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  • Trump administration reaches a trade deal to lower Taiwan’s tariff barriers

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    WASHINGTON — The Trump administration reached a trade deal with Taiwan on Thursday, with Taiwan agreeing to remove or reduce 99% of its tariff barriers, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative said.

    The agreement comes as the U.S. remains reliant on Taiwan for its production of computer chips, the exporting of which contributed to a trade imbalance of nearly $127 billion during the first 11 months of 2025, according to the Census Bureau.

    Most of Taiwan’s exports to the U.S. will be taxed at a 15% rate, the USTR’s office said. The 15% rate is the same as that levied on other U.S. trading partners in the Asia-Pacific region, such as Japan and South Korea.

    Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick attended the signing of the reciprocal agreement, which occurred under the auspices of the American Institute in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States. Taiwan’s Vice Premier Li-chiun Cheng and its government minister Jen-ni Yang also attended the signing.

    “President Trump’s leadership in the Asia-Pacific region continues to generate prosperous trade ties for the United States with important partners across Asia, while further advancing the economic and national security interests of the American people,” Greer said in a statement.

    The Taiwanese government said in a statement that the tariff rate set in the agreement allows its companies to compete on a level field with Japan, South Korea and the European Union. It also said the agreement “eliminated” the disadvantage from a lack of a free trade agreement between Taiwan and the U.S.

    The deal comes ahead of President Donald Trump’s planned visit to China in April and suggests a deepening economic relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan.

    Taiwan is a self-ruled democracy that China claims as its own territory, to be annexed by force if necessary. Beijing prohibits all countries it has diplomatic relations with — including the U.S. — from having formal ties with Taipei.

    Under the deal, Taiwan will make investments of $250 billion in U.S. industries, such as computer chips, artificial intelligence applications and energy. The Taiwanese government says it will provide up to an additional $250 billion in credit guarantees to help smaller businesses invest in the U.S.

    The agreement would make it easier for the U.S. to sell autos, pharmaceutical drugs and food products in Taiwan. But the critical component might be that Taiwanese companies would invest in the production of computer chips in the U.S., possibly helping to ease the trade imbalance.

    The investments helped enable the U.S. to reduce its planned tariffs from as much as 32% initially to 15%.

    Taiwan’s government said it will submit the deal and investment plans to its legislature for approval.

    The U.S. side said the deal with Taiwan would help create several “world-class” industrial parks in America in order to help build up domestic manufacturing of advanced technologies such as chips. The Commerce Department in January described it as “a historic trade deal that will drive a massive reshoring of America’s semiconductor sector.”

    In return, the U.S. would give preferential treatment to Taiwan regarding the possible tariffs stemming from a Section 232 investigation of the importing of computer chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

    TSMC, the chip-making giant, is expected to be the key investor. It has committed to $165 billion in investments in the U.S., including not only fabrication plants but also a major research and development center that would help build a supply chain to power U.S. artificial intelligence ambitions. Major U.S. tech companies such as Nvidia and AMD rely on TSMC for manufacturing highly advanced chips.

    Taiwan also said the investments will be two-way, with U.S. companies also investing in key Taiwanese industries. Nvidia this week signed a land deal in Taipei to build a headquarters office there.

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  • A privacy breach at the IRS: Taxpayer data wrongly shared with DHS, court filing says

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    WASHINGTON — The IRS erroneously shared the taxpayer information of thousands of people with the Department of Homeland Security, as part of the agencies’ controversial agreement to share information on immigrants for the purpose of identifying and deporting people illegally in the U.S, according to a new court filing.

    The revelation stems from a data-sharing agreement signed last April by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, which allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records.

    A declaration filed Wednesday by IRS Chief Risk and Control Officer Dottie Romo stated that the IRS was only able to verify roughly 47,000 of the 1.28 million names ICE requested.

    For less than 5% of those individuals, the IRS gave ICE additional address information, potentially violating privacy rules created to protect taxpayer data.

    Romo added that Treasury notified DHS in January of the error and requested DHS’ assistance in “promptly taking steps to remediate the matter consistent with federal law,” which includes “appropriate disposal of any data provided to ICE by IRS based on incomplete or insufficient address information.”

    The IRS-DHS agreement set off litigation between advocacy groups and the federal government last year.

    Public Citizen filed a lawsuit against the Treasury secretary, the Homeland Security secretary and their respective agencies on behalf of several immigrant rights groups shortly after the agreement was signed.

    Most recently, a Massachusetts federal court ordered the IRS to stop sharing residential addresses with ICE. And last November, a federal court blocked the IRS from sharing information with DHS, saying the IRS illegally disseminated the tax data of some migrants last summer.

    The news of the erroneous disclosure was initially reported by The Washington Post. A spokesperson from the IRS did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

    Advocates fear that the potential unlawful release of taxpayer records could be used to maliciously target Americans, violate their privacy and create other ramifications.

    Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen said that “this breach of confidential information was part of the reason we filed our lawsuit in the first place. Sharing this private taxpayer data creates chaos and, as we’ve seen this past year, if federal agents use this private information to track down individuals, it can endanger lives.”

    Tom Bowman, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology said that “the improper sharing of taxpayer data is unsafe, unlawful, and subject to serious criminal penalties.”

    “Once taxpayer data is opened to immigration enforcement, mistakes are inevitable and the consequences fall on innocent people,” Bowman said. “The disclosure of thousands of confidential records unfortunately shows precisely why strict legal firewalls exist and have — until now — been treated as an important guardrail.”

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  • Italian police fire tear gas as protesters clash near Winter Olympics hockey venue

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    MILAN — Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday.

    The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands against the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of U.S. agents in Italy.

    Police held off the violent demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink, after the skirmish. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including families with small children and students, had dispersed.

    Earlier, a group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (a half-mile) from the Olympic Village that’s housing around 1,500 athletes.

    Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue. A heavy police presence guarded the entire route.

    There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.

    The demonstration coincided with U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony on Friday.

    He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, far from the protest, which also was against the deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the U.S. delegation.

    U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the U.S. is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.

    At the larger, peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent trees felled to build the new bobsled run in Cortina. A group of dancers performed to beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, one a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem.

    “Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” read a banner by a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Association of Proletariat Excursionists organized the cutout trees.

    “They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure project, citing urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass on debt to Italian taxpayers.

