US news | The Guardian

A perverse information ecosystem is being mined by big tech for profit, fooling the unwary and sending algorithms crazyThere are two parallel image channels that dominate our daily visual consumption. In one, there are real pictures and footage of the world as it is: politics, sport, news and entertainment. In the other is AI slop, low-quality content with minimal human input. Some of it is banal and pointless - cartoonish images of celebrities, fantasy landscapes, anthropomorphised animals. And some is a sort of pornified display of women just simply ... being, like a virtual girlfriend you cannot truly interact with. The range and scale of the content is staggering, and infiltrates everything from social media timelines to messages circulated on WhatsApp. The result is not just a blurring of reality, but a distortion of it.A new genre of AI slop is rightwing political fantasy. There are entire YouTube videos of made-up scenarios in which Trump officials prevail against liberal forces. The White House account on X jumped on a trend of creating images in Studio Ghibli style and posted an image of a Dominican woman in tears as she is arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). AI political memefare has, in fact, gone global. Chinese AI videos mocking overweight US workers on assembly lines after the tariff announcement raised a question for, and response from, the White House spokesperson last week. The videos, she said, were made by those who do not see the potential of the American worker". And to prove how pervasive AI slop is, I had to triple-check that even that response was not itself quickly cobbled-together AI content fabricating another dunk on Trump's enemies. Continue reading...

The EU, the world's biggest single market, can reposition itself and become less reliant on exporting goods to the US and ChinaThis is why America first doesn't have to mean Europe last.Europeans have had plenty to mope about since Donald Trump entered the White House not quite three months ago. The US president has said that the EU was created to screw the United States" and slapped punitive tariffs on European goods. He has cast doubt on the US commitment to defend Nato allies. He has cosied up to Vladimir Putin, insulted Volodymyr Zelenskyy and tried to settle Russia's war in Ukraine on terms that would undermine European security. His vice-president has denigrated European democratic values, and his national security team has spewed venom in a Signal chat at pathetic" Europe.Finally complete the European capital markets union and banking union to unleash the cross-border investment power of some 3tn in European savingsStrike trade deals with countries and regions around the world, seeking a reliable partner committed to cutting tariffs rather than weaponising themJointly develop common defence capabilities to strengthen the European wing of Nato and be able to defend European interests if the US withdraws or steps asideProvide Ukraine with greater military assistance, including medium-range missiles to fill the US gap and strengthen its position before any negotiationBuild international coalitions to defend liberal democracy, and uphold a rules-based order with like-minded partners from Canada to Japan, India and AustraliaExpand economic partnerships with middle- and low-income countries in Asia, Africa and South America that consider the EU a more reliable partner than a protectionist US or a predatory Russia, and a valuable hedge against excessive dependence on ChinaOffer a special visa programme to attract US scientists and tech workers fleeing Trump's university crackdownPaul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre Continue reading...

Defence secretary reportedly sent the group flight schedules for strikes on Houthis; draft order calls for drastic restructure of state department - key US politics stories from 20 AprilDefence secretary Pete Hegseth is in the spotlight for a communications blunder in which he reportedly created his own Signal group chat that included his wife and brother, in which he shared confidential details of a US strike on Yemen this March.The chat on Signal, a commercially available app not authorized as a means to communicate sensitive or classified national defense information, allegedly included more than a dozen people. Continue reading...

US defense secretary texted strike information to his family in group chat he created, sources tell the New York TimesBefore the US launched military strikes on Yemen in March, Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, sent detailed information about the planned attacks to a private Signal group chat that he created himself, which included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people, the New York Times reported on Sunday.The Guardian has independently confirmed the existence of Hegseth's own private group chat. Continue reading...

Senator warns of US getting closer to a constitutional crisis' as Samuel Alito's dissent signals deference to TrumpMinnesota senator Amy Klobuchar warned on Sunday that the US is getting closer and closer to a constitutional crisis", but the courts, growing Republican disquiet at Trump administration policies, and public protest were holding it off.I believe as long as these courts hold, and the constituents hold, and the congress starts standing up, our democracy will hold," Klobuchar told CNN's State of the Union, adding but Donald Trump is trying to pull us down into the sewer of a crisis." Continue reading...

