NEW YORK, Feb 17 (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge threw out on Tuesday a lawsuit against Buffalo Wild Wings that alleged the restaurant and sports bar chain deceived consumers by selling boneless wings that are not actually de-boned chicken wings.
Judge John Tharp Jr. in Chicago dismissed the proposed class action lawsuit brought in 2023 by a man named Aimen Halim who claimed he was misled into purchasing the disputed menu item that is essentially a chicken nugget.
“Halim sued (Buffalo Wild Wings) over his confusion, but his complaint has no meat on its bones,” Tharp wrote in his ruling.
“Despite his best efforts, Halim did not ‘drum’ up enough factual allegations to state a claim,” the judge added.
Halim alleged that the marketing and advertising of “boneless wings” is false, duping consumers in violation of the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, among other claims.
Tharp said reasonable consumers are not deceived into thinking boneless wings are truly made of wing meat. “If Halim is right, reasonable consumers should think that cauliflower wings are made (at least in part) from wing meat. They don’t, though,” the judge added.
Despite granting the chain’s request to dismiss the case, Tharp gave Halim until March 20 to amend his lawsuit to present any additional facts that would allow the case to go ahead.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Saad Sayeed)
MOSCOW, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Russia could deploy its navy to prevent European powers from seizing its vessels and may retaliate against European shipping if Russian ships are taken, Nikolai Patrushev, one of Russia’s leading hardliners, was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
Western states have sought to cripple Russia’s economy with sanctions and in recent months have tried to block oil tankers suspected of involvement in Russian oil shipments. In January, the United States seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker as part of efforts to curb Venezuelan oil exports.
Patrushev, a Kremlin aide who is a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, said Russia needed to give a tough response – particularly towards Britain, France and Baltic states.
“If we don’t give them a tough rebuff, then soon the British, French and even the Balts (Baltic nations) will become arrogant to such an extent that they will try to block our country’s access to the seas at least in the Atlantic basin,” Patrushev, who serves as chairman of Russia’s Maritime Board, told the Russian media outlet Argumenty i Fakty.
“In the main maritime areas, including regions far from Russia, substantial forces must be permanently deployed – forces capable of cooling the ardour of Western pirates,” he said.
Patrushev said that the navies of major powers were undergoing radical technological change and modernisation amid what he said was clear “gunboat diplomacy” from Washington over Venezuela and Iran. Russia’s updated naval shipbuilding programme to 2050 will be submitted for approval soon, he said.
He also said that Russia believed the NATO military alliance planned to blockade the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea.
“Any attempt at a naval blockade of our country is completely illegal from the standpoint of international law, and the concept of a ‘shadow fleet’, which EU representatives brandish at every turn, is a legal fiction,” he said.
The shadow fleet refers to a network of vessels that Western nations say are operated by Russia to evade sanctions.
“By implementing their naval blockade plans, the Europeans are deliberately pursuing a scenario of military escalation, testing the limits of our patience and provoking active retaliatory measures,” Patrushev said. “If a peaceful resolution to this situation fails, the blockade will be broken and eliminated by the navy.”
LONDON, Feb 17 (Reuters) – As American and European policymakers know well, global currency dominance and exchange rate movement are different things. But there’s a decent argument that Europe’s push to widen euro usage necessarily involves some revaluation of the single currency.
As Transatlantic ties fray and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned of lines that “cannot be uncrossed” after President Donald Trump’s bid for the U.S. to acquire Greenland, European Union leaders and finance chiefs this past week have launched another push to bolster the bloc’s economic clout and reposition its defense.
With the Munich Security Conference as the backdrop, an informal EU summit last week brought renewed impetus to deepen European capital markets integration. Leaders also discussed possibly expanding joint euro debt sales and – led by the European Central Bank on Saturday – widening euro access, liquidity and financing worldwide.
Some of this has been on the table before. But the urgency for action is now evident in a willingness for a two-speed advance with six core countries – Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland – in the vanguard if agreement among the 27 is too cumbersome or slow. An EU6 summit is due early next month.
The plans are likely necessary, even if not yet sufficient, to expand the role of the euro and allow it to absorb some of the nervousness about the world’s overexposure to dollars at a time of enormous U.S. political and economic upheaval.
Whether that greater global role brings a less welcome appreciation of the euro’s value is another question.
As finance chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic ponder the potential for at least some shift in the scale of dollar dominance in reserves, trade, invoicing and commodity pricing, they have differing takes on any related exchange rate fallout.
Trump’s administration sees a “strong dollar” primarily in terms of the currency’s reach and pervasive use in cross-border finance – an extension of American power unrelated to the ebbs and flows of the exchange rate itself. The presumption is that the Trump team sees an unwinding of the dollar’s overvalued exchange rate as an integral part of its global trade reset.
Currency experts, such as Cornell professor and former IMF official Eswar Prasad, think a gradual weakening of the dollar’s exchange rate is possible without damaging its international dominance.
But Prasad, in a new book published this month called The Doom Loop, says this dominance, even though durable for reasons of inertia and scale, may well be at the heart of mounting global economic instability. And if that reaches a crescendo, the search for adequate alternatives inevitably rises, as gold’s parabolic recent price gains attest.
“While dollar dominance might prove a saving grace at times of crisis, it is that very dominance which has a destabilizing effect worldwide,” he wrote. “It exposes other countries to the mercurial and often undisciplined economic and financial policies of the United States.”
Europe, on the other hand, clearly wants to lift the euro’s role but is far less keen on the exchange-rate appreciation that may follow, mainly because it would hurt export competitiveness at a time of great global trade uncertainty and further dampen inflation in the slower‑growth region.
Much like its U.S. counterparts, it would like the “exorbitant privilege” of being a bigger reserve currency but not the bloated exchange rate valuation that might go with it.
But if the U.S. side were happy with gradual dollar slippage on the exchanges and only a modest reduction in the dollar’s usage per se, would the Europeans be happy with the flipside of that scenario?
AXA Group Chief Economist Gilles Moec argued this week that disentangling the exchange rate impact from global usage was theoretically correct, but it would be hard to see any significant one-off shift not affecting the euro’s value.
Moec makes the point that during the last transition between dominant reserve currencies over a century ago, between the two world wars, when sterling ceded prominence to the dollar, the dollar appreciated on trend.
Even though the U.S. unsuccessfully tried to resist that rise by devaluing the dollar against gold at the time, he points out, demand from global investors for the new reserve currency mechanically won out.
“Our point here is that the European Central Bank cannot completely disconnect its support for an upgrade in the euro’s global role from monetary policy,” he concluded.
The plus side is that a “more assertive role” for the euro could be positive for the EU by triggering regular inflows from foreign investors into euro assets at a time when Europe needs it. What’s more, a stronger euro could aid a shift from an export-led economy to a domestically led growth mode.
“To ease the transition, though, a flexible monetary policy would be necessary to avoid a too brutal decline in competitiveness,” Moec concluded.
If Europe now feels it also needs to cross lines that cannot be uncrossed, then maybe it just has to take all that on the chin.
The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.
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Feb 16 (Reuters) – Thomas Pritzker said on Monday he stepped down as executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels, acknowledging “terrible judgment” in maintaining contact with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Pritzker, 75, would not seek re-election to the company’s board in 2026, he said in a letter to the company’s board.
“Good stewardship also means protecting Hyatt, particularly in the context of my association with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell which I deeply regret. I exercised terrible judgment in maintaining contact with them, and there is no excuse for failing to distance myself sooner,” Pritzker said in a statement.
Pritzker has served as executive chairman since 2004 and highlighted the company’s growth and resilience during his tenure, including taking Hyatt public, adopting an “asset-light” strategy and navigating the COVID-19 pandemic.
The U.S. Justice Department’s release of millions of internal documents related to Epstein has revealed the late financier and sex offender’s ties to many prominent people in politics, finance, academia and business – both before and after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to prostitution charges, including soliciting an underage girl.
Evidence in multiple legal and criminal cases has also shed light on these connections. Epstein was arrested again in 2019 on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors. His 2019 death in a Manhattan jail cell was ruled a suicide.
TUCSON, Arizona, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Nancy Guthrie’s family has been cleared as possible suspects in her abduction, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said on Monday, as the case involving the mother of “Today” show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie entered its third week.
Guthrie’s family, which includes “all siblings and spouses,” has been cooperative and gracious as authorities investigate the kidnapping, Nanos said.
“To suggest otherwise is not only wrong, it is cruel,” he said in a statement. “The Guthrie family are victims plain and simple.”
Investigators on Sunday said they had obtained a DNA sample from a glove that was found near 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie’s Arizona home and appears to match the pair worn by a masked prowler seen in doorbell camera footage before she was abducted two weeks ago.
Nancy Guthrie was last seen on January 31 when family dropped her off at her home near Tucson after she had dined with them, and relatives reported her missing the following day, authorities have said.
(Reporting by Herbert Villarraga in Tucson, Arizona and Hannah Lang in New York; editing by Scott Malone)
Nearly six years later, checks from a $2.67 billion settlement fund related to Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance will be distributed to affected subscribers in 2026.
In October 2020, Blue Cross Blue Shield reached a $2.67 billion settlement in an antitrust class action lawsuit; a judge gave his final approval of the settlement in August 2025.
The settlement stemmed from a class action antitrust lawsuit filed in Alabama under the title “Blue Cross Blue Shield Antitrust Litigation MDL 2406, N.D. Ala. Master File No. 2:13-cv-20000-RDP.”
This settlement, resulting from an antitrust class action lawsuit, was reached on behalf of individuals and businesses that purchased or received health insurance provided or administered by a Blue Cross Blue Shield company. The Group Representatives (“Plaintiffs”) entered into a Settlement Agreement on October 16, 2020, with Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (“BCBSA”) and Blue Individual Plans in Settlement. BCBSA and Blue Individual Plans in Settlement are referred to as “Settlement Defendants.”
The Plaintiffs allege that the Settlement Defendants violated antitrust laws by agreeing not to compete with each other and to limit competition between them in the sale of health insurance and health insurance administration services. The Settlement Defendants deny all allegations of wrongdoing and assert that their conduct results in lower health care costs and greater access to care for their customers. The Court has not yet determined who is right or wrong. Instead, the Plaintiffs and the Settlement Defendants have agreed to a settlement to avoid the risk and cost of further litigation.
The Settlement Agreement will establish a Settlement Fund of $2.67 billion. The Defendants who sign the Settlement will also agree to implement changes in their operations that, according to the Plaintiffs, will increase opportunities for competition in the health insurance market.
There are two classes of settlements, including a Damages Class and an Injunctive Class. Those who could receive payments include individuals who received coverage under any Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance or administrative services plan between February 2008 and October 2020.
Under the terms of the settlement, approximately $1.9 billion will be allocated to reimbursements for subscribers who filed claims. The remaining $700 million will go to the attorneys for the case.
To receive payment, you must have filed a claim before November 5, 2021.
NEW YORK, Feb 15 (Reuters) – The Food and Drug Administration will consider a petition to revoke the safety status of dozens of processed refined carbohydrates unless food companies can prove they are safe and not contributing to health issues and obesity, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in remarks that aired on Sunday.
He said the FDA would take up a request by former agency Commissioner David Kessler, who asked it last August to remove corn syrup and dozens of other sweeteners and starches from the list of ingredients classified as GRAS, or Generally Recognized as Safe.
“We will act on David Kessler’s petition,” Kennedy told CBS’ “60 Minutes” program. “And the questions that he’s asking are questions that FDA should’ve been asking a long, long time ago.”
Kennedy and Kessler say the GRAS classification, enacted by Congress in 1958, has allowed the use of ingredients without a full government safety review because it lets food companies verify the safety of those items without oversight. Kennedy said that he intends to close that loophole if he gets White House approval.
“There is no way for any American to know if a product is safe if it is ultraprocessed,” Kennedy said on “60 Minutes.”
Kessler, a pediatrician, was FDA commissioner from 1990 to 1997.
Two food industry trade groups, the Consumer Brands Association and the American Farm Bureau Federation, did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
During his tenure heading the FDA, Kessler tried to regulate tobacco under the agency. The effort ultimately failed, but it helped put a greater spotlight on the tobacco industry.
He now wants the FDA to take the same approach with large food companies.
“We changed how this country views tobacco,” Kessler told the CBS program. “We need to change how this country views these ultraprocessed foods.”
Kennedy’s campaign against processed foods and artificial dyes has been one of his most high-profile endeavors in office. The Trump administration last month announced new dietary guidelines that urge Americans to eat more protein and less sugar than previously advised, while avoiding highly processed foods.
But on Sunday’s show, Kennedy stopped short of saying he would call for more government regulations.
“I’m not saying that we’re going to regulate ultraprocessed food,” he said. “Our job is to make sure that everybody understands what they’re getting, to have an informed public.”
(Reporting by Michelle Conlin in New York; Editing by Sergio Non and Alistair Bell)
CABIMAS, Venezuela — The pumps that brought prosperity from deep in the Earth’s crust are now mostly rusted relics of a storied past.
The buildings that housed a prideful labor force are vandalized, colonized by squatters or boarded up.
The schools, clinics, the manicured golf course — onetime amenities from an industry awash in petrodollars — gone or overgrown with weeds.
“Our biggest problem is depression and anxiety,” says Manuel Polanco, 74, a former petroleum engineer whose recollections of the good times only highlight a dystopian present. “We barely survive. We have just enough to feed ourselves, to get by.”
This is the dismal tableau today in Venezuela’s Maracaibo Basin, which, for much of the last century, was one of the globe’s leading sources of petroleum.
A monument to oil workers stands in a square in Cabimas, a once-thriving oil town in Venezuela.
(Marcelo Pérez del Carpio/For The Times)
Since the U.S. attack last month and arrest of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, President Trump has vowed to rebuild the country’s moribund oil sector — while also providing resources and cash for the United States. East of Maracaibo lies the Orinoco Belt, home to the world’s largest proven deposits, estimated at more than 300 billion barrels.
But a recent swing through the Maracaibo region in northwestern Venezuela dramatized the many obstacles. Greeting visitors is a dire panorama of nonfunctioning wells, battered pipelines and empty storage tanks, among other markers of decline.
The U.S. plans have generated considerable skepticism in a place not accustomed to good news. But some oil-field veterans envision a return to the glory days.
“I see myself flourishing again,” said José Celestino García Petro, 66 and a father of eight, who said he never found steady work after his well-servicing firm was expropriated by the government years ago. “Rising from the ashes!”
Deteriorated oil rigs and gas flow stations are seen on Lake Maracaibo, near the city of Cabimas.
At its peak in the 1970s, Venezuela was daily pumping some 3.5 million barrels. A charter member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the nation exuded affluence and excess — though the wealth was mostly channeled to domestic elites and foreign oil companies, not the impoverished majority.
But slumping crude prices, government mismanagement and U.S. sanctions have left Venezuela’s industry a hollowed-out shell of its former, grandiose self.
Last year, Venezuela managed to pump about 1 million barrels a day, less than 1% of global production. Even so, petroleum was still a lifeline for a nation mired in more than a decade of economic, political and social tumult marked by mass emigration, hyperinflation and a near-ubiquitous sense of despair.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, left, and Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodriguez hold a news conference after their meeting at the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas on Feb. 11.
(Julio Urribarri / Anadolu via Getty Images)
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright visited Venezuela last week, met with the country’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, and even toured some oil fields. He boasted of “enormous progress” in reviving a business that is now effectively under U.S. management.
Dimming the upbeat declarations is a harsh reality: It will likely take at least a decade — and perhaps $200 billion or more — to restore the country’s decrepit hydrocarbon infrastructure, experts say.
A lot depends on Big Oil, but some executives are wary. At a White House meeting last month, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods labeled Venezuela “uninvestable.”
Along the oil-streaked shores of Lake Maracaibo — actually a massive coastal lagoon, fed by both freshwater rivers and the Caribbean — the vestiges of a once-thriving enterprise stand out like totems from a past civilization.
Dotting the shoreline is a bleak expanse of detritus: timeworn pumps, tottering derricks, wayward cranes and aging pipelines. Gobs of oil mar the coast. Pollution has ravaged once-abundant stocks of fish and crab.
“I pray to God every day that things will change for the better,” said Joel José León Santo, 53, who on a recent morning was preparing his fishing boat with three colleagues. “But so far we haven’t seen any improvements. Food is more expensive. Tomorrow’s meal depends on today’s catch.”
1
2
1.Much of Venezuela’s oil industry is in disrepair, like this broken oil pipeline over Lake Maracaibo. 2.The General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge spans an outlet of Lake Maracaibo and links the region with the rest of Venezuela.
There is no official number, but industry observers estimate that fewer than 2,000 wells are functioning in a region that is home to some 12,000.
“Everything here is bad, at a standstill,” said Mari Camacho, 45, who, with her family, is among those squatting in a series of abandoned homes in the town of El Güere, flanked by mangroves along the eastern shores of Lake Maracaibo.
A brick factory that once served oil producers shuttered long ago. Her four sons left for Colombia, part of the country’s historic exodus.
Her home sits atop a sea of oil, but Camacho says there has been no electricity for six years, since a transformer blew out. No one fixed it. Alarming her and neighbors are rumors that the legal owners of their homes plan to claim their property.
“I don’t know where I would go,” she said.
About 10 miles south is the sweltering city of Cabimas, an iconic venue in Venezuela’s petroleum narrative. It is now a ramshackle, seemingly lost-in-time metropolis where residents sit on porches observing the unsteady progress of cars navigating pothole-ridden streets.
People stand near a sign reading “Maracaibo” at a park on the shore of Lake Maracaibo.
“All the great companies that used to exist were connected to the petroleum industry,” said Hollister Quintero, 32, a Cabimas native whose grandparents worked for foreign oil firms during the industry’s heady days. “Now, there is just desolation.”
Quintero, who lacked the funds to finish college, struggles as a freelance audiovisual producer. He also cares for his aging parents, whose public pensions amount to the equivalent of $2 a month.
Most young people leave town, Quintero said, while those who stay find jobs in the informal sector. A common, albeit not very lucrative, option: delivering food orders on bicycles or motorcycles.
“There just aren’t many opportunities,” he said.
A mural in Maracaibo celebrates Venezuela’s oil industry.
For centuries, Lake Maracaibo’s environs were known for natural seepage of oil rising to the surface from sedimentary rock, a phenomenon also seen in sites like Los Angeles’ La Brea Tar Pits. Indigenous people and Spanish settlers utilized the viscous goo for medicinal purposes and waterproofing boats.
But the dawn of the oil age in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries and the allure of black gold attracted a new crowd: wildcatters and fortune-hunters from the United States and Europe, drawn to a backwater heretofore known for coffee, cacao and cattle.
It was here in Cabimas where, more than a century ago, a well-named Barroso II jump-started a boom.
On Dec. 14, 1922, the ground shook in Cabimas, but it wasn’t an earthquake. Barroso II, managed by Royal Dutch Shell, began spitting skyward some 100,000 barrels daily.
“Suddenly, with a roar, oil erupted from the well in a spout that towered 200 feet above the derrick and fanned out in the air like a titan’s umbrella,” Orlando Méndez, a Venezuelan oil historian, wrote in a 2022 article for the American Assn. of Petroleum Geologists, marking the blowout’s centennial.
“The villagers poured out of their houses,” Méndez wrote. “Oil sprayed them in a torrent of black raindrops. … Only the bravest walked hesitantly toward the well. They held out their hands and the dark, sticky fluid splattered [on] their palms. ‘¡Petróleo!’ they all shouted.”
The gusher didn’t relent for nine days.
The runaway well ushered in a bonanza. Little attention was paid to the environmental catastrophe for Lake Maracaibo, destination of much of the escaping crude.
The Petróleos de Venezuela Bajo Grande Refinery on the shore of Lake Maracaibo.
Explorers scouring the lakeside soon discovered other, even more productive fields. By the end of the 1920s, Venezuela had become the world’s largest oil exporter.
“Maracaibo was alive with eager strangers as every boat that landed there disgorged an army of oil workers,” Méndez wrote.
In subsequent decades, Venezuela rode a boom-and-bust cycle, but by the late-1990s returned to producing near-record levels of 3 million barrels a day.
With revenues soaring, the late President Hugo Chávez, a left-wing populist, lavished cash on Venezuelan masses long excluded from the petroleum windfall. An opposition-backed general strike in 2002-03 prompted Chávez to fire almost 20,000 employees of the state oil firm.
Years later, Chávez nationalized dozens of oil companies, including some U.S. firms. The expropriations, along with the firings, consolidated state control of the oil sector and, experts say, drained the country of expertise and investment, inflicting lasting damage.
Chávez died in 2013. International oil prices soon cratered — bad news for his chosen successor, Maduro. U.S. sanctions enacted during Trump’s first term exacerbated the crisis. Most fired oil workers never got their jobs back.
“We were stigmatized, our benefits were taken away, and we were denied the opportunity to work in Venezuela,” said Polanco, the petroleum engineer.
An anti-U.S. mural in Maracaibo declares, “Venezuela is not a menace, Venezuela is hope.”
After his dismissal, Polanco said he found employment in Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico, but later returned to Cabimas. He has one son in the United States, another in Mexico.
He and other former oil workers expressed guarded optimism for Trump’s ambitious revival blueprint.
“I would love to return to the oil industry and have it be the same as it was 22 years ago,” said Michelle Bello, 51, a father of five who said he and four siblings were forced out from the state oil company during the purge. “Take politics out of it.”
Quintero, the young entrepreneur, also welcomes the notion that his hometown may return to its renowned era of affluence. But he is skeptical.
“Of course I hope that Cabimas could be reborn anew as a petroleum center,” said Quintero. “This is a place with a lot of history and culture. But the sad fact is this: We are now a ghost town.”
Special correspondent Mogollón reported from Cabimas and Times staff writer McDonnell from Mexico City.
MUNICH, Feb 15 (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to begin a two-day trip on Sunday, to bolster ties with Slovakia and Hungary, whose conservative leaders, often at odds with other European Union countries, have warm ties with President Donald Trump.
Rubio will use the trip to discuss energy cooperation and bilateral issues, including NATO commitments, the State Department said in an announcement last week.
“These are countries that are very strong with us, very cooperative with the United States, work very closely with us, and it’s a good opportunity to go see them and two countries I’ve never been in,” Rubio told reporters before departing for Europe on Thursday.
Rubio, who in his dual role also serves as Trump’s national security adviser, will meet in Bratislava on Sunday with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who visited Trump in Florida last month. The U.S. diplomat’s trip follows his participation in the Munich Security Conference over the last few days.
WILL MEET VIKTOR ORBAN ON MONDAY
On Monday, Rubio is expected to meet with Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, who is trailing in most polls ahead of an election in April when he could be voted out of power.
“The President said he’s very supportive of him, and so are we,” Rubio said. “But obviously we were going to do that visit as a bilateral visit.”
Orban, one of Trump’s closest allies in Europe, is considered by many on the American hard-right as a model for the U.S. president’s tough policies on immigration and support for families and Christian conservatism. Budapest has repeatedly hosted Conservative Political Action Conference events, which bring together conservative activists and leaders, with another due in March.
TIES WITH MOSCOW AND CLASHES WITH THE EU
Both Fico and Orban have clashed with EU institutions over probes into backsliding on democratic rules.
They have also maintained ties with Moscow, criticised and at times delayed the imposition of EU sanctions on Russia and opposed sending military aid to Ukraine.
Even as other European Union countries have secured alternative energy supplies after Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022, including by buying U.S. natural gas, Slovakia and Hungary have also continued to buy Russian gas and oil, a practice the United States has criticised.
Rubio said this would be discussed during his brief tour, but did not give any details.
Fico, who has described the European Union as an institution that is in “deep crisis”, has showered Trump with praise saying he would bring peace back to Europe.
But Fico criticised the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in early January.
Hungary and Slovakia have also so far diverged from Trump on NATO spending.
They have raised defence spending to NATO’s minimum threshold of 2% of GDP.
Fico has, however, refused to raise expenditure above that level for now, even though Trump has repeatedly asked all NATO members to increase their military spending to 5%. Hungary has also planned for 2% defence spending in this year’s budget.
On nuclear cooperation, Slovakia signed an agreement with the United States last month and Fico has said U.S.-based Westinghouse was likely to build a new nuclear power plant.
He also said after meeting the chief of France’s nuclear engineering company Framatome during the week he would welcome more companies taking part in the project.
(Reporting by Humeyra PamukAdditional reporting by Jan Lopatka in Prague; editing by Barbara Lewis)
TAIPEI, Feb 15 (Reuters) – China is the real threat to security and is hypocritically claiming to uphold U.N. principles of peace, Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said on Sunday in a rebuff to comments by China’s top diplomat at the Munich Security Conference.
China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, a view the government in Taipei rejects, saying only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, addressing the annual security conference on Saturday, warned that some countries were “trying to split Taiwan from China”, blamed Japan for tensions over the island and underscored the importance of upholding the United Nations Charter.
Taiwan’s Lin said in a statement that whether viewed from historical facts, objective reality or under international law, Taiwan’s sovereignty has never belonged to the People’s Republic of China.
Lin said that Wang had “boasted” of upholding the purposes of the U.N. Charter and had blamed other countries for regional tensions.
“In fact, China has recently engaged in military provocations in surrounding areas and has repeatedly and openly violated U.N. Charter principles on refraining from the use of force or the threat of force,” Lin said. This “once again exposes a hegemonic mindset that does not match its words with its actions.”
China’s military, which operates daily around Taiwan, staged its latest round of mass war games near Taiwan in December.
Senior Taiwanese officials like Lin are not invited to attend the Munich conference.
China says Taiwan was “returned” to Chinese rule by Japan at the end of World War Two in 1945 and that to challenge that is to challenge the postwar international order and Chinese sovereignty.
The government in Taipei says the island was handed over to the Republic of China, not the People’s Republic, which did not yet exist, and hence Beijing has no right to claim sovereignty.
The republican government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists, and the Republic of China remains the island’s formal name.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by William Mallard)
Feb 14 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter to lawmakers regarding redactions in the files pertaining to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Politico reported on Saturday.
The letter, required by law, includes a general description of the types of redactions made, and a list of notable people mentioned in the files in any way.
(Reporting by Christian Martinez; Editing by Sergio Non)
MUNICH, Feb 14 (Reuters) – Secretary of State Marco Rubio cast the United States as the “child of Europe” in a message of unity on Saturday, offering some reassurance as well as levelling more criticism at allies after a year of turmoil in transatlantic relations.
Rubio was addressing the annual Munich Security Conference, where Europe’s leading powers have tried to project their own independence and strength while straining to keep an alliance with the U.S. under President Donald Trump alive.
The speech delivered a degree of reassurance to European countries who fear being left in the lurch on anything from the war in Ukraine to international trade ructions in a rapidly shifting global order.
But it was short on concrete commitments and made no mention of Russia, raising questions on whether Rubio’s more emollient tone than that of Vice President JD Vance at the same event a year ago would change the underlying dynamics.
“In a time of headlines heralding the end of the transatlantic era, let it be known and clear to all that this is neither our goal nor our wish, because for us Americans, our home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe,” Rubio said.
“For the United States and Europe, we belong together,” he said in a speech that drew a standing ovation at the end.
MIXED REACTIONS TO RUBIO’S SPEECH
While European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she was “very much reassured” by the speech, others struck a more cautious tone.
“I am not sure that Europeans see the announced civilisational decline, supposedly caused mainly by migration and deindustrialisation, as a core uniting interest. For most Europeans, the common interest is security,” said Gabrielius Landsbergis, former foreign minister of NATO member Lithuania.
“This was not a departure from the general position of the (Trump) administration. It was simply delivered in more polite terms,” he said on X.
Vance’s address last year dressed down European allies, arguing that the greatest danger to Europe came from censorship and democratic backsliding rather than external threats like Russia.
While praising Europe’s cultural achievements from the artist Michelangelo to the poet William Shakespeare, Rubio also touched on themes that have raised hackles, including criticism of mass migration and zealous action on climate change.
“We do not want our allies to be weak, because that makes us weaker,” he said.
“For we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline, we do not seek to separate but to revitalise an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history.”
A European diplomat said there was a sense of relief that Rubio had not directly attacked Europe and used the personal story to link the two sides. But, the diplomat added, “how you deliver the message makes a difference, but on the fundamentals the message is similar to Vance”.
STARMER CALLS FOR MORE HARD POWER
The Munich conference of top security leaders has been dominated this year by how countries are scrambling to adjust to a year of confrontations with Trump on anything from tariffs to his threat to wrest Greenland from fellow NATO member Denmark.
Asked about Russia after his speech, Rubio said the United States would not ditch its commitment to working on a peace deal with Ukraine but that it was not clear whether Moscow was serious about achieving this.
Speaking directly after Rubio, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned on Saturday against “knee-jerk” calls for the United States to distance itself from China and said that despite some positive recent signs from the White House, some U.S. voices were undermining the relationship.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz had in his opening address on Friday called for a stronger Europe to reset ties with the U.S. in a dangerous new era of great power politics, while stressing the need for Europe to beef up its own defences.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has similarly sought a reset in relations with Europe after Brexit, on Saturday stressed the need to bolster the UK’s “hard power” and military readiness plus more defence integration with Europe.
He also hinted at further alignment with the European Union’s single market – which allows goods, services, capital and people to move freely across member states – and deeper economic integration, six years after Britain left the EU.
“We are not at a crossroads today, the road ahead is straight, and it is clear we must build our hard power, because that is the currency of the age,” Starmer said.
“We must be able to deter aggression, and yes, if necessary, we must be ready to fight.”
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Gram Slattery, Andrew Gray, Sarah Marsh, James Mackenzie, John Irish, Jonathan Landay, Alistair Smout; writing by Matthias Williams; editing by Mark Heinrich)
MUNICH, Feb 14 (Reuters) – Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned on Saturday against “knee-jerk” calls for the United States to distance itself from China.
Calling for a “positive and pragmatic” policy from Washington, he said the best outcome for both would be cooperation.
“The other prospect is seeking decoupling from China and severing supply chains and to oppose China on everything in a purely emotional, knee-jerk way,” he said in remarks at the Munich Security Conference.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie; editing by Sarah Marsh and Tomasz Janowski)
(Corrects time frame of video release to this week, in paragraph 4 and second bullet point)
By Herbert Villarraga, Jana Winter and Jasper Ward
TUCSON, Arizona Feb 13 (Reuters) – The Arizona sheriff leading the investigation into the abduction of U.S. television journalist Savannah Guthrie’s elderly mother says the biggest clue by far in the nearly two weeks since she vanished is the video of a masked prowler tampering with her doorbell camera.
“That individual is who we’re looking for,” Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said in an interview with Reuters as the search for 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, presumed kidnapped for ransom from her home near Tucson, stretched into its 13th day.
“Are there others? We don’t know that until we find him, or other evidence comes in to indicate that, but right now, he’s who we want. Somebody out there knows who this is,” Nanos said.
Nanos was referring to the release earlier this week of then-newly discovered video footage showing an armed man — wearing a ski mask, gloves and a backpack — tampering with Nancy Guthrie’s Google Nest doorbell camera outside her house shortly before she vanished.
“The strongest evidence is that video,” Nanos said. “That’s really what we’re focused on. We’ve got to find that guy. And that’s what everybody is trying to do.”
Experts have said that investigators were likely seeking to bring facial recognition analysis to bear on the video to produce a composite image of a suspect that they can run against a national database that includes all U.S. drivers with Real ID licenses.
The sheriff said the release of the video, which took days to retrieve and reassemble from discarded digital data likely left unarchived on Google servers, immediately generated a flood of nearly 5,000 calls from tipsters. By then, he said, the sheriff’s department and FBI had already fielded some 30,000 calls together.
He said investigators are “constantly taking in video” from other sources, ranging from traffic cameras to license-plate scanners to neighborhood surveillance cameras.
“Everything is being gathered in and looked at,” he said. “It is a long process.”
Nancy Guthrie was last seen on January 31 when family dropped her off at her home following an evening dinner with them, and relatives reported her missing the following day, authorities said.
The sheriff has said the elder Guthrie had extremely limited mobility and could not have wandered off far from home unassisted, leading investigators to conclude early on that she had been taken against her will.
Traces of blood found on her front porch were confirmed by DNA tests to have come from Guthrie, officials said last week. Law enforcement and family members have described her as being in frail health and in need of daily medication to survive.
At least two purported ransom notes have surfaced since she disappeared, both delivered initially to news media outlets and setting two deadlines that have since lapsed.
Savannah Guthrie, 54, co-anchor of the popular NBC News morning show “Today,” has posted several video messages with her brother and sister, appealing to their mother’s captors for her return, pleading for the public’s help in solving the case, and even expressing a willingness to meet ransom demands.
Nanos confirmed to Reuters that no proof of life has surfaced since the abduction, but he was quick to add: “there’s not been any proof of death either.”
The sheriff went on to reaffirm his working presumption that Nancy Guthrie remains alive.
“Hope is sometimes all we have, it really is,” he said. “I have a team of 400 officers from federal government, state government, local government. I have a community of a million people here who are invested in this, who want her back. Sometimes all we have to go on is hope. I’m not going to kill that.”
The FBI on Thursday doubled the reward offered for information leading to the location of Nancy Guthrie, or the arrest and conviction of a suspect in her abduction, to $100,000.
(Reporting by Herbert Villaraga in Tucson, Arizona, and Jana Winter and Jasper Ward in Washington; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
BOSTON — Unions, advocates for low-income workers and other groups urged state lawmakers on Thursday to permanently “opt out” of several new federal laws enacted as part of President Donald Trump’s tax cut and policy bill, warning of the impact on the state’s coffers.
The Legislature’s Revenue Committee is considering a proposal by Gov. Maura Healey that would delay implementation of what she described as the five “most costliest” changes in federal tax code created by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act until next year.
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BEIJING, Feb 13 (Reuters) – China and the United States held an anti-narcotics intelligence exchange meeting from Tuesday to Thursday in the U.S., Chinese state media reported on Friday.
Teams from China and the U.S. had “in-depth discussions on the narcotics situation, cleanup of illicit online information, cooperation cases, control of chemicals, and drug-related anti-money laundering”, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Both sides agreed to “promote healthy, in-depth and pragmatic anti-narcotics cooperation”, Xinhua said.
(Reporting by Xiuhao Chen and Ryan Woo; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Feb 12 (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge in Texas on Thursday blocked a rule that expanded the amount of information companies have to turn over when seeking a merger review, saying it exceeded the Federal Trade Commission’s authority.
The rule, finalized in 2024, provided antitrust enforcers at the FTC and the U.S. Department of Justice with more information about mergers and acquisitions.
Some dealmakers had scrambled to file for approval before the rule came into effect last February, in order to avoid its requirements. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued to block the rule last year.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle in Tyler, Texas, an appointee of President Donald Trump, said the FTC had not shown the rule’s benefits would outweigh its costs.
“Though the FTC asserts that the rule will detect illegal mergers and save agency resources, the FTC fails to substantiate these assertions,” he wrote.
While the rule was finalized in the waning days of the Biden administration, current FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, who was then a commissioner, voted in its favor, calling it “a lawful improvement over the status quo” at the time.
“We are reviewing the ruling and weighing our options,” a spokesperson for the FTC said. “The Chamber of Commerce is a left-wing, open borders supporting activist group.”
The Chamber is the largest business lobby group in the U.S., whose board includes executives from FedEx, Sempra, Abbott Laboratories, Fidelity Investments, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Nasdaq.
Daryl Joseffer, executive vice president of the Chamber’s litigation center, said in response to the ruling: “We are pleased with the court’s decision today rejecting the Biden Administration’s onerous merger tax.”
A Chamber spokesperson did not comment on the FTC spokesperson’s description of the organization.
(Reporting by Jody Godoy in Los Angeles; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Jamie Freed)
WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) – Former U.S. Supreme Court lawyer Thomas Goldstein told a federal jury weighing criminal tax charges against him on Thursday that he should have paid more attention to his tax returns and to his law firm’s finances, but that he did not intentionally violate any laws.
“The mistakes, responsibility for those tax years is mine. I may end up continuing to pay for this for a long time,” said Goldstein, who is accused of misreporting millions of dollars stemming from his side-career as a high-stakes poker player. “That’s my responsibility. It’s just very different from whether I committed a crime.”
Returning to the stand on his second day of testimony at the trial in Greenbelt, Maryland, Goldstein clashed with prosecutor Sean Beaty, who portrayed him as a meticulous lawyer who could dig deep on all issues of a case, commanding substantial legal fees for his work, but also as a liar who deceived his wife and others about the scope of his poker activities.
“You still think you’re the victim here?,” Beaty asked him.
“No, I do not think I am the victim here, sir,” Goldstein responded.
Goldstein, who argued more than 40 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court before retiring in 2023, was indicted last year for allegedly failing to report millions of dollars he won in poker games, lying on mortgage loan documents and making improper payments through his former law firm Goldstein & Russell.
He has pleaded not guilty and blamed any financial reporting errors on an overreliance on his advisers and accountants.
Beaty questioned Goldstein about his lavish spending, including a $225,000 Bentley car, splurging at clubs and renting expensive apartments in Miami and other cities. “Poker. Travel. Cars. Watches. All while you owed millions of dollars to the IRS,” Beaty told jurors.
Goldstein testified that his personal spending on property while he owed taxes “has an element of being embarrassing” but was not illegal.
“I am not making excuses,” he said. “I should have had a different set of priorities. But it’s not a situation where I am just all the time wildly doing things.”
Jurors have heard from more than a dozen witnesses so far, including law firm leaders, IRS agents and other poker players in the high-stakes gambling circles Goldstein inhabited.
Jury deliberations in the trial could begin next week.
SEC Chair Paul Atkins has defended the agency’s enforcement shift as lawmakers question why Justin Sun’s case was paused.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Paul Atkins is facing scrutiny from lawmakers as the agency moves to reshape its cryptocurrency regulatory framework.
Democrats are questioning potential links between industry actors and President Donald Trump amid a broader decline in enforcement actions.
SEC Scrutinized Over Tron Case
During a House Financial Services Committee hearing, Democratic members zeroed in on the SEC’s decision to pause its case against Tron founder Justin Sun. Representative Maxine Waters pointed to what she described as a sweeping rollback of prior crypto enforcement actions after Trump entered the White House and new SEC leadership took over last year.
Waters referenced the regulator’s 2023 lawsuit against Sun, in which he was accused of organizing the unregistered sale of crypto securities tied to the TRX and BTT tokens and manipulating trading volumes.
Later in February 2025, the SEC asked the federal court overseeing the case to issue a stay, which paused the proceedings. Since that decision, Sun has become a major financial supporter of Trump-linked crypto ventures, purchasing billions of WLFI tokens, making him the largest backer of World Liberty Financial.
Waters also highlighted a more recent claim by his alleged former girlfriend, who publicly suggested she possesses evidence of TRX manipulation.
Atkins declined to address specifics of the case, telling lawmakers he could not comment on individual enforcement matters. He added that he would be open to further discussion in a confidential setting “to the extent the rules allow me to do that.”
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When asked whether the agency ever acts to protect investors in ways that could negatively affect Trump-affiliated businesses, he responded, “As far as what the Trump family does or not, I can’t speak to that.”
Trump’s Ties to Binance
Lawmakers also raised concerns about other high-profile litigation the SEC dropped last year, including cases against Binance, Ripple, Coinbase, Kraken, and Robinhood.
In May 2025, the financial watchdog ended its lawsuit against Binance, which it had sued in 2023 for offering unlicensed services and misrepresenting trading controls. Trump later also pardoned Zhao, while a stablecoin issued by WLF was used by an Abu Dhabi investment firm for a $2 billion investment in Binance.
“Explain to me how this happens without any enforcement action,” Representative Stephen Lynch said. “The reputational damage that the SEC is suffering right now is unbelievable. And you’re in the seat, sir. It’s your responsibility. I’m just asking for an explanation.”
The SEC Chair defended the regulator, saying it has a “robust enforcement effort” and continues to bring cases. However, data from Cornerstone Research shows that its overall legal actions fell 30% in 2025, while crypto-related cases dropped 60%.
Atkins, who became the organization’s chair in April 2025 after Gary Gensler’s departure, is known for criticizing the previous aggressive approach and framing his leadership as a move away from litigation-heavy tactics.
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Feb 11 (Reuters) – The Pentagon is pushing the top AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic to make their artificial-intelligence tools available on classified networks without many of the standard restrictions that the companies apply to users.
During a White House event on Tuesday, Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael told tech executives that the military is aiming to make the AI models available on both unclassified and classified domains, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The Pentagon is “moving to deploy frontier AI capabilities across all classification levels,” an official who requested anonymity told Reuters.
It is the latest development in ongoing negotiations between the Pentagon and the top generative AI companies over how the U.S. will use AI on a future battlefield that is already dominated by autonomous drone swarms, robots and cyber attacks.
Michael’s comments are also likely to intensify an already contentious debate over the military’s desire to use AI without restrictions and tech companies’ ability to set boundaries around how their tools are deployed.
Many AI companies are building custom tools for the U.S. military, most of which are available only on unclassified networks typically used for military administration. Only one AI company – Anthropic – is available in classified settings through third parties but the government is still bound by the company’s usage policies.
Classified networks are used to handle a wide range of more sensitive work that can include mission-planning or weapons targeting. Reuters could not determine how or when the Pentagon planned to deploy AI chatbots on classified networks.
Military officials are hoping to leverage AI’s power to synthesize information to help shape decisions. But while these tools are powerful, they can make mistakes and even make up information that might sound plausible at first glance. Such mistakes in classified settings could have deadly consequences, AI researchers say.
AI companies have sought to minimize the downside of their products by building safeguards within their models and asking customers to adhere to certain guidelines. But Pentagon officials have bristled at such restrictions, arguing that they should be able to deploy commercial AI tools as long as they comply with American law.
This week, OpenAI reached a deal with the Pentagon so that the military could use its tools, including ChatGPT, on an unclassified network called , which has been rolled out to more than 3 million Defense Department employees. As part of the deal, OpenAI agreed to remove many of its typical user restrictions although some guardrails remain.
Alphabet’s Google and xAI have previously struck similar deals.
In a statement, OpenAI said this week’s agreement is specific to unclassified use through genai.mil. Expanding on that agreement would require a new or modified agreement, a spokesperson said.
Similar discussions between OpenAI rival Anthropic and the Pentagon have been significantly more contentious, Reuters previously reported. Anthropic executives have told military officials that they do not want their technology used to target weapons autonomously and conduct U.S. domestic surveillance. Anthropic’s products include a chatbot called Claude.
“Anthropic is committed to protecting America’s lead in AI and helping the U.S. government counter foreign threats by giving our warfighters access to the most advanced AI capabilities,” an Anthropic spokesperson said. “Claude is already extensively used for national security missions by the U.S. government and we are in productive discussions with the Department of War about ways to continue that work.”
President Donald Trump has ordered the Department of Defense to rename itself the Department of War, a change that will require action by Congress.
(Reporting by David Jeans in New York and Deepa Seetharaman in San Francisco; Editing by Kenneth Li and Matthew Lewis)