    Homemade signs read “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the final one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”

    The demonstration followed another last week when hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.

    Like last week, demonstrators Saturday said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence, despite official statements that a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in U.S. diplomatic territory, and not operational on the streets.

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  • Norwegian crown princess issues apology amid scrutiny of Epstein links

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    Norwegian crown princess issues apology to those she has ‘disappointed’ amid scrutiny of Epstein links

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  • Newly obtained emails undermine RFK Jr.’s testimony about 2019 Samoa trip before measles outbreak

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    Over two days of questioning during his Senate confirmation hearings last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated the same answer.

    He said the closely scrutinized 2019 trip he took to Samoa, which came before a devastating measles outbreak, had “nothing to do with vaccines.”

    Documents obtained by The Guardian and The Associated Press undermine that testimony. Emails sent by staffers at the U.S. Embassy and the United Nations provide, for the first time, an inside look at how Kennedy’s trip came about and include contemporaneous accounts suggesting his concerns about vaccine safety motivated the visit.

    The documents have prompted concerns from at least one U.S. senator that the lawyer and activist now leading America’s health policy lied to Congress over the visit. Samoan officials later said Kennedy’s trip bolstered the credibility of anti-vaccine activists ahead of the measles outbreak, which sickened thousands of people and killed 83, mostly children under age 5.

    The revelations, which come as measles outbreaks erupt across the U.S., build on previous criticism that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine record makes him unfit to serve as health secretary, a role in which he has worked to radically reshape immunization policy and public perceptions of vaccines.

    The newly disclosed documents also reveal previously unknown details of the trip, including that a U.S. Embassy employee helped Kennedy’s team connect with Samoan officials. Kennedy, then running his anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, did not publicly discuss the trip at the time, but he has since said his “purpose” for going there was not related to vaccines and “I ended up having conversations with people, some of whom I never intended to meet.” Besides meeting with anti-vaccine activists, Kennedy met with Samoan officials, including the health minister at the time, who told NBC News that Kennedy shared his view that vaccines were not safe. Kennedy has said he went there to introduce a medical data system.

    The U.S. State Department turned over the emails — many of which are heavily redacted — as a result of an open records lawsuit brought with the assistance of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

    These disclosures come at a time when Kennedy, as President Donald Trump’s health secretary, has used his power and enormous public influence to overhaul federal immunization guidance and raise suspicion about the safety and importance of vaccines, including the measles vaccine. Meanwhile, measles outbreaks in multiple U.S. states have rolled back decades of success in eliminating the highly contagious disease, putting the country on the verge of losing its elimination status. The latest figures show more than 875 people in South Carolina have been infected.

    Kennedy addressed questions about his trip to Samoa during two Senate confirmation hearings for his appointment as health secretary.

    “My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines,” he said under questioning by Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts in his Jan. 30, 2025, hearing.

    “Did the trip have nothing to do with vaccines as you told my colleagues in Senate Finance yesterday?” Markey asked later.

    “Nothing to do with vaccines,” Kennedy replied.

    One of the senators who questioned Kennedy about Samoa during his confirmation hearings, Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, responded to the records by saying, “Kennedy’s anti-vaccine agenda is directly responsible for the deaths of innocent children.”

    “Lying to Congress about his role in the deadly measles outbreak in Samoa only underscores the danger he now poses to families across America,” Wyden said in an email. “He and his allies will be held responsible.”

    Taylor Harvey, a spokesman for Wyden and other Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, said it is a crime to make a false statement to Congress and “casual, false denials to Congress will not be swept under the rug.”

    A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to questions sent by email and text message.

    Kennedy has said his visit did not influence people’s decisions on whether to get themselves or their children immunized.

    “I had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa. I never told anybody not to vaccinate,” he told the 2023 documentary “Shot in the Arm.” “I didn’t, you know, go there for any reason to do with that.”

    Anti-vaccine activists in the United States became interested in Samoa in July 2018, when two babies died after being injected with a tainted measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine that had been improperly prepared. The government halted the vaccine program for 10 months, until the following April. Vaccination rates plummeted.

    The records show that during the time when no vaccines were being administered, Kennedy’s group, Children’s Health Defense, was trying to connect Kennedy with Samoa’s prime minister. A January 2019 email from the group’s then-president, Lyn Redwood, to Samoan activist Edwin Tamasese asked him to “please share this letter with the Honorable Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi for Robert Kennedy, Jr.”

    About two months later, Tamasese wrote back to Redwood, with a cc: to Kennedy and others.

    “Hope all is well, organizing logistics with the PMs office and wanted to confirm how many people are coming? Also just wanted to confirm costs etc for the visit and how this will be handled,” he wrote.

    Tamasese immediately forwarded the chain of messages to the personal and government email accounts of Benjamin Harding, at the time an employee of the U.S. Embassy in Apia, Samoa.

    “just sent this. expecting an answer tomorrow as I think it is Sunday there. your letter looks good,” Tamasese told Harding.

    While the U.S. Embassy in the past has acknowledged that an unnamed staffer attended an event with Kennedy and anti-vaccine activists while he was in Samoa, the records show that Harding wasn’t a passive attendee: He helped arrange Kennedy’s visit and connected Kennedy’s delegation with Samoan government officials.

    In a May 23, 2019, email to Harding’s personal email address, a staffer for the Samoan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade wrote: “Hi Benj, Currently awaiting the official bio-notes for Mr Kennedy and Dr Graven to convey to the Hon. Prime Minister and Hon. Minister of Health for their reference. Please note, that this needs to be sent with our official letter when requesting an appointment.”

    Harding forwarded the ministry’s request to Dr. Michael Graven, then the chief information officer at Children’s Health Defense.

    Harding did not respond to messages seeking comment sent to several listed email addresses, social media accounts, a phone number listed to his parents and a general mailbox at a company he lists as a current workplace on his LinkedIn profile.

    Embassy staffers got a tip about Harding’s involvement in the trip from Sheldon Yett, then the representative for Pacific island countries at UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.

    “We now understand that the Prime Minister has invited Robert Kennedy and his team to come to Samoa to investigate the safety of the vaccine,” Yett wrote in a May 22, 2019, email to an embassy staffer based in New Zealand. “The staff member in question seems to have had a role in facilitating this.”