Decorated hats and costumes flood St Patrick's Cathedral in New York City during the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival Continue reading...

Tessa Janecke scored the winning goal in overtime as the United States beat Canada to win goldCanada 0-0 USA, 14:25 left, 1st period: It's all Canada at the moment. They've taken the shots lead 6-3. So far, nothing has troubled Frankel too much, but let them shoot a lot" is never a good game plan.Social media alert: USA Hockey and Hockey Canada are both on BlueSky, but neither organization has posted. That's no fun. Continue reading...

If enacted changes would be one of the biggest reorganizations of department since its founding in 1789A draft Trump administration executive order reported to be circulating among US diplomats proposes a radical restructuring of the US state department, including drastic reductions to sub-Saharan operations, envoys and bureaus relating to climate, refugees, human rights, democracy and gender equality.The changes, if enacted, would be one of the biggest reorganizations of the department since its founding in 1789, according to Bloomberg, which had seen a copy of the 16-page draft. The New York Times first reported on the draft. Continue reading...

US vice-president spends few minutes with pontiff whom he has publicly disagreed with over migrationPope Francis and JD Vance, who have disagreed very publicly over the Trump administration's attitude to immigration and its migrant deportation plans, met briefly in Rome on Sunday to exchange Easter greetings.The meeting came a day after the US vice-president, who converted to Roman Catholicism in 2019, sat down with senior Vatican officials and had an exchange of opinions" over international conflicts and immigration. Continue reading...

The idea that autism is some aberration that can be cured is typical of a movement that celebrates simplistic thinking and loathes human differenceIn the recent past, Robert F Kennedy Jr has said that Donald Trump is a terrible human being" and probably a sociopath". But in the US's new age of irrationalism and chaos, these two men are now of one voice, pursuing a strand of Trumpist politics that sometimes feels strangely overlooked. With Trump once again in the White House and Kennedy ensconced as his health and human services secretary, what they are jointly leading is becoming clearer by the day: a war on science and knowledge that aims to replace them with the modern superstitions of conspiracy theory.Nearly 2,000 members of the US's National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have warned of slashing funding for scientific agencies, terminating grants to scientists, defunding their laboratories, and hampering international scientific collaboration". Even work on cancer is now under threat. But if you want to really understand the Trump regime's monstrousness, consider where Kennedy and a gang of acolytes are heading on an issue that goes to the heart of millions of lives: autism. Continue reading...

A new E4 dating show brings the lies we tell while dating into the spotlight. But is bending the truth always a bad thing when looking for love?In 1994, I went on a date. I had just arrived in a new country and I liked the guy: he seemed funny and confident. He took me to a hardware store (weird, but not a dealbreaker) and then for a Tex-Mex meal during which, at some point, I told him I drove a Land Rover.It was a truly weird, dumb, lie - I knew nothing about cars and cared even less. Maybe I thought it made me sound grown up, tougher and more capable than I was, or maybe the margaritas went to my head? I'm sure I told him other lies (I remember giving the impression that I enjoyed clubbing), but that one was memorably stupid. Continue reading...

President's attack on universities echoes efforts by Reagan and McCarthy - but experts say we're seeing much worse'The showdown between Donald Trump and Harvard University may have exploded into life this week, but the battle represents just the latest step in what has been a decades-long war waged by the right wing on American academia.It's a fight by conservatives that dates back to Ronald Reagan, the hitherto spiritual leader of the Republican party, all the way to McCarthyism and beyond, experts say, as the rightwing scraps to seize more control in a manner that is part of a standard playbook of authoritarianism". Continue reading...

Guttmacher report finds 155,000 people crossed state lines for procedure - double number who did so before Roe's fallFor the second year in a row, abortion providers performed more than 1m abortions in the United States in 2024. About 155,000 people crossed state lines for abortions - roughly double the number of patients who did so in 2020, before the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and paved the way for more than a dozen state-level abortion bans to take effect.These numbers, released earlier this week by the abortion rights-supporting Guttmacher Institute, have not changed much since 2023, when the US also performed more than 1m abortions and 169,000 people traveled for the procedure. Continue reading...

