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Abu Dhabi CNN  —  President Donald Trump flew back Friday from a whirlwind trip to the Middle East – investment deals in hand, a new bond with Syria forged, but still dogged by the familiar conflicts that have long hovered over the region. His four-day trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates revealed a president with old habits – leaning into the fanfare and flattery and trappings of office – and new – a streamlined, goal-oriented agenda heavy on dealmaking and low on the chaos that engulfed his first term. Still, some of the challenges across the…

May 17, 2025, 12:25 AM ETKansas City Current forward Temwa Chawinga became the fastest player in NWSL history to score 25 career regular season goals on Friday when she scored in a 1-0 victory over the Orlando Pride. Chawinga reached the feat in 34 games.”Happy for her, but also, I don’t think Temwa’s going to stop here,” Kansas City head coach Vlatko Andonovski said. “She’s got a lot more to offer.”But Chawinga left the match in the 89th minute due to an injury.Andonovski confirmed that Chawinga’s issue on Friday was related to an unspecified leg injury that the 2024 NWSL…

Jeff CarlisleMay 16, 2025, 11:56 PM ETCloseJeff Carlisle covers MLS and the U.S. national team for ESPN FC.Canada men’s national team manager Jesse Marsch has had discussions with Vancouver Whitecaps defender Tristan Blackmon about possibly representing Canada at international level, sources told ESPN.Blackmon, 28, has spent parts of the last four seasons with the Caps, and has delivered some stellar displays during Vancouver’s run to the final of the Concacaf Champions Cup, in which it will face Cruz Azul in Mexico City on June 1.One source characterized the discussions as exploratory in nature, with Blackmon taking a wait-and-see approach to…

In the 1983 film War Games, a supercomputer known as WOPR (for War Operation Plan Response) is about to provoke a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, but because of the ingenuity of a teenager (played by Matthew Broderick), catastrophe is averted. In the first Terminator film, which was released a year later, a supercomputer called “Skynet” decides to exterminate humanity because it’s perceived as a threat to its existence rather than to protect American nuclear weapons.Although these films offered audiences grim scenarios of intelligent machines running amok, they were also prophetic. Artificial intelligence (AI) is…

CNN  —  Russia has sentenced an Australian man to 13 years in a maximum-security prison for fighting alongside Ukrainian forces, state prosecutors in the Russian-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine said Friday. Oscar Jenkins, 33, was found guilty by a court in Luhansk of participating in an armed conflict as a mercenary, prosecutors said in a statement, after it ruled he had fought for Ukraine against Russia between March and December last year. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Saturday that her government was “appalled” by the sentencing, calling it a “sham trial” and urged Russia to treat Jenkins in…

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian drone hit a bus evacuating civilians from a front-line area in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region Saturday, killing nine people, Ukrainian officials said, hours after Moscow and Kyiv had held their first direct peace talks in years that failed to yield a ceasefire.Seven people were also injured in the attack in Bilopillia, a town around 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Russia’s border, three of them seriously, according to local Gov. Oleh Hryhorov and Ukraine’s national police. The Associated Press couldn’t independently verify the report. There was no comment from Moscow.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the…

La Paz, Bolivia AP  —  Hundreds of supporters of ex-President Evo Morales marched toward Bolivia’s top electoral court on Friday to push for their leftist leader’s candidacy in presidential elections later this year, a rally that descended into street clashes as police tried to clear out a group of demonstrators. The confrontations come in response to a ruling by Bolivia’s Constitutional Court that blocks Morales, the nation’s first Indigenous president who governed from 2006 until his ouster in 2019, from running again in Aug. 17 elections. The turmoil escalates political tensions as Bolivia undergoes its worst economic crisis in four…

Moody’s Ratings cut the United States’ sovereign credit rating down a notch to Aa1 from the Aaa, the highest possible, citing the growing burden of financing the federal government’s budget deficit and the rising cost of rolling over existing debt amid high interest rates.“This one-notch downgrade on our 21-notch rating scale reflects the increase over more than a decade in government debt and interest payment ratios to levels that are significantly higher than similarly rated sovereigns,” the ratings agency said in a statement.The decision to lower the United States credit profile would be expected, at the margin, to lift the yield…

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday dealt a blow against the Trump administration’s attempt to send Venezuelans it says are gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador, saying the detainees must have a proper chance to raise legal objections.The 7-2 decision, which grants a request from a group of Venezuelans, clarified an unusual order issued by the justices in the early hours of April 19 that hit pause on any government plans to deport people held in northern Texas.The justices in the latest unsigned decision faulted the administration for giving the detainees only 24 hours to launch…

Istanbul, Turkey CNN  —  Russia and Ukraine’s first direct talks in three years began Friday with hopes as dim as the gray Istanbul skies. And while the weather brightened as the talks went on, the prospects for peace did not. In the end a large prisoner swap (one of many in this war) and two discussion topics for future talks – a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, and the contours of a ceasefire – were the only deliverables, as the press pack at Istanbul’s Dolmabahçe Palace thinned out and the sun sank over…