    Two days later, a top embassy staff member in Apia wrote to Scott Brown, then the Republican U.S. president’s ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, alerting him to Kennedy’s trip and Harding’s involvement.

    “The real reason Kennedy is coming is to raise awareness about vaccinations, more specifically some of the health concerns associated with vaccinating (from his point of view),” the embassy official, Antone Greubel, wrote. “It turns out our very own Benjamin Harding played some role in a personal capacity to bring him here.” Greubel wrote that he told Harding to “cease and desist from any further involvement with this travel,” though the rest of the sentence is redacted.

    Yett did not respond to questions, though he said in an email, “that was a very grim time in Samoa.”

    Brown, who is running for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire, declined to comment. Greubel referred questions to a press office at the State Department. A State Department spokesperson would not answer questions about the records, saying that as a general practice they do not comment on personnel matters.

    Harding left the embassy in July 2020, though he remains in Samoa, according to his LinkedIn account.

    Kennedy ultimately visited in June 2019. While there, he and his wife, actor Cheryl Hines, were photographed greeting the prime minister during an Independence Day celebration. He also met with government health officials as well as a group of figures who have cast doubt on vaccines, including Tamasese.

    The Guardian and the AP could find no record of Kennedy publicly discussing the purpose of his trip until after measles struck. In 2021, he wrote that he went there to discuss “the introduction of a medical informatics system” to track drug safety. He said Samoan officials “were curious to measure health outcomes following the ‘natural experiment’ created by the national respite from vaccines.”

    Since then, he has said his reason for going to Samoa was not related to vaccines.

    Redwood, the former Children’s Health Defense president who made early outreach to Samoa, is now an employee at HHS, reportedly working on vaccine safety.

    During the measles outbreak, Kennedy wrote a four-page letter to Samoa’s prime minister suggesting without evidence that the measles infections were due to a defective vaccine and floating other unfounded theories.

    ___

    This story was jointly reported and published by The Guardian and The Associated Press.

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  • Vance: Olympics are ‘one of the few things’ that unite Americans

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    MILAN — U.S. Vice President JD Vance arrived with his family Thursday, telling U.S. athletes competing in the Milan Cortina Winter Games that the competition “is one of the few things that unites the entire country” before taking his family to see a hockey game.

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    By MICHELLE L. PRICE – Associated Press

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  • What to know as Iran and US set for nuclear talks in Oman

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran and the United States will hold talks Friday in Oman, their latest over Tehran’s nuclear program after Israel launched a 12-day war on the country in June and the Islamic Republic launched a bloody crackdown on nationwide protests.

    U.S. President Donald Trump has kept up pressure on Iran, suggesting America could attack Iran over the killing of peaceful demonstrators or if Tehran launches mass executions over the protests. Meanwhile, Trump has pushed Iran’s nuclear program back into the frame as well after the June war disrupted five rounds of talks held in Rome and Muscat, Oman, last year.

    Trump began the diplomacy initially by writing a letter last year to Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to jump start these talks. Khamenei has warned Iran would respond to any attack with an attack of its own, particularly as the theocracy he commands reels following the protests.

    Here’s what to know about Iran’s nuclear program and the tensions that have stalked relations between Tehran and Washington since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

    Trump dispatched the letter to Khamenei on March 5, 2025, then gave a television interview the next day in which he acknowledged sending it. He said: “I’ve written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing.’”

    Since returning to the White House, the president has been pushing for talks while ratcheting up sanctions and suggesting a military strike by Israel or the U.S. could target Iranian nuclear sites.

    A previous letter from Trump during his first term drew an angry retort from the supreme leader.

    But Trump’s letters to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his first term led to face-to-face meetings, though no deals to limit Pyongyang’s atomic bombs and a missile program capable of reaching the continental U.S.

    Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, has mediated talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff. The two men have met face to face after indirect talks, a rare occurrence due to the decades of tensions between the countries.

    It hasn’t been all smooth, however. Witkoff at one point made a television appearance in which he suggested 3.67% enrichment for Iran could be something the countries could agree on. But that’s exactly the terms set by the 2015 nuclear deal struck under former President Barack Obama, from which Trump unilaterally withdrew America. Witkoff, Trump and other American officials in the time since have maintained Iran can have no enrichment under any deal, something to which Tehran insists it won’t agree.

    Those negotiations ended, however, with Israel launching the war in June on Iran.

    Israel launched what became a 12-day war on Iran in June that included the U.S. bombing Iranian nuclear sites. Iran later acknowledged in November that the attacks saw it halt all uranium enrichment in the country, though inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have been unable to visit the bombed sites.

    Iran soon experienced protests that began in late December over the collapse of the country’s rial currency. Those demonstrations soon became nationwide, sparking Tehran to launch a bloody crackdown that killed thousands and saw tens of thousands detained by authorities.

    Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials increasingly threaten to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran now enriches uranium to near weapons-grade levels of 60%, the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.

    Under the original 2015 nuclear deal, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium up to 3.67% purity and to maintain a uranium stockpile of 300 kilograms (661 pounds). The last report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s program put its stockpile at some 9,870 kilograms (21,760 pounds), with a fraction of it enriched to 60%.

    U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.” Iranian officials have threatened to pursue the bomb.

    Iran was once one of the U.S.’s top allies in the Mideast under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA had fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.

    But in January 1979, the shah, fatally ill with cancer, fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. The Islamic Revolution followed, led by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and created Iran’s theocratic government.

    Later that year, university students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s saw the U.S. back Saddam Hussein. The “Tanker War” during that conflict saw the U.S. launch a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea, while the U.S. later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the U.S. military said it mistook for a warplane.

    Iran and the U.S. have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since, with relations peaking when Tehran made the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Mideast that persist today.

    ___

    The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Trump and Xi discuss Iran in wide-ranging call as US presses China and others to break from Tehran

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    WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed the situation in Iran in a wide-ranging call as the U.S. administration pushes Beijing and others to further isolate Tehran.

    Trump said the two leaders also discussed a broad range of other critical issues in the U.S.-China relationship, including trade and Taiwan and his plans to visit Beijing in April.

    “The relationship with China, and my personal relationship with President Xi, is an extremely good one, and we both realize how important it is to keep it that way,” Trump said in a social media posting about the call.