The president has made clear he wants the prestigious prize. That's just one of many honors to comeFrom the start of his first campaign for president 10 years ago, Donald Trump has incessantly presented himself as a winner, the only man in the world who had the temperament to make America great again. As he said in 2016:We're gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you'll say: Please, please. It's too much winning. We can't take it any more, Mr President, it's too much.' And I'll say: No it isn't. We have to keep winning. We have to win more!'"Ariel Dorfman, a distinguished professor emeritus of literature at Duke University, is the Chilean American author of the play Death and the Maiden and the novel The Suicide Museum and, more recently, Allegro, narrated playfully by Mozart Continue reading...

Arturo Suarez Trejo was caught up in Trump's immigration crackdown in North Carolina and sent to a notorious Salvadorian prisonIn a recording studio in downtown Santiago, where the dad she has never met once sung, a four-month-old baby girl snuggles in her mother's arms, noise-cancelling earmuffs shielding her tiny ears from the sound.Nahiara Rubi Suarez Sanchez is equally oblivious to the plight of her father, a Venezuelan musician who is thought to be languishing in a maximum-security prison thousands of miles away in El Salvador after being swept up in Donald Trump's anti-migrant crusade. Continue reading...

Massive, sustained protests led to the 2021 downfall of billionaire oligarch Andrej Babi, dubbed the Czech Trump'A former cold war communist dictatorship and component part of the Habsburg empire seems an unlikely source of hope for Donald Trump's opponents.One such country, Hungary, is often cited as the model for Trump's no-holds-barred authoritarian assault on US institutions. Viktor Orban, the central European country's prime minister, has been a guest at the president's Mar-a-Lago estate and has won Trump's praise for transforming Hungary into an illiberal state" that extols traditional" values - and for projecting the kind of strongman" persona the president admires. Continue reading...

It was a nation of dreams, built for the screen. Then it shatteredThe first impression America gave me was gentle carelessness. We were driving down from Canada to visit family friends in Texas sometime in the mid- to late 1980s, and a young border patrol agent at a booth, crouched over a newspaper, leaning back in his chair, carelessly waved my family's station wagon across without looking up. You didn't even need a passport to enter the United States until I was 33.You need clear eyes at the border today. Europe and Canada have issued travel advisories after a series of arbitrary detentions, deportations to foreign jails without due process and hundreds of valid visas pulled or voided amid a sense of general impunity. While I have crossed the border a hundred times at least, sometimes once a month when I lived there, I cannot say when I will see America again, and I am quite sure I will never return to the country I once visited. Continue reading...

If gastropods are lucky, another cheap and unlovable source of age-defying secretions will come along soonApologies. As a reasonably attentive student of generational divides, I'm still late to one of the most dramatic divergences yet: the normalisation of snail slime.At some point, maybe around the time I stopped believing in face cream miracles, smearing on snail mucus, in serums or lotions, was hailed by newcomers to Korean-made skin products as transformative, almost immediately. Its most cherished effect being, as an industry spokeswoman told British Vogue in 2023, a radiant youthful glow". Today, thanks more to rhapsodising influencers than age-defying evidence, the slime phenomenon persists, gathers converts and withstands objections from snail supporters, who do not, sadly, seem that numerous. What snails need now, perhaps more than any other animal, is celebrity allies, supposing there are any willing to sacrifice the magical power of slime. Continue reading...

Substituting liberal biases with conservative will only serve to subvert academic objectivityFew people want to live in an echo chamber. Many have no problem being friends with those who vote differently to the way they do. And many would probably agree with John Stuart Mill that he who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that" - that to truly know one's own argument, one must also know the arguments of those who disagree.How to create a culture that encourages more fruitful engagement between those of differing political views has become a key question in contemporary public debate. Nowhere more so than in universities, where there has been much debate about viewpoint diversity", the aspiration to nurture differing and conflicting perspectives within an institution or group as a means of sharpening arguments and teasing out truths. Continue reading...

Playing in Stanford's football stadium, the school's softball home game against archrivals California set the NCAA attendance record Saturday with a crowd of 13,207 Continue reading...

Protesters pour into the streets from east coast to west in second wave of demonstrations this month - key US politics stories from Saturday 19 April at a glanceProtesters poured into the streets across the country again on Saturday in the second wave of demonstrations this month, as organizers seek to turn discontent with Donald Trump's presidency into a mass movement that will eventually translate into ballot box action.Large protests took place from east coast to west, in major cities like Washington, New York and Chicago, as well as Rhode Island, Maryland, Wisconsin, Tennessee, South Carolina, among many others. Americans abroad also signalled their opposition to the Trump agenda in the Irish capital of Dublin and other cities. Continue reading...

Aditya Wahyu Harsono, father of infant with special needs, surprised at work despite valid visa through June 2026An Indonesian father of an infant with special needs, who was detained by federal agents at his hospital workplace in Minnesota after his student visa was secretly revoked, will remain in custody after an immigration judge ruled Thursday that his case can proceed.Judge Sarah Mazzie denied a motion to dismiss the case against Aditya Wahyu Harsono on humanitarian grounds, according to his attorney. Harsono, 33, was arrested four days after his visa was revoked without notice. He is scheduled for another hearing on 1 May. Continue reading...

Organizers call for 11 million people to march and rally in this weekend's effort to protect democracy'Protesters poured into the streets of cities and towns across the United States again on Saturday, in the second wave of protests this month, as organizers seek to turn discontent with Donald Trump's presidency into a mass movement that will eventually translate into action at the ballot box.By early afternoon, large protests were under way in Washington, New York and Chicago, with images of crowds cascading across social networks showing additional demonstrations in Rhode Island, Maryland, Wisconsin, Tennessee, South Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, California and Pennsylvania, among others. Americans abroad also signaled their opposition to the Trump agenda in Dublin, Ireland, and other cities. Continue reading...

Two new surveys confirm that women who take on children from an earlier marriage will almost always be seen as witchesStepmothers have always been witches. Long before the Brothers Grimm gave us Snow White's usurping queen (and long before Gal Gadot's toe-curling recent turn in the role), there was Medea, witch of classical myth. Medea is best remembered for killing her own children but, according to Ovid, she went on to acquire a stepson, the hero Theseus, and attempted to kill him too. (Poison, of course, and with an eye on his inheritance: Witchy stepmothering 101.)Two millennia after Ovid, modern women still let our lives be limited by such stories. A new survey says that 43% of single mothers are deterred from dating other parents by negative stereotypes of stepmothers portrayed in popular culture"; 37% explicitly cite the fear that their partners' children will view them as a wicked stepmother". One should approach such a survey with caution - it is commissioned by a dating app for parents - but these findings are mirrored in academic studies the world over. A 2018 survey from New Zealand found that stepmothers altered their behaviour, fearful of setting boundaries with their stepchildren, for fear of the wicked stepmother" tag.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

Former president spoke at commemoration for the 168 people who died in the 1995 attack by far-right extremistBill Clinton called on Americans to put aside whose resentments matter most" and issued a defense of government employees as he returned to Oklahoma City on Saturday for a remembrance service for the 30th anniversary of the deadliest homegrown terrorist attack in US history.If our lives are going to be dominated by efforts to dominate people we disagree with, we're going to put the 250-year-old march toward a more perfect union at risk," he said. None of us would ever get much done. Believe me, we've all got something to be mad about." Continue reading...

The Catholic church has taken the first steps to canonise the architect of Barcelona's extraordinary Sagrada FamiliaI don't understand the processes by which people become saints, but the case for the canonisation of the great Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi, now progressing with the blessing of the pope, seems strong. He was devout - he tried to go without food for 40 days in emulation of Jesus Christ, until a bishop friend talked him out of likely death. The unprecedented phantasmagoria that he designed in stone, iron and ceramic could be called miracles. He even suffered a form of martyrdom, being hit by a tram while apparently deep in thought about his most famous work, the church of Sagrada Familia. It's not quite the same as a burning at the stake or a fusillade of arrows or the other grisly ends of ancient saints, but has its own significance. Gaudi's mission was to find spiritual meaning in a world transformed by industry and machines, of which the fatal tram might be considered a representative. Continue reading...

Neverending calls to automated customer service lines aren't just frustrating - new research suggests they may be quietly radicalising as wellQuestion: what are the eight most annoying words in the English language? Answer: Your call is important to us ... please hold." But when you have turned into a gibbering wreck after 10 minutes of your valuable time have ticked away - intermittently punctuated by assurances that, while your tormentor is experiencing high call volumes at the moment", nevertheless your call is still important to him/her/it - you can take comfort in the thought that you are not alone. In fact, you belong to the majority of sentient beings in an industrial society like ours.Thanks to a useful piece of market research, we now have an idea of the numbers of victims of this industrial practice - at least in the UK. A survey commissioned by the New Britain Project thinktank found that the average Briton spends between 28 and 41 minutes every week coping with inefficient customer service systems, and that nearly four-fifths of them are frustrated by the wasted time, the unnecessary friction, and the quiet resignation that has become part of daily interactions with both public and private services". Continue reading...

Agencies protecting coal miners from hazards such as black lung' among those gutted by government cutsThe Trump administration's efforts to expand coal mining while simultaneously imposing deep cuts to agencies tasked with ensuring miner health and safety has left some advocates dumbfounded".Agencies that protect coal miners from serious occupational hazards, including the condition best known as black lung", have been among those affected by major government cuts imposed by the White House and the unofficial department of government efficiency" (Doge) run by the billionaire Elon Musk. Continue reading...

US vice-president, who is a Catholic convert, discusses immigration and international wars with secretary of stateThe US vice-president, JD Vance, had an exchange of opinions" with the Vatican's secretary of state over current international conflicts and immigration when they met on Saturday, the Vatican has said.The Vatican issued a statement after Vance, a Catholic convert, met Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. There was no indication he met Pope Francis, who has resumed some official duties during his recovery from pneumonia. Continue reading...

The progressive Democrat from Queens is the son of a famous film-maker and poised to take on frontrunner Andrew CuomoCan a 33-year-old cricket-playing socialist, who wants to freeze rent, make city transport free and once aspired to be a rapper win an already turbulent election to become the next mayor of New York?Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and state assembly member in Queens, has been the surprise package in the Democratic primary and is now poised to take on the frontrunner in the race, ex-state governor Andrew Cuomo, who is mounting a political comeback after being forced from office in the face of a series of sexual harassment claims. Continue reading...

Brothers had hoped resentencing hearing would pave way for immediate release - but judge orders pause until MayThe Menendez brothers have spent years waiting for another day in court and a chance to prove that they should be freed after serving over three decades in prison for the 1989 slayings of their parents.This week it appeared their time was perhaps finally coming - a judge was set to review their request for a resentencing and determine whether they have been rehabilitated. Their attorney, Mark Geragos, planned to ask the Los Angeles county judge Michael Jesic to reduce Erik and Lyle Menendez's charges to manslaughter, which would allow them to be released from prison immediately. Continue reading...

The order is the latest example of how the courts are challenging the Trump administration's overhaul of the immigration systemThe US supreme court has ordered the Trump administration to temporarily halt the deportation of Venezuelan men in immigration custody, after their lawyers said they were at imminent risk of removal without the judicial review previously mandated by the justices.The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court," the justices said early on Saturday. Continue reading...

A Wall Street Journal article offered disturbing details about the billionaire's behavior. Imagine the backlash if he were a womanI regret to inform you that, once again, we are all being forced to think about Elon Musk's gonads. Musk, who has had at least 14 children with four women, hasn't officially launched a new mini-Musk for a while, but the Wall Street Journal has just dropped some disturbing details about the billionaire's well-publicized breeding fetish.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Xavier Becerra, the state's attorney general and a former US cabinet member, says he's prepared to call Trump's bluffXavier Becerra thinks California's next governor should know how to call Donald Trump's bluff.The former US health and human services secretary built his reputation in the state leading California's legal battles against the first Trump administration. Now, as he joins a crowded field of Democrats vying to succeed the term-limited governor, Gavin Newsom, Becerra says he has the experience - and the poker face - to go toe-to-toe with the president again. Continue reading...

Revulsion at deadly Oklahoma City explosion in 1995 has faded. But echoes of the blast, and its perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, are heard today as far-right ideas storm the USThe world's first reaction to the young military veteran and far-right radical who blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City 30 years ago this month was near-universal revulsion at the carnage he created and at the ideology that inspired it.A crowd yelled baby killer" - and worse - as 26-year-old Timothy McVeigh was led away in chains from a courthouse in rural Oklahoma where the FBI caught up with him two days after the bombing. He had the same crew cut he'd sported in his army days and stone cold eyes. Continue reading...

Tasneem Sharif Abbas, 16, flew with her sister to the US, where doctors awaited and volunteers cheered their arrivalDozens of people across the world were in non-stop communication for several months to arrange the arrival of Tasneem Sharif Abbas to the US. Abbas's entire life changed when a bomb dropped on her family's home in Gaza on 31 October 2023. A piece of metal severed her arm and she blacked out as rubble fell on her. Soon after, her arm was amputated at a local Gaza hospital. This is not a movie or a fictional story. This is the reality I have lived," Abbas said in a statement. This is just a glimpse of the dark days that have turned my life into a nightmare."Last year, the 16-year-old and an accompanying guardian, her adult sister Ashjan who is not injured, evacuated to Egypt, where they spent several months aboard a medical ship. The journey to fit Abbas with a prosthetic arm began with a 24-hour-flight from Cairo to New York, where volunteers met them in the airport during a several-hour layover. The only time there was uncertainty was in the visa process," said Raghed Ahmed, vice-president of the Philadelphia chapter of the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF), a non-profit that has provided medical care to Middle Eastern kids since the 1990s. The group also facilitated the sisters' travel. We weren't sure if it would take two weeks or six months, but her visa was approved in a couple of weeks," Ahmed said. Continue reading...

Foundation leaders say charitable organisations could be next in the firing line - but must stand together' to resistJohn Palfrey will not be obeying in advance.At a moment when leaders of tech companies, law firms, media corporations and academic institutions have bent the knee to Donald Trump, the president of the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation insists that charitable organisations choose resistance over capitulation. Continue reading...

Our writers made their predictions with the NBA postseason tipping off in proper on Saturday afternoonAbsolutely not. Could it stand to be a little shorter? Sure. Do the referees need to be more judicious with when they intervene? I'd argue they do. But the real problem the NBA faces is, in my opinion, a PR one. Its loudest voices should spend less time pearl-clutching and more time celebrating. Claire de Lune Continue reading...

Nayib Bukele has shown how brutal control can be sustained not just through force, but by raising the cost of speaking outThe Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) maximum security prison in El Salvador is the crown jewel of President Nayib Bukele's efforts to quash not only criminal gangs, but also criticism and political opposition to his government. The mega-prison" is also one of the more visible destinations in the emerging map of American deportations - a sprawling archipelago that includes conservative US districts, the Guantanamo military base and Central American waypoints connected by a tangle of military and charter flights.That the two states have connected their penal architecture is no coincidence. Donald Trump's aggressive policies towards foreigners build on Bukele's infamous iron fist crackdown against criminal gangs: it's a political toolkit that leverages anti-establishment anger to justify an authoritarian slide. In deploying strongman tactics to address social concerns, both leaders also cultivate a chilling culture of fear.Jordana Timerman is a journalist based in Buenos Aires. She edits the Latin America Daily BriefingDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Senator Chris Van Hollen accuses El Salvador's government of planting margarita glasses to undermine his trip - key US politics stories from Friday 18 April at a glanceMaryland senator Chris Van Hollen revealed that Kilmar Abrego Garcia had been moved from El Salvador's notorious Cecot prison - where he was sharing a cell with 25 other inmates - to a detention center with better conditions.Van Hollen met with Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration admits it mistakenly deported, and said that he had been left traumatized" after facing threats in the Cecot facility. Continue reading...

This blog is now closed. You can read our latest story hereThe US is optimistic that it can end the very brutal war" between Russia and Ukraine, Vice-President JD Vance said before a bilateral meeting with the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome on Friday.The meeting comes less than 24 hours after the pair met in Washington. Vance said:I want to update the prime minister on some of the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine ... even in the past 24 hours, we think we have some interesting things to report on.Since there are the negotiations I won't prejudge them, but we do feel optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war, this very brutal war, to a close. Continue reading...