafe when they seek to access this,” the UK’s safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, said at the time.

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A hawk that terrorized a sleepy English village for weeks was finally captured on Thursday, ending a string of around 50 attacks that landed a 75-year-old man in the hospital, disrupted postal deliveries, and stole two woollen beanies belonging to a 91-year-old man.

Greenhalgh had stopped at Flamstead, a small village about 30 miles north of London, on his way home, to boost efforts to catch the bird. Just as he arrived, he saw the hawk fly down from a chimneypot, “chase a guy across the road and tried to … knock him on the head,” he said.

“I thought ‘Oh, you horrible little bird.’ Then he had a go at an Amazon driver. And I think ‘Oh my goodness me,’” Greenhalgh added.

Then, he watched as Harris left his house to go for a run “and (the hawk) starts chasing him down the road … for about 3-400 yards and you can see him ducking, diving out the way a bit.”

Chaotic scenes like this had become commonplace in Flamstead in recent weeks, with some locals resorting to wearing helmets to protect themselves from the attacks.

Harris even began wearing a helmet when he went out running after he had been attacked twice, he told Britain’s PA Media news agency. He hadn’t let his two children out in the backyard for weeks since it became one of the hawk’s favored spots, he added.

Meanwhile, Glyn Parry – a 91-year-old resident – made a chinstrap out of a shoelace to keep his hat on his head after the hawk stole two of his woollen beanies. “It was such an unusual thing, so I thought it won’t happen again, but it did,” he told the BBC.

The hawk’s reign of mayhem came to an end on Thursday, when it went into a local garden, where Greenhalgh spent about 40 minutes trying to coax it down into a trap before it flew back to Harris’ yard.

“I heard Steve shouting ‘Quick, quick, I think I’ve got it,’” Greenhalgh said, recalling that he rushed into the yard to help Harris stop the hawk escaping the makeshift trap.

The hawk is now “in a specialised aviary, awaiting re-training,” local police said in a statement.

Jim Hewitt, the 75-year-old man who was treated in hospital for hawk-inflicted injuries, said he was “relieved” it had had been caught, according to Britain’s PA Media news agency.

“I had to be careful and cautious – the sensible thing was to drive to the shop, but I won’t get beaten by a poxy bird,” he said.

“I’m relieved that it’s been caught and not had to be put to death or shot. And I’m even more relieved that a child isn’t going to get hurt.”

Tall, bald men were the most frequent targets of the attacks, said Greenhalgh, theorizing that the hawk “was getting a little bit hormonal and he’s looking for a … mate” now that it is breeding season.

He explained that birds of prey can imprint on their owners if they’re hand-reared and said that this hawk had probably been raised by a tall, bald man. “Because they’re totally humanized, he thinks he’s a human, he doesn’t think he’s a hawk,” he added.

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The Chinese military officials in brown uniforms fan out around rows of young trees, shoveling soil into freshly dug pits. The camera pans to the most senior leaders one by one, in order of rank. But one prominent face is conspicuously absent.

The news segment, aired Wednesday night on China’s state broadcaster, features a tree-planting event in the outskirts of the capital Beijing – an annual springtime tradition for the country’s military leadership spanning more than four decades.

But Gen. He Weidong, the second-highest-ranking uniformed officer in the People’s Liberation Army, was nowhere to be seen. Nor was he named as a participant in a report by the official state news agency.

Gen. He’s absence from the high-profile event has fueled ongoing speculation that the second-ranking vice chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC) may have become the latest – and most senior – casualty in leader Xi Jinping’s purge of the military’s top ranks.

As Xi’s No.2 general, He shares a long-standing relationship with the Chinese leader, dating back decades to the early days of their careers in the coastal province of Fujian.

Rumors about an investigation against He first surfaced among the Chinese dissident community following China’s annual political meetings last month. The 67-year-old hasn’t appeared in public for three weeks since the closing ceremony of the country’s rubber-stamp legislature on March 11.

The Chinese government has offered little in the way of clearing the air.

When asked about He’s situation at a news briefing on March 27, Defense Ministry spokesperson Wu Qian said: “There is no information on this matter, and we are not aware of the situation.”

It is now unclear what has happened to He, who also sits on the Communist Party’s 24-member Politburo.

Three weeks out of the public eye is not unheard of for a top general without a public-facing role and there is always a chance he resurfaces. But his no-show at a well-choreographed annual propaganda event stands out in a political system deeply attuned to the importance of symbolism.

“Clearly the absence of one CMC vice chair is important symbolically,” said James Char, a longtime PLA expert and assistant professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

Similar to the Communist Party Congresses and annual “two sessions” political gatherings, “it’s important for all the major figures that the rest of the world know of to show up to be in the same picture, because it helps to demonstrate the power and – more importantly – the unity of the party,” Char said.

Reading the “tree leaves”

In the opaque world of Chinese politics, observers have long leaned on arcane signals of Communist Party traditions and protocol to interpret what is going on behind the scenes. The discipline, known as “tea-leaf reading,” has become more relevant than ever in Xi’s era as he centralizes power into his own hands and makes the decision-making process even more obscure.

And now, some experts are scouring this week’s events for clues on the fate of one of Xi’s top generals.

The annual ritual began as part of a nationwide tree-planting campaign launched by late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in late 1981, following devastating floods he blamed on rampant deforestation. It was billed as a patriotic, selfless undertaking in “greening the motherland, building socialism and benefiting future generations.”

The following spring, Deng, then chairman of the CMC, planted the first tree of the campaign, setting a tradition that has since been carried on by successive Chinese leaders and military top brass.

Wednesday marked “the 43th consecutive year the CMC leadership has collectively participated in the voluntary tree-planting activity in the capital,” said Xinhua, the state news agency.

Since Xi came to power in late 2012, his two vice chairmen on the CMC had led military officers to plant trees without fail every spring – until He’s rare absence on Wednesday.

The first-ranking CMC vice chairman, Gen. Zhang Youxia, attended the event, so did two other generals on the commission, Liu Zhenli and Zhang Shengmin.

The only other uniformed CMC member who did not show up was Adm. Miao Hua, who was suspended under investigation in November for “serious violations of discipline” – a common euphemism for corruption and disloyalty.

“I think He’s absence is quite telling, but again, no one can be absolutely sure,” Char said. “There’s another school of thought, which is He Weidong was involved in the last two weeks with the preparations for the military exercises around Taiwan.”

Starting from Tuesday, combined forces of the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command held surprised exercises around Taiwan for two straight days, testing capabilities to blockade the self-ruling island, simulate strikes on its ports and other critical infrastructure, and launch long-range live-fire strikes.

The commander of the Eastern Theater Command from 2019 to 2022 was He. It was during his tenure that the Eastern Theater Command staged massive military drills and fired missiles around Taiwan in August 2022, in retaliation against then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei.

A prolonged absence from public view does not always signal trouble for Chinese officials. Some have resurfaced and resumed their duties. It’s also not uncommon for officials to be taken in for questioning by graft busters to assist investigations into colleagues.

Last November, Defense Minister Dong Jun was reported to be under investigation for corruption by the Financial Times, citing US officials. China’s Defense Ministry dismissed the report as a “sheer fabrication.” Dong reemerged in public a week later. The minister was also seen attending Wednesday’s tree-planting event on the state broadcaster.

Military purges

After coming to power, Xi consolidated control over the world’s largest military by taking down powerful generals from rival factions and replacing them with allies and loyal proteges.

But a decade on, having structurally overhauled the People’s Liberation Army and stacked its top ranks with his own men, Xi is still knee-deep in his seemingly endless struggle against graft and disloyalty – and is increasingly turning against his own handpicked loyalists.

Since the summer of 2023, more than a dozen high-ranking figures in China’s defense establishment have been ousted in a sweeping purge that focused on the country’s nuclear force and equipment procurement, including two defense ministers promoted to the CMC by Xi.

The ongoing turmoil roiling the senior ranks of the PLA has raised questions over Xi’s ability to end systemic corruption in the military and enhance its combat readiness at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions.

“Recurring purges of the senior-most PLA leaders indicate that Xi Jinping distrusts his officer corps,” said Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the RSIS.

“The constant removal of so many senior officers, as well as the extent of corruption running to the very top undoubtedly has an effect on the PLA’s morale, and likely also its military capabilities,” Thompson added.

But some analysts noted that by this point, the PLA may have well become accustomed to the shake-ups in its high command.

“Leadership purges in the PLA seem to have become normalized to a point that it’s just part and parcel of being the PLA,” said Collin Koh, another research fellow at RSIS.

The Chinese military may have started to grow accustomed to the purges – to a point where it is able to isolate them from its daily operational activities and go on with business as usual, Koh noted.

“It does not necessarily mean that because of the purges, the PLA has started to relent on readiness. These purges might potentially have the effect of reminding the PLA to do their work better – if anything, if you want to escape the purges, then one way to do that is to obey what the party is telling you, which is to be prepared for conflict,” he said.

A close confidant

Like Miao, He is widely believed to have forged close personal ties with Xi during their overlapping years in Fujian, where the future Chinese leader was rising through the ranks as a local official in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Both He and Miao spent most of their early career serving in the former 31st Group Army in Fujian, which became a major power base for Xi. A string of military officers hailing from the 31st Group Army have been fast-tracked for promotion since Xi took power in late 2012.

Gen. He was no exception. In 2013, he was promoted to commander of Jiangsu Military District; less than a year later, he became commander of the Shanghai Garrison. In 2016, he was promoted yet again to command ground forces of the Western Theater Command, which oversees China’s border with India.

He was promoted to full general in 2017, when he became commander of the Eastern Theater Command, responsible for leading any military invasion or blockade of Taiwan.

But the ultimate sign of Xi’s trust in He came at the 20th Party Congress in 2022, when He landed the CMC vice chairmanship – an unusually rapid rise for an official who hadn’t served on the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party.

During that leadership reshuffle, Xi stacked the CMC with six loyalists. If confirmed to be under investigation, He would be the powerful military body’s first sitting vice chairman to be purged by Xi and the third member on the current CMC to fall from grace.

The last time a sitting CMC vice chair was purged was more than three decades ago, when then-Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang was ousted for sympathizing with student protesters in the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement.

“What happens finally to He Weidong gives us a window into how the political system in China is being restructured further under Xi Jinping,” Char said, noting the PLA’s reform of its rigid political structure.

“I don’t think anyone in the system now is irreplaceable,” he said. “This is what a political strong man does. He’s ruthless… he’s continuously purging his own ranks to keep his generals on their toes.”

This post appeared first on cnn.com

A Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian president’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih on Friday killed at least 16 people, including six children, according to Ukrainian authorities. The strike also injured over 50 people.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky offered his condolences to the families of those killed and injured in his nightly address soon afterward.

“Many injured, houses damaged. The missile actually hit the area next to residential buildings – a children’s playground, ordinary streets,” Zelensky said.

Russia also targeted a power plant in Kherson with a drone on Friday, Zelensky said.

“Such strikes cannot be a coincidence – Russians know that this is an energy facility,” Zelensky said. “These types of facilities must be protected from any attacks, as per the promises Russia made to the American side.”

In a statement on Telegram, the Russian ministry of defense claimed the strike had targeted a meeting between Ukrainian and Western officers, describing it as “a high-precision strike… with a high-explosive missile on the site of a meeting with unit commanders and Western instructors in one of the restaurants in the city of Kryvyi Rih.”

“As a result of the strike, the enemy lost up to 85 servicemen and officers of foreign countries, as well as up to 20 vehicles,” the post claimed.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

A key moderate Democrat is warning his party they are heading the ‘wrong’ way on trade.

Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, was one of the few Democrats to express some optimism at President Donald Trump’s support for tariffs, specifically his move to add a 10% baseline duty to all U.S. imports. 

Golden noted in a brief interview with Fox News Digital on Thursday that he himself proposed legislation for a 10% universal tariff earlier this year and in the previous Congress.

When asked how his stance on tariffs has been received by fellow House Democrats, Golden said, ‘Well, I think that they are moving in the wrong direction when it comes to trade.’

‘I think it’s been a knee-jerk reaction to the president,’ the Maine Democrat explained of the more recent furor.

He said the Democratic Party he joined in his ‘formative years’ was ‘the party that was warning about things like the World Trade Organization or [the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)].’

‘It has kind of, I think, had a sudden movement in the opposite direction, and that’s unfortunate,’ Golden said. ‘You’ve got to look beyond, you know, who the president is…to ask themselves what would be good for rural communities or working-class people, or cities like Detroit, whatever it may be – those who have been hit hardest by the existing trade regime.’

He added, however, ‘I think that this debate has been brewing since the ’90s, so it’s not only about Trump.’

Golden has been known to break from his own party on issues like trade, border security, and notably, former President Joe Biden’s student loan relief efforts.

He won his seat in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District by less than 1% in 2024, while Trump carried the district by 10%.

He said on Wednesday that he was ‘pleased’ Trump’s tariff plan lined up with his own ideas for a universal tax on foreign goods.

‘I’m eager to work with the president to fix the broken ‘free trade’ system that made multinational corporations rich but ruined manufacturing communities across the country. But tariffs must be paired with policies that prioritize American families’ prosperity.’

He pointed out, however, that Trump ‘introduced a number of new tariff policies’ alongside the 10% universal tax, and that he would need time to review the policies in detail before weighing in on them further.

Trump’s plan involves a 10% blanket tariff on all imports into the U.S., as well as reciprocal tariffs as high as nearly 50% on both adversaries and allies.

Golden added, ‘We need to make sure that the new approach benefits working people — that means supporting unions, the trades and apprenticeship programs, cutting regulations that hold back production, unleashing American energy and using tariff revenue to support domestic manufacturers that create good-paying jobs for Americans.’

‘Tariffs are a first step in rewriting a rigged trade system, but they cannot be the last one.’

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Senior Iranian officials are threatening to ramp up the country’s nuclear program as the Trump administration weighs a possible strike against the regime if Tehran does not come to the table for negotiations.

‘The president should be making the regime sweat, pure and simple,’ Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran expert and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital.

‘This can be done with strict enforcement of maximum pressure sanctions, and a targeted campaign against regime assets in the region – Yemen being a good example now. Washington will also need to add a critical third element to its otherwise economic and military pressure policy. Maximum support for the Iranian people.’

Lisa Daftari, a Middle East expert and editor-in-chief at The Foreign Desk, told Fox News Digital that while diplomacy often demands negotiation, extending any offer to Iran’s regime, even symbolically, risks legitimizing a government that has spent decades terrorizing its own people and funding proxies like Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah.

‘This regime thrives on defiance, not dialogue. That has not changed. For over four decades, the mullahs have understood only one language: might,’ Daftari said.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Thursday that it would be better if the U.S. had direct talks with Iran.

‘I think it goes faster, and you can understand the other side a lot better than if you go through intermediaries,’ Trump said. ‘They wanted to use intermediaries. I don’t think that’s necessarily true anymore. I think they’re concerned. I think they feel vulnerable, and I don’t want them to feel that way.’

Trump also threatened to bomb Iran and impose secondary sanctions on Iranian oil if it did not come to the bargaining table over its nuclear program. Although the president said he preferred to make a deal, Trump did not rule out a military option.
 

‘It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before,’ President Trump told NBC News last weekend.

The U.S. expanded its deterrence efforts in the region, deploying additional squadrons of fighter jets, bombers, and predator drones to reinforce defensive air-support capabilities. The U.S. is also sending the USS Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group to the region to join USS Harry S. Truman, which has been in the Middle East to fight against the Houthi’s in Yemen.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, responded with threats of his own and said that Iran would respond ‘decisively and immediately’ to any threat issued by the U.S. Iran is still floating the idea of indirect talks, something the administration is reportedly considering.

Taleblu said, ‘Tehran’s counteroffer of indirect talks is the regime’s way of rejecting Trump while leaving the door open for talks that can be used as a shield against a potential preemptive attack.’

The president sent a letter to Khamenei expressing interest in making a deal on the nuclear issue. While increasing its military presence in the region, reports indicate that the Trump administration is considering indirect talks with Iran to curb the expansion of its nuclear program and avoid a direct confrontation.

Experts and observers of the region warn that Iran has used negotiating as a delaying tactic in the past and warn the Trump administration against entering into talks that might further embolden Iran.

‘The Trump administration should impose full pressure on the regime in Iran given how weak the regime has become in the last several years. Indirect talks are the regime’s strategy of buying time so it can live to fight another day,’ Alireza Nader, an independent analyst in Washington, D.C., and expert on Iran, told Fox News Digital.

Nader’s recommendation to Trump is to support the people of Iran and argued that the regime is much weaker than it appears.

‘President Trump really wants a deal. Iran has a chance here to go back and negotiate, keep its civilian nuclear program but make concessions about its size and the duration of a deal,’ Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told Fox News Digital.

‘Trump is in a dominant position. Republicans in Congress fear him. Nothing can stop him—at least for now. But power is fickle. The longer he’s in the White House, the more vulnerable he may become. Iran shouldn’t wait for that,’ Vatanka added.

In an interview with Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies podcast, ‘The Iran Breakdown,’ former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said that eventually, Israel will attack Iran’s nuclear facility, with or without the United States, because there is no other choice, according to Lapid.

Ali Larijani, an advisor to the supreme leader, said in an interview that although Iran does not seek a nuclear weapon, Tehran will have no choice but to build a nuclear weapon if the U.S. or Israel strike Iran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency reported in February that Iran has accelerated its nuclear program and has enriched uranium close to weapons-grade levels. 

Danielle Pletka, senior fellow in Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), told Fox News Digital that having additional military assets in the Middle East is sound policy given the threats that the U.S. and its allies face in the region.

For Pletka, the question is, what is the Trump administration looking for?

‘A deal in which the Iranians do not fully get rid of their nuclear weapons program? If so, the president sets the United States up for the risk that Barack Obama inflicted on our allies and ourselves – merely delaying the Iranian nuclear program to a later date,’ Pletka told Fox News Digital.

Pletka said it is strange that President Trump seems to envision a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)-like deal, and that has prompted a lot of criticism on Capitol Hill. 

Trump originally withdrew from JCPOA, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, during his first term in 2018 and reapplied harsh economic sanctions. The Biden administration had initially looked at re-engaging with Iran on the nuclear issue upon taking office, but on-again-off-again talks went nowhere, complicated by Iran’s domestic politics and its role in supporting its terror groups in the region.

The other risk that the president runs, according to AEI’s Pletka, is being perceived as a paper tiger.

‘He threatened Hamas with bombing that he never delivered. Now he’s threatening Iran with military action. But does he really mean it? Or is he just blowing hot air?’ she said.

Pletka said, ‘There is an enormous amount of uncertainty around the president’s intentions, and that uncertainty is an opportunity for the Iranians to exploit.’

The Middle East Institute’s Vatanka said he believed that Trump could claim a potential win he can sell at home and say he got a better deal than President Obama did with the JCPOA, if Iran were to agree to permanently keep its enrichment level to a low level, unlike the expiration dates included in the JCPOA.

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