    The Chinese government, in a readout of the call, said the two leaders discussed major summits that both nations will host in the coming year that could present opportunities for them to meet. The Chinese statement, however, made no mention of Trump’s expected April visit to Beijing.

    Trump and Xi discussed Iran as tensions remain high between Washington and Tehran over Iran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests last month. The U.S. president says he’s weighing taking military action against the Middle Eastern country.

    Trump is also pressing Iran to make concessions over its nuclear program, which his Republican administration says was already set back by the U.S. bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites during the 12-day war Israel launched against Iran in June.

    U.S. and Iranians officials said Wednesday they have agreed to hold high-level talks on Friday i n Oman. The talks had initially been slated for Turkey but were shifted to the Gulf country at Iran’s insistence. A White House official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the administration remains “very skeptical” that the talks will be successful but agreed to go along with the change in plans out of respect for allies in the region.

    Trump announced last month that the U.S. would impose a 25% tax on imports to the United States from countries that do business with Iran. China is Iran’s biggest trading partner.

    Years of sanctions aimed at stopping Iran’s nuclear program have left the country isolated. But Tehran still did nearly $125 billion in international trade in 2024, including $32 billion with China, $28 billion with the United Arab Emirates and $17 billion with Turkey, the World Trade Organization says.

    China also made clear that it has no intention of stepping away from its long-term plans of reunification with Taiwan, a self-governing, democratic island operating independently from mainland China, though Beijing claims it as its own territory.

    The Trump administration in December announced a massive package of arms sales to Taiwan valued at more than $10 billion that includes medium-range missiles, howitzers and drones. The move continues to draw an angry response from Beijing.

    “Taiwan will never be allowed to separate from China,” the Chinese government statement said. “The U.S. must handle the issue of arms sales to Taiwan with prudence.”

    Neither Trump nor the Chinese government in its statement raised whether the U.S. leader’s repeated calls for a U.S. takeover of Greenland, the Arctic territory controlled by Denmark, came up during the conversation.

    Trump has made his case for the U.S. taking over the strategic island as necessary to rebuff Chinese and Russian encroachment, even as experts have repeatedly rebuffed Trump’s claims of Chinese and Russian military forces lurking off Greenland’s coastline. Denmark and Greenland as well as several European government leaders have pushed back against Trump’s takeover calls.

    Separately, Xi also spoke on Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Xi’s engagement with Trump and Putin comes as the last remaining nuclear arms pact, known as the New START treaty, between Russia and the United States is set to expire Thursday, removing any caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century.

    Trump has indicated he would like to keep limits on nuclear weapons but wants to involve China in a potential new treaty.

    “I actually feel strongly that if we’re going to do it, I think China should be a member of the extension,” Trump told The New York Times last month. “China should be a part of the agreement.”

    The call with Xi also coincided with a ministerial meeting that the Trump administration convened in Washington with several dozen European, Asian and African nations to discuss how to rebuild global supply chains of critical minerals without Beijing.

    Critical minerals are needed for everything from jet engines to smartphones. China dominates the market for those ingredients crucial to high-tech products.

    “What is before all of us is an opportunity at self-reliance that we never have to rely on anybody else except for each other, for the critical minerals necessary to sustain our industries and to sustain growth,” Vice President JD Vance said at the gathering.

    Xi has recently held a series of meetings with Western leaders who have sought to boost ties with China amid growing concerns about Trump’s tariff policies and calls for the U.S. to take over Greenland, a Danish territory.

    The disruption to global trade under Trump has made expanding trade and investment more imperative for many U.S. economic partners. Vietnam and the European Union upgraded ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership last month, two days after the EU and India announced a free-trade agreement. And Canada struck a deal last month to cut its 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars in return for lower tariffs on Canadian farm products.

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  • Trump administration presses efforts to ensure supply of critical minerals outside of China

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    WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is expected to unveil its grandest plan yet to rebuild supply chains of critical minerals needed for everything from jet engines to smartphones, likely through purchase agreements with partners on top of creating a $12 billion U.S. strategic reserve to help counter China’s dominance.

    Vice President JD Vance is set to deliver a keynote address Wednesday at a meeting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is hosting with officials from several dozen European, Asian and African nations. The U.S. is expected to sign deals on supply chain logistics, though details have not yet been revealed. Rubio met Tuesday with foreign ministers from South Korea and India to discuss critical minerals mining and processing.

    The meeting and expected agreements will come just two days after President Donald Trump announced “Project Vault,” or a stockpile of critical minerals to be funded with a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Export and Import Bank and nearly $1.67 billion in private capital.

    The Trump administration is making such bold moves after China, which controls 70% of the world’s rare earths mining and 90% of the processing, choked off the flow of the elements in response to Trump’s tariff war. The two superpowers are in a one-year truce after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in October and agreed to pull back on high tariffs and stepped up rare earth restrictions.

    But China’s limits remain tighter than they were before Trump took office.

    “We don’t want to ever go through what we went through a year ago,” Trump said on Monday when announcing Project Vault.

    Other countries might join with the Trump administration in buying up critical minerals and taking other steps to spur industry development because the trade war revealed how vulnerable Western counties are to China, said Pini Althaus, who founded Oklahoma rare earth miner USA Rare Earth in 2019.

    “They’re looking at setting up sort of a buyers’ club, if you will,” said Althaus, who now is working to develop new mines in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as CEO of Cove Capital. “The key producers and key consumers of critical minerals will sort of get together and work on pricing structures, floor pricing and other things.”

    The government last week also made its fourth direct investment in an American critical minerals producer when it extended $1.6 billion to USA Rare Earth in exchange for stock and a repayment agreement.

    Seeking government funding these days is like meeting with private equity investors because officials are scrutinizing companies to ensure anyone they invest in can deliver, Althaus said. And the government is demanding terms designed to generate a return for taxpayers as loans are repaid and stock prices increase, he said.

    Meanwhile, the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s board this week approved the $10 billion loan — the largest in its history — to help finance the setup of the U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve. It is tasked with ensuring access to critical minerals and related products for manufacturers, including battery maker Clarios, energy equipment manufacturer GE Vernova, digital storage company Western Digital and aerospace giant Boeing, according to the policy bank.

    Bank President and Chairman John Jovanovic told CNBC that the project creates a public-private partnership formula that “is uniquely suited and puts America’s best foot forward.”

    “What it does is it creates a scenario where there are no free riders. Everybody pitches in to solve this huge problem,” he said.

    Manufacturers, which benefit the most from the reserve, are making a long-term financial commitment, Jovanovic said, while the government loan spurs private investments.

    The stockpile strategy may help spark a “more organic” pricing model that excludes China, which has used its dominance to flood the market with lower-priced products to squeeze out competitors, said Wade Senti, president of the U.S. permanent magnet company AML.

    The Trump administration also has injected public money directly into the sector. The Pentagon has shelled out nearly $5 billion over the past year to help ensure its access to the materials after the trade war laid bare just how beholden the U.S. is to China.

    A bipartisan group of lawmakers last month proposed creating a new agency with $2.5 billion to spur production of rare earths and the other critical minerals. The lawmakers applauded the steps by the Trump administration.

    “It’s a clear sign that there is bipartisan support for securing a robust domestic supply of critical minerals that both reduces our reliance on China and stabilizes the market,” Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Todd Young, R-Ind., said in a joint statement Tuesday.

    Building up a stockpile will help American companies weather future rare earth supply disruptions, but that will likely be a long-term effort because the materials are still scarce right now with China’s restrictions, said David Abraham, a rare earths expert who has followed the industry for decades and wrote the book “The Elements of Power.”

    The Trump administration has focused on reinvigorating critical minerals production, but Abraham said it’s also important to encourage development of manufacturing that will use them. He noted that Trump’s decisions to cut incentives for electric vehicles and wind turbines have undercut demand for these elements in America.

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  • Trump signs bill to end partial government shutdown

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    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed a roughly $1.2 trillion government funding bill Tuesday that ends the partial federal shutdown that began over the weekend and sets the stage for an intense debate in Congress over Homeland Security funding.

    The president moved quickly to sign the bill after the House approved it with a 217-214 vote.

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    By KEVIN FREKING – Associated Press

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  • Football, politics and protest: This year’s Super Bowl comes at a tinderbox moment in the US

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    WASHINGTON — Don’t tune into the Super Bowl hoping for a break from the tumultuous politics gripping the U.S.

    The NFL is facing pressure ahead of Sunday’s game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots to take a more explicit stance against the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement. More than 184,000 people have signed a petition calling on the league to denounce the potential presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Super Bowl, which is being held at Levi’s Stadium in the San Francisco Bay Area. The liberal group MoveOn plans to deliver the petition to the NFL’s New York City headquarters on Tuesday.

    Meanwhile, anticipation is building around how Bad Bunny, the halftime show’s Spanish-speaking headliner, will address the moment. He has criticized President Donald Trump on everything from his hurricane response in his native Puerto Rico to his treatment of immigrants. On Sunday night, he blasted ICE while accepting an award at the Grammys. His latest tour skipped the continental U.S. because of fears that his fans could be targeted by immigration agents.

    Trump has said he doesn’t plan to attend this year’s game, unlike last year, and he has derided Bad Bunny as a “terrible choice.” A Republican senator is calling it “the woke bowl.” And a prominent conservative group plans to hold an alternative show that it hopes will steal attention from the main event.

    The Super Bowl is one of the few remaining cultural touchstones viewed by millions of people in real time and the halftime show is no stranger to controversy, perhaps most notably Janet Jackson’s 2004 performance in which her breast was briefly exposed. But there are few parallels to this year’s game, which has the potential to become an unusual mix of sports, entertainment, politics and protest. And it will unfold at a tinderbox moment for the U.S., just two weeks after Alex Pretti’s killing by federal agents in Minneapolis reignited a national debate over the Trump administration’s hard-line law enforcement tactics.

    “The Super Bowl is supposed to be an escape, right? We’re supposed to go there to not have to talk about the serious things of this country,” said Tiki Barber, a former player for the New York Giants who played in the Super Bowl in 2001 and has since attended several as a commentator. “I hope it doesn’t devolve, because if it does, then I think we’re really losing touch with what’s important in our society.”

    The 31-year-old Bad Bunny, born in Puerto Rico as Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, has elevated Latino music into the mainstream and gained global fame with songs almost entirely in Spanish — something that irks many of his conservative detractors. He has leaned into the controversy, referring to the halftime show when he hosted “Saturday Night Live” in October by joking “everybody is happy about it — even Fox News.”

    He segued into a few sentences in Spanish, expressing Latino pride in the achievement, and finished by saying in English, “If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn!”

    Those who follow him closely doubt that he’ll back down now.

    “He has made it very clear what he stands for,” said Vanessa Díaz, a professor at Loyola Marymount University and co-author of “P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance.” “So I can’t imagine that this would all go away with the Super Bowl.”

    The halftime show is a collaboration between the NFL, Roc Nation and Apple Music. Roc Nation curates the performers and Apple Music distributes the performance while the NFL ultimately controls the stage, broadcast and branding.

    The NFL, which is working to expand its appeal across the world, including into Latin America, said it never considered removing Bad Bunny from the halftime show even after criticism from Trump and some of his supporters.

    NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on Monday described the singer as “one of the great artists in the world,” as well as someone who understands the power of the Super Bowl performance “to unite people and to be able to bring people together.”

    “I think artists in the past have done that. I think Bad Bunny understands that. And I think you’ll have a great performance,” Goodell told reporters during his annual Super Bowl press conference.

    About half of Americans approved of Bad Bunny as the halftime performer, according to an October poll from Quinnipiac University. But there were substantial gaps with about three-quarters of Democrats backing the pick compared to just 16% of Republicans. About 60% of Black and Hispanic adults approved of the selection compared to 41% of whites.

    Republicans are eager to maintain Latino support in their bid to keep control of Congress. But as the Super Bowl draws near, many in the GOP have kept up their Bad Bunny critiques.

    Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, the former head football coach at Auburn University who is now running for governor, derided the “Woke Bowl” on Newsmax last week and said he’ll watch an alternative event hosted by Turning Point USA.

    The group founded by the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk said Monday that Kid Rock, a vocal Trump supporter, would be among the performers at its event.

    In recent days, Department of Homeland Security official Jeff Brannigan hosted a series of private calls with local officials and the NFL in which he indicated that ICE does not plan to conduct any law enforcement actions the week of the Super Bowl or at the game, according to two NFL officials with direct knowledge of the conversations.

    ICE is not expected to be among more than a dozen DHS-related agencies providing security at the game, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

    While that is the plan, some worry that Trump and his MAGA allies who lead DHS can change their minds ahead of Sunday’s game given their recent statements.

    DHS official Corey Lewandowski, a key adviser to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, said in October that ICE agents would be conducting immigration enforcement at the game.

    “There is nowhere that you can provide safe haven to people who are in the country illegally, not the Super Bowl, not anywhere else,” he said at the time.

    Asked to clarify ICE’s role this week, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin refused to say whether federal immigration agents will be present for the Super Bowl.

    “Those who are here legally and not breaking other laws have nothing to fear,” she said. “We will not disclose future operations or discuss personnel. Super Bowl security will entail a whole-of-government response conducted in line with the U.S. Constitution.”

    The progressive group MoveOn will host a Tuesday rally outside the NFL headquarters in New York to present a petition telling the league, “No ICE at the Super Bowl.”

    “This year’s Super Bowl should be remembered for big plays and Bad Bunny, not masked and armed ICE agents running around the stadium inflicting chaos, violence, and trauma on fans and stadium workers,” MoveOn spokesperson Britt Jacovich said. “The NFL can’t stay on the sidelines, the league has a responsibility to act like adults, protect Super Bowl fans and stadium workers, and keep ICE out of the game.”

    In an interview, San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie was optimistic that the event would be a success even in a politically tense climate.

    “We are going to keep everybody safe — our residents, our visitors,” he said. “Obviously with everything going on, we’re staying on top of it, monitoring everything. But I expect everything to be safe and fun.”

    ___

    Peoples reported from New York.

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  • Trump administration to create a strategic reserve for rare earths elements

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    WASHINGTON — The Trump administration plans to deploy nearly $12 billion to create a strategic reserve of rare earth elements, a stockpile that could counter China’s ability to use its dominance of these hard to process metals as leverage in trade talks.

    The White House confirmed on Monday the start of “Project Vault,” which would initially be funded by a $10 billion loan from the US Export-Import Bank and nearly $1.67 billion in private capital. The minerals kept in the reserve would help to shield the manufacturers of autos, electronics and other goods from any supply chain disruptions.

    During trade talks last year spurred by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, the Chinese government restricted the exporting of rare earths that are needed for jet engines, radar systems, electric vehicles, laptops and phones.

    China represents about 70% of the world’s rare earths mining and 90% of global rare earths processing. That gave it a chokehold on the sector that has caused the U.S. to nurture alternative sources of the elements, creating a stockpile similar to the national reserve for petroleum.

    The loan would be for a period of 15 years. The U.S. government has previously taken stakes in the rare earths miner MP Materials, as well as providing financial backing to the companies Vulcan Elements and USA Rare Earth.

    Bloomberg News was the first to report the creation of the rare earths strategic reserve.

    Trump is scheduled on Monday to meet with General Motors CEO Mary Barra and mining industry billionaire Robert Friedland.

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  • US futures and world shares slip as worries over Trump’s Fed chief pick and AI weigh on markets

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    U.S. futures and world shares skidded on Monday as worries over President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next Federal Reserve chair amplified jitters over a possible bubble in the artificial intelligence boom.

    South Korea’s exchange, which is heavily influenced by tech-related developments, briefly suspended trading as its benchmark Kospi bounced, closing 5.3% lower at 4,949.67. Samsung Electronics gave up 6.3%, while chip maker SK Hynix sank 8.7%.

    The Kospi has been forging records for weeks as big tech companies piggybacked on the AI craze with deals with major players like chip maker Nvidia and OpenAI.

    In early European trading, Germany’s DAX edged less than 0.1% lower to 24,528.57. The CAC 40 in Paris shed 0.2% to 8,108.56, while Britain’s FTSE 100 declined 0.3% to 10,195.88.

    The future for the S&P 500 sank 0.7%, while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.4%.

    Markets took a hit as investors considered how Kevin Warsh, Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Reserve after Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s term ends in May might handle interest rates.

    Warsh’s nomination requires Senate approval. But financial markets fear the Fed may lose some of its independence because of Trump, who has pushed hard for more and faster rate cuts. That fear has helped catapult skyward the price of gold and weaken the U.S. dollar’s value over the last year.

    “People do not get handed the keys to the most powerful central bank on earth because they plan to drive in the opposite direction of the people who gave them the keys,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.

    Early Monday, the price of gold fell 1.9%, while silver bounced back slightly, gaining 0.2%. Both plunged Friday as record runs in precious metals markets ground to a halt.

    On Friday, the price of gold dropped 11.4%, suddenly losing momentum after a tremendous rally where it roughly doubled over 12 months. It topped $5,000 for the first time on Jan. 26 and was around $5,600 at one point on Thursday.

    Silver, which had been on a similar, jaw-dropping tear, plunged 31.4%.

    U.S. benchmark crude oil lost $3.46 to $61.75 per barrel, while Brent crude, the international standard, fell $3.47 to $65.85 per barrel.

    Speaking to reporters during the weekend, Trump said Iran should negotiate a “satisfactory” deal to prevent the Middle Eastern country from getting any nuclear weapons.

    “I don’t know that they will. But they are talking to us. Seriously talking to us,” he said.

    That comment apparently assuaged some worries over potential disruptions to oil supplies that had pushed prices higher, analysts said.

    In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 gave up early gains, sinking 1.3% to 52,655.18.

    Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 2.2% to 26,775.57, while the Shanghai Composite index sank 2.5% to 4,015.75.

    In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 fell 1% to 8,778.60.

    Taiwan’s Taiex lost 1.4%.

    On Friday, the S&P 500 dropped 0.4% and the Dow lost 0.4%. The Nasdaq composite lost 0.9%.

    The Fed chair has a big influence on the economy and markets worldwide by helping to dictate where the U.S. central bank moves interest rates. That affects prices for all kinds of investments, as the Fed tries to keep the U.S. job market humming without letting inflation get out of control.

    A report released Friday showed U.S. inflation at the wholesale level was hotter last month than economists expected. That could put pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates steady for a while instead of cutting them, as it did late last year.

    The longtime assumption has been that the Fed should operate separately from the rest of Washington so that it can make moves that are painful in the short term but necessary for the long term. To get inflation down to the Fed’s goal of 2%, for example, may require the unpopular choice to keep interest rates high and grind down on the economy for a while.

    In other action early Monday, the dollar fell to 154.88 Japanese yen from 154.94 yen. The euro was unchanged at $1.1853.

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  • A who’s who of powerful men amed in Epstein files

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    NEW YORK — From tech titans to Wall Street power brokers and foreign dignitaries, a who’s who of powerful men make appearances in the huge trove of documents released by the Justice Department in connection with its investigations of Jeffrey Epstein.

    All have denied having anything to do with his sexual abuse of girls and young women. Yet some of them maintained friendships with Epstein, or developed them anew, even after news stories made him widely known as an alleged abuser of young girls.

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    By PHILIP MARCELO – Associated Press

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  • Blast in Iran port city kills 1, wounds 14 before Strait of Hormuz naval drill watched by US

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — An explosion tore through an apartment building Saturday in Iran ‘s port city of Bandar Abbas, killing a 4-year-old girl as local media footage purportedly showed a security force member being carried out by rescuers.

    The blast happened a day before a planned naval drill by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil traded passes. Already, the U.S. military had warned Iran not to threaten its warships or commercial traffic in the strait, on which Bandar Abbas sits.

    State television quoted a local fire official as blaming the blast on a gas leak. Media reported at least 14 others suffered injuries in the explosion at the eight-story building, which blew out windows and covered the street below in debris.

    A local newspaper, Sobh-e Sahel, aired footage of one of its correspondents speaking in front of the building. The footage included a sequence that showed a man in black boots and a green security force uniform being carried out on a stretcher. He wore a neck brace and appeared to be in pain, his left hand covering the branch insignia on his uniform.

    The local newspaper did not acknowledge the security force member being carried out elsewhere in its reporting. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard itself did not discuss the blast, other than to deny that a Guard navy commander had been hurt in the explosion.

    Another explosion blamed on a gas explosion Saturday in the southwestern city of Ahvaz killed five people, state media reported.

    It comes as Iran remains tense over a threat by U.S. President Donald Trump to potentially launch a military strike on the country over the killing of peaceful protesters or the possible mass execution of those detained in a major crackdown over the demonstrations.

    Ali Larijani, a top security official in Iran, wrote on X late Saturday that “structural arrangements for negotiations are progressing.” However, there is no public sign of any talks with the United States, which Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has repeatedly ruled out.

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  • Starbucks Feels the Heat as More Chains Compete for US Coffee Drinkers

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Americans are drinking more coffee than they have in decades. But fewer of them are getting it from Starbucks.

    The company that revolutionized U.S. coffee culture remains America’s biggest player, with nearly 17,000 U.S. stores and plans to open hundreds more. But it’s facing unprecedented competition, which will make it harder to win back the customers it already lost.

    Starbucks’ share of spending at all U.S. coffee shops fell in 2024 and 2025; it now stands at 48%, down from 52% in 2023, according to Technomic, a food industry consulting firm. Dunkin ‘, a perennial rival that just opened its 10,000th U.S. store, gained market share in both of those years.

    Starbucks has other challengers, like the fast-growing drive-thru chains 7 Brew, Scooter’s Coffee and Dutch Bros. Chinese chains like Luckin Coffee and Mixue are opening U.S. stores. High-end coffee shop Blue Bottle, which has 78 U.S. stores, has opened two more since the start of the year. Even McDonald’s and Taco Bell are bolstering their beverage offerings.

    “People haven’t fallen out of love with Starbucks, but they’re now polyamorous in their coffee choices,” said Chris Kayes, chair of the management department in the George Washington University School of Business. “People are now experimenting with other coffees, and they’re seeing what’s out there.”

    Americans love coffee. In both 2024 and 2025, an estimated 66% of Americans reported drinking coffee every day, up 7% from 2020, according to the National Coffee Association, an industry trade group.

    Coffee chains are racing to cash in on that demand. The number of chain coffee stores in the U.S. jumped 19% to more than 34,500 over the last six years, according to Technomic, a consulting firm that researches the foodservice industry.

    Seattle-based Starbucks was a small, regional chain when former CEO Howard Schultz acquired it in 1987. Now, other small chains are seeing explosive growth. Nebraska-based Scooter’s Coffee had 200 locations in 2019; it now has more than 850. Arkansas-based 7 Brew, which had 14 locations in 2019, now has more than 600.

    “There’s too much supply relative to demand,” said Neil Saunders, a managing director and retail analyst at consulting firm GlobalData Retail

    Saunders said Starbucks’ size is somewhat of a disadvantage, since it has less ability to grow sales by opening new locations.

    “Honestly, they’re pretty saturated,” Saunders said. “They’re a very mature business.”

    “Growth doesn’t require us to become something new. It requires us to be exceptionally good at what we already are,” Starbucks Chief Operating Officer Mike Grams said.

    Starbucks expects to open more than 575 new U.S. stores over the next three years. It developed a smaller-format store that is cheaper to build but still has indoor seating, drive-thru lanes and mobile pickup. The company said the reduced scale would allow Starbucks stores to operate in locations they couldn’t before.

    Starbucks is also adding new products, like updated pastries and snackable foods that are high in protein and fiber, to try to win back customers.

    Lack of menu innovation is one reason Starbucks has struggled, especially among younger consumers who like novelty and will try new places to find it, Saunders said.

    Arizona-based Dutch Bros, for example, added protein coffee drinks in January 2024, nearly two years before Starbucks did. Energy drinks make up 25% of Dutch Bros’ business almost 14 years after the chain introduced them. Starbucks offered iced energy drinks for a limited time in 2024; executives said Thursday that customizable energy drinks would appear on the Starbucks menu soon.

    Dutch Bros, which is led by former Starbucks executive Christine Barone, has just over 1,000 shops in the U.S. and hopes to double that number by 2029. It’s betting that customers want speed and convenience; nearly all of its stores are drive-thrus with walk-up windows.

    Dutch Bros also focuses on value. In a recent meeting with investors, Barone pointed out that Dutch Bros’ medium drinks are 24 ounces; at Starbucks, a medium drink is 16 ounces.

    Luckin, whose app brims with coupons and promotions, is also value-oriented. On a recent afternoon, one of its nine New York stores buzzed with customers picking up mobile orders. The tiny shop had no seating.

    Xunyi Xie, who was visiting New York from his home in Delaware, said he stopped by to try a Velvet Latte because Luckin had a $1.99 drink promotion. Xie said he normally brews his own espresso, but if Luckin opened a store that was on his way to work, he would go there.

    As for Starbucks? “I think it’s overpriced,” Xie said.

    In 2024, the average customer spent $9.34 at Starbucks, compared to $8.44 at Dutch Bros and $4.68 at Dunkin’, according to an analysis by the investment research company Morningstar.

    Starbucks didn’t raise prices in its 2025 fiscal year and has vowed to be judicious about future increases. But Ari Felhandler, an equity analyst with Morningstar, said it would be a mistake for Starbucks to try to win over customers with discounts because competitors will always go lower.

    “Keep your prices the same and try to justify them,” Felhandler said. He thinks Starbucks’ store redesigns and new menu items will bring back traffic.

    Grams, Starbucks’ chief operating officer, said the company firmly believes its best way forward is not drive-thru-only stores or mobile pickup kiosks. It’s building cafes with comfortable seating — the “soul of Starbucks,” as he put it — that also serve mobile, drive-thru and delivery customers. Customers sometimes want something convenient, and they sometimes want to dwell, he said.

    “There’s always going to be competition. We’re aware of it, we keep an eye on it for sure, but we don’t try to be them,” Grams told The Associated Press. “We offer something that most people don’t, which is a legitimate space to sit down, enjoy and use it for a variety of different reasons.”

    But Kayes, of George Washington University, wonders if that strategy will be enough to keep Starbucks on top, or if customers who want a cozy or premium experience have already moved on to independent coffee shops or upscale chains like Blue Bottle.

    “In some ways, I think they are a victim of their own success,” Kayes said. “I do think that the aura of Starbucks as being something special and unique and exciting isn’t there anymore.”

    Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – January 2026

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  • Trump stirs talk of ‘new world order’

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    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump gives. And he takes away.

    Offended by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s increasingly assertive posture toward the U.S., Trump revoked an invitation to join his Board of Peace. Many Western allies are suspicious of the organization, which is chaired by Trump and was initially formed to focus on maintaining the ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hamas but has grown into something skeptics fear could rival the United Nations.

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    By STEVEN SLOAN – Associated Press

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  • Some Republicans express concern over the tactics used in Minnesota and urge shooting investigation

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    WASHINGTON — A handful of Republicans expressed growing concern Sunday about the tactics that federal immigration officials are using in Minnesota after a U.S. Border Patrol agent fatally shot a man in Minneapolis.

    Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said the killing Saturday of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse who protested President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, was a “real tragedy.” Pretti was a U.S. citizen, born in Illinois.

    “I think the death of Americans, what we’re seeing on TV, it’s causing deep concerns over federal tactics and accountability,” Stitt told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Americans don’t like what they’re seeing right now.”

    When asked if he thought the president should pull immigration agents from Minnesota, Stitt said Trump has to answer that question.

    “He’s getting bad advice right now,” Stitt said.

    The governor said the Republican president needed to tell the American people what the solution and “endgame” are, and that there needed to be solutions instead of politicizing the situation. “Right now, tempers are just going crazy and we need to calm this down,” Stitt said.

    Other Republicans, including Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, also conveyed unease. In a social media post, Cassidy called the shooting “incredibly disturbing” and that the “credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake.” Tillis urged a “thorough and impartial investigation.”

    “Any administration official who rushes to judgment and tries to shut down an investigation before it begins are doing an incredible disservice to the nation and to President Trump’s legacy,” Tillis said in a post.

    Administration officials were firm in their defense of the hard-line immigration tactics.

    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said “it’s a tragedy when anyone dies” but he blamed Democratic leaders in Minnesota for “fomenting chaos.”

    “There are a lot of paid agitators who are ginning things up and the governor has not done a good job of tamping this down,” Bessent said on ABC’s “This Week.”

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    Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report

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  • Trump threatens Canada with 100% tariffs over its new trade deal with China

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    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to impose a 100% tariff on goods imported from Canada if America’s northern neighbor went ahead with its trade deal with China.

    Trump said in a social media post that if Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney “thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken.”

    While Trump has waged a trade war over the past year, Canada this month negotiated a deal to lower tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in return for lower import taxes on Canadian farm products.

    Trump initially had said that agreement was what Carney “should be doing and it’s a good thing for him to sign a trade deal.”

    Carney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Trump’s threat came amid an escalating war of words with Carney as the Republican president’s push to acquire Greenland strained the NATO alliance. Trump had commented while in Davos, Switzerland, this week that “Canada lives because of the United States.” Carney shot back that his nation can be an example that the world does not have to bend toward autocratic tendencies.

    Trump later revoked his invitation to Carney to join the president’s “Board of Peace” that he is forming to try to resolve global conflicts.

    Trump’s push to acquire Greenland has come after he has repeatedly needled Canada over its sovereignty and suggested it also be absorbed the United States as a 51st state.

    He resumed that this week, posting an altered image on social media showing a map of the United States that included Canada, Venezuela, Greenland and Cuba as part of its territory.

    In his message Saturday, Trump continued his provocations by calling Canada’s leader “Governor Carney.” Trump had used the same nickname for Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, and his use of it toward Carney was the latest mark of their soured relationship.

    Carney has not yet reached a deal with Trump to reduce some of the tariffs that he has imposed on key sectors of the Canadian economy. But Canada has been protected by the heaviest impact of Trump’s tariffs by the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement. That trade agreement is up for a review this year.

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    Associated Press writer Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.

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  • US hits 9 tankers with sanctions over Iranian oil during protest crackdown

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    WASHINGTON — The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on a fleet of nine ships and their owners accused of transporting hundreds of millions of dollars in forbidden Iranian oil to foreign markets.

    The sanctions are being imposed because of Iran’s “shutdown of internet access to conceal its abuses” against its citizens during its crackdown on nationwide protests, the U.S. Treasury Department said. They “target a critical component of how Iran generates the funds used to repress its own people,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

    Iranians and Iranian businesses have been struggling under the longest and most comprehensive internet shutdown in the history of the Islamic Republic. The government blocked internet access on Jan. 8 as nationwide protests led to a crackdown on information sharing.

    The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said the nine targeted vessels — flagged from Palau, Panama and other jurisdