WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Friday he would like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to “get this war ended” in Ukraine as he pushes for a 30-day ceasefire.
Trump, who departs on Monday on a trip to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar, was asked what his message to Putin is in the wake of a warning from the US embassy in Kyiv about a “potentially significant” air attack in the coming days. “I have a message for both parties: Get this war ended,” Trump says of Ukraine and Russia. “Get this stupid war finished. That’s my message for both of them,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
The embassy said on its website that it had received information about an air attack that may occur at any time over the next several days.
“The Embassy, as always, recommends US citizens be prepared to immediately shelter in the event an air alert is announced,” it said.
The White House said Trump had a “very good and productive” call with Zelensky on Thursday and that Trump hopes both Ukraine and Russia will agree next week to a proposed 30-day ceasefire.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, speaking to reporters at a briefing on Friday, also reiterated that a Trump meeting with Putin next week in the Middle East was not going to happen.
In Kyiv, Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said he spoke by telephone on Friday with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials about the proposed ceasefire as part of moves toward a peace agreement.
“The main focus was the question of the ceasefire and prospects for a peace settlement,” Yermak wrote on Telegram, adding that US envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg had also taken part. Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov was also present.
“Also discussed was the importance of implementing the points on which our presidents agreed,” Yermak wrote.
Judge blocks Trump from cutting funding from 34 cities and counties over ‘sanctuary’ policies
The Trump administration has been trying to remove millions of people in the country illegally
District Judge William Orrick said Trump's “executive actions” were an unconstitutional “coercive threat”
Updated 5 sec ago
AP
A judge ruled late Friday the Trump administration cannot deny funding to Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and 30 other cities and counties because of policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration efforts.
US District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco extended a preliminary injunction blocking the administration from cutting off or conditioning the use of federal funds for so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions. His earlier order protected more than a dozen other cities and counties, including San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.
An email to the White House late Friday was not immediately returned. In his ruling, Orrick said the administration had offered no opposition to an extended injunction except to say the first injunction was wrong. It has appealed the first order.
Orrick also blocked the administration from imposing immigration-related conditions on two particular grant programs.
The Trump administration has ratcheted up pressure on sanctuary communities as it seeks to make good on President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to remove millions of people in the country illegally.
One executive order issued by Trump directs Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to withhold federal money from sanctuary jurisdictions. Another order directs every federal agency to ensure that payments to state and local governments do not “abet so-called ‘sanctuary’ policies that seek to shield illegal aliens from deportation.”
The cities and counties that sued said billions of dollars were at risk.
Orrick, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, said the executive orders and the “executive actions that have parroted them” were an unconstitutional “coercive threat.”
In May, the Department of Homeland Security published a list of more than 500 “sanctuary jurisdictions,” saying each one would receive formal notification that the government had deemed them noncompliant. It also said it would inform them if they were believed to be in violation of any federal criminal statutes.
The list was later removed from the department’s website after critics noted it included localities that have actively supported the administration’s tough immigration policies.
The Justice Department has also sued New York, Los Angeles and other cities over their sanctuary policies.
There is no strict definition for sanctuary cities, but the terms generally describe places that limit cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE enforces immigration laws nationwide but seeks help from state and local authorities to identify immigrants wanted for deportation and hold them for federal officers.
Trump turns $11.1 billion in US government funds into a 10 percent stake in downtrodden Intel
US govt getting the stake through the conversion of $11.1 billion in previously issued funds and pledges, making a gain of $1.9 billion, on paper
Remarkable turn of events comes at a time that the chipmaker is in the process of laying off more than 20,000 workers in bid to bounce back from years of missteps
Updated 23 August 2025
AP
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Friday announced the US government has secured a 10 percent stake in struggling Silicon Valley pioneer Intel in a deal that was completed just a couple weeks after he was depicting the company’s CEO as a conflicted leader unfit for the job.
“The United States of America now fully owns and controls 10 percent of INTEL, a Great American Company that has an even more incredible future,” Trump wrote in a post.
The US government is getting the stake through the conversion of $11.1 billion in previously issued funds and pledges. All told, the government is getting 433.3 million shares of non-voting stock priced at $20.47 apiece — a discount from Friday’s closing price at $24.80. That spread means the US government already has a gain of $1.9 billion, on paper.
The remarkable turn of events makes the US government one of Intel’s largest shareholders at a time that the Santa Clara, California, company is in the process of jettisoning more than 20,000 workers as part of its latest attempt to bounce back from years of missteps taken under a variety of CEOs.
Intel’s current CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, has only been on the job for slightly more than five months, and earlier this month, it looked like he might be on shaky ground already after some lawmakers raised national security concerns about his past investments in Chinese companies while he was a venture capitalist. Trump latched on to those concerns in an August 7 post demanding that Tan resign.
But Trump backed off after the Malaysian-born Tan professed his allegiance to the US in a public letter to Intel employees and went to the White House to meet with the president, leading to a deal that now has the US government betting that the company is on the comeback trail after losing more than $22 billion since the end of 2023. Trump hailed Tan as “highly respected” CEO in his Friday post.
In a statement, Tan applauded Trump for “driving historic investments in a vital industry” and resolved to reward his faith in Intel. “We are grateful for the confidence the President and the Administration have placed in Intel, and we look forward to working to advance US technology and manufacturing leadership,” Tan said.
Intel’s current stock price is just slightly above where it was when Tan was hired in March and more than 60 percent below its peak of about $75 reached 25 years ago when its chips were still dominating the personal computer boom before being undercut by a shift to smartphones a few years later. The company’s market value currently stands at about $108 billion — a fraction of the current chip kingpin, Nvidia, which is valued at $4.3 trillion.
The stake is coming primarily through US government grants to Intel through the CHIPS and Science Act that was started under President Joe Biden’s administration as a way to foster more domestic manufacturing of computer chips to lessen the dependence on overseas factories.
But the Trump administration, which has regularly pilloried the policies of the Biden administration, saw the CHIPs act as a needless giveaway and is now hoping to make a profit off the funding that had been pledged to Intel.
“We think America should get the benefit of the bargain,” US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said earlier this week. “It’s obvious that it’s the right move to make.”
About $7.8 billion had been been pledged to Intel under the incentives program, but only $2.2 billion had been funded so far. Another $3.2 billion of the government investment is coming through the funds from another program called “Secure Enclave.”
Although US government can’t vote with its shares and won’t have a seat on Intel’s board of directors, critics of the deal view it as a troubling cross-pollination between the public and private sectors that could hurt the tech industry in a variety of ways.
For instance, more tech companies may feel pressured to buy potentially inferior chips from Intel to curry favor with Trump at a time that he is already waging a trade war that threatens to affect their products in a potential scenario cited by Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics for the Cato Institute.
“Overall, it’s a horrendous move that will have real harms for US companies, US tech leadership, and the US economy overall,” Lincicome posted Friday.
The 10 percent stake could also intensify the pressure already facing Tan, especially if Trump starts fixating on Intel’s stock price while resorting to his penchant for celebrating his past successes in business.
Nancy Tengler, CEO of money manager Laffer Tengler Investments, is among the investors who abandoned Intel years ago because of all the challenges facing Intel.
“I don’t see the benefit to the American taxpayer, nor do I see the benefit, necessarily to the chip industry,” Tengler said while also raising worries about Trump meddling in Intel’s business.
“I don’t care how good of businessman you are, give it to the private sector and let people like me be the critic and let the government get to the business of government.,” Tengler said.
Although rare, it’s not unprecedented for the US government to become a significant shareholder in a prominent company. One of the most notable instances occurred during the Great Recession in 2008 when the government injected nearly $50 billion into General Motors in return for a roughly 60 percent stake in the automaker at a time it was on the verge of bankruptcy. The government ended up with a roughly $10 billion loss after it sold its stock in GM.
The US government’s stake in Intel coincides with Trump’s push to bring production to the US, which has been a focal point of the trade war that he has been waging throughout the world. By lessening the country’s dependence on chips manufactured overseas, the president believes the US will be better positioned to maintain its technological lead on China in the race to create artificial intelligence.
Even before gaining the 10 percent stake in Intel, Trump had been leveraging his power to reprogram the operations of major computer chip companies. The administration is requiring Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, two companies whose chips are powering the AI craze, to pay a 15 percent commission on their sales of chips in China in exchange for export licenses.
Gambian man sentenced to more than 67 years after US conviction for torture
Michael Sang Correa, a member of former Gambian dictator Jammeh’s death squad, was convicted by US jury in April
Rights groups say Jammeh carried out brutalities against critics and political dissenters
Updated 23 August 2025
Reuters
A Gambian man who was part of an armed unit run by former dictator Yahya Jammeh and was convicted of torture by a US jury in April has been sentenced to more than 67 years in prison, the US Justice Department said on Friday.
A Colorado jury convicted the Gambian national, Michael Sang Correa, for his participation in the torture of numerous victims in Gambia in 2006, including beating and flesh burning, because of the victims’ purported involvement in a coup plot against the then-president, the Justice Department said.
Correa, 46, was sentenced to 810 months in prison by Senior Judge Christine Arguello for the District of Colorado after conviction on one count of conspiracy to commit torture and five counts of torture, the department said in a statement.
The case marked the first criminal prosecution over involvement in the feared armed group known as “the Junglers,” which operated in Gambia’s police state during Jammeh’s rule. The former president seized power in 1994 and foiled several attempts to overthrow him before he lost a 2016 election.
Correa was arrested in 2020 under a law which makes it a crime for anyone in the US to commit torture abroad.
Jammeh denied torture during his rule.
The Junglers were a secretive offshoot of the Gambian army that took orders from Jammeh. Rights groups and former victims say they carried out brutalities that worsened after a failed coup in 2006.
Suspected coup plotters and other outspoken opponents of Jammeh were taken to the National Intelligence Agency near one of the capital Banjul’s white sand beaches, according to victims.
Some found themselves in a torture chamber where they were subjected to electric shocks, beatings and burning with acid, they said. (Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Edmund Klamann)
Being Muslim and American in the nation’s heartland
The Muslim presence across the Midwest grew exponentially after a 1965 immigration law eliminated the quotas that had blocked arrivals from many parts of the world since the mid-1920s, Curtis said
Faroz Waziri jokes that he and his wife Mena might have been the first Afghans in town when they came in the mid-2010s on a special visa for those who had worked for the US armed forces overseas
“You can be a Muslim that’s practicing your religion and still coexist with everybody else around you,” said Hassan Igram, who chairs the center’s board of trustees
Updated 23 August 2025
AP
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa: The oldest surviving place of worship for Muslims in the United States is a white clapboard building on a grassy corner plot, as unassumingly Midwestern as its neighboring houses in Cedar Rapids – except for a dome.
The descendants of the Lebanese immigrants who constructed “the Mother Mosque” almost a century ago — along with newcomers from Afghanistan, East Africa and beyond — are defining what it can mean to be both Muslim and American in the nation’s heartland just as heightened conflicts in the Middle East fuel tensions over immigration and Islam in the United States.
Imam Taha Tawil of "The Mother Mosque of America" discusses the building's long history in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Friday, Aug. 8, 2025. (AP)
Standing by the door in a gold-embroidered black robe, Fatima Igram Smejkal greeted the faithful with a cheerful “salaam” as they hurried into the Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids for Friday prayers. In 1934, her family helped open what the National Register of Historic Places calls “the first building designed and constructed specifically as a house of worship for Muslims in the United States.”
“They all came from nothing … so they wanted to give back,” Smejkal said of families like hers, who arrived at the turn of the 20th century. “That’s why I’m so kind to the ones that come in from Somalia and the Congo and Sudan and Afghanistan. I have no idea what they left, what they’re thinking when they walk in that mosque.”
Muslims attend Friday prayer at the Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids on Friday, Aug. 8, 2025, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (AP)
The community now gathers in the Islamic Center. It was built in the 1970s when they became too many for the Mother Mosque’s living-room-sized prayer hall, and now they’re have outgrown its prayer hall, as well. Hundreds of fifth-generation Muslim Iowans, recent refugees and migrants pray on industrial carpets rolled onto the gym’s basketball court — the elderly on walkers, babies in car seats, women in headscarves and men sporting headgear from African kufi and Afghan pakol caps to baseball hats.
This physical space where diverse groups gather helps sustain community as immigrants try to preserve their heritage while assimilating into US culture and society.
Community members talk after Friday prayer at the Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids on Friday, Aug. 8, 2025, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (AP)
“You can be a Muslim that’s practicing your religion and still coexist with everybody else around you,” said Hassan Igram, who chairs the center’s board of trustees. He shares the same first and last names as his grandfather and Smejkal’s grandfather – two cousins who came to Iowa as boys in the 1910s.
Lebanese migrants ‘Mother Mosque’
Tens of thousands of young men, both Christians and Muslims, settled in booming Midwestern towns after fleeing the Ottoman Empire, many with little more than a Bible or a Qur’an in their bags. They often worked selling housewares off their backs to widely scattered farms, earning enough to buy horses and buggies, and then opened grocery stores.
Two young girls stand together outside of the Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids after Friday prayer on Aug. 8, 2025, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (AP)
Through bake sales and community dinners, a group of Muslim women raised money in the 1920s to build what was called the “Muslim Temple.” Like the Igrams, Anace Aossey remembers attending prayer there with his parents – though as children they were more focused on the Dixie Cream donuts that would follow.
“We weren’t raised real strict religiously,” said Aossey, whose father sold goods along the tracks from a 175-pound sack. “They were here to integrate themselves into the American society.”
Growing up Muslim in America
Muslims sometimes faced institutional discrimination. After serving in World War II, Smejkal’s father, Abdallah Igram, successfully campaigned for soldiers’ dog tags to include Muslim as an option, along with Catholic, Protestant and Jewish.
Mohamed Mahmoud, right, helps Afghan refugee Faroz Waziri, left, and his son select deserts at the halal grocery store he opened in 2022 after immigrating from Sudan on Friday, Aug. 8, 2025, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (AP)
But in Cedar Rapids, immigrants found mutual acceptance, fostered through houses of worship and friendships between US-born children and their non-Muslim neighbors. Smejkal’s best friend was Catholic, and her father kept beef hot dogs in the kitchen to respect the Muslim prohibition against pork. Smejkal’s father, in turn, made sure Friday meals included fish sticks.
“Arab-speaking Muslims were part and parcel of the same stories that inform our sense of what the Midwest is and its values are,” said Indiana University professor Edward E. Curtis, IV. “They participated in the making of the American heartland.”
Abdallah Igram is buried in the city’s hilltop Muslim cemetery, among the first in the United States when it was built in the 1940s. It’s next to the Czech cemetery – for the descendants of the migrants who helped establish Cedar Rapids in the 1850s — and the Jewish cemetery, whose operators donated trees to the Muslim one after damage from a derecho five years ago. Smejkal wishes the whole world’s faiths could collaborate this way.
“That’s when there’s no barriers anymore. I pray one day it’s really like that,” Smejkal said.
Being Muslim in the Heartland
The Muslim presence across the Midwest grew exponentially after a 1965 immigration law eliminated the quotas that had blocked arrivals from many parts of the world since the mid-1920s, Curtis said.
Mistrust flared again after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, especially in farming communities whose young people were fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, said Ako Abdul-Samad, an African-American who represented Des Moines for nearly two decades in the Iowa House of Representatives. He feared being Muslim would prevent his election when he first ran for office, but voters re-elected him again and again.
Immigration, including from Muslim countries, remains a contentious issue, even as Muslim communities flourish and increase their political influence in major cities like Minneapolis and Detroit.
But daily interactions between Muslims and their neighbors have provided some protection from prejudice, according to the Mother Mosque imam, a Palestinian who immigrated in the 1980s. “Stereotypes and things did not work” in Cedar Rapids, Taha Tawil said.
Bosnian Muslims say they’ve had similar experiences near Des Moines, where a new multimillion dollar mosque and cultural center is opening next month, an expansion of the first center established by war refugees 20 years ago.
“Our neighbors have been great to us, including the farmers we got the land from,” said its treasurer, Moren Blazevic. “We’re finally Iowans.”
Becoming Midwesterners
Faroz Waziri jokes that he and his wife Mena might have been the first Afghans in town when they came in the mid-2010s on a special visa for those who had worked for the US armed forces overseas. After struggling with “culture shock” and language barriers, they’ve become naturalized US citizens, and he’s the refugee resources manager at a non-profit founded by Catholic nuns.
While grateful for the aid and the safety they feel, the Waziris miss their families and homeland. And they fear that cultural differences — especially the individualism Americans express, like when they sit around a table for meals, instead of together on a rug — remain too vast.
“Mentally and emotionally, I never think I’m American,” said Mena Waziri. She’s a college graduate now, and loves the independence and women’s rights that remain unattainable in Taliban-run Afghanistan. But the family is keen for their US-born son, Rayan, to have Muslim friends and values.
These tensions are familiar for the descendants of the city’s first Muslim settlers, like Aossey, who keeps exhibit panels about Lebanese immigration and integration in the same garage where he stores ATVs on his recreational farm.
“My story is the American story,” Aossey said. “It’s not the Islamic story.”
Trump threatens federal intervention in Chicago, government takeover in D.C.
Chicago, other cities do not share D.C.’s federal status
Violent crime has fallen in Washington, Chicago, data shows
Updated 23 August 2025
Reuters
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Friday he would probably expand his crime crackdown to Chicago, intervening in another city governed by Democrats, and threatened to take full control of Washington, D.C., rather than only its policing.
Saying without evidence that violent crime was out of control in the nation’s capital, Trump deployed D.C. National Guard soldiers and federal agents on the streets last week with a mandate to reduce crime.
“It was horrible and Mayor Bowser better get her act straight or she won’t be mayor very long, because we’ll take it over with the federal government, run it like it’s supposed to be run,” Trump told reporters, referring to Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Recent statistics, which Trump dismissed, show crime has declined in the US capital since a 2023 peak.
Washington is a unique federal enclave, established in the US Constitution and falling under the jurisdiction of Congress, not belonging to any state.
In 1973, Congress passed the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, allowing residents to elect a mayor and council members.
Continuing his off-the-cuff remarks at the White House, Trump mused about extending his efforts to other cities. He has declined to explain how the federal government could intervene in local law enforcement in cities outside of the federal enclave of D.C.
“Chicago is a mess,” Trump said, deriding its mayor. “And we’ll straighten that one out probably next.”
Trump said some of his supporters in Chicago have been “screaming for us to come.”
“I did great with the Black vote, as you know, and they want something to happen,” he said. “So I think Chicago will be our next, and then we’ll help with New York.”
As in Washington, crime, including murders, has declined in Chicago in the last year.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said he took Trump’s comments seriously but has not received formal communication from the administration about federal law enforcement or military deployments.
The mayor said Trump’s approach has been “uncoordinated, uncalled for and unsound.” He added: “There are many things the federal government could do to help us reduce crime and violence in Chicago, but sending in the military is not one of them.”
New York City, also criticized by Trump, has reported a steady decline in violent crime in recent decades, and now has a relatively low murder rate among big American cities. Trump also threatened federal government intervention in San Francisco, another city governed by Democrats.
While the Republican president has cast his efforts as an urgent move to help residents feel safe again, Democrats and other critics say he aims to expand the powers of the president beyond the bounds of the Constitution and assert federal control over cities run by Democratic officials.
The US Constitution’s Tenth Amendment generally prevents the federal government from commandeering state or municipal officials and from intervening in states’ legal and criminal justice systems unless citizens’ constitutional rights are being violated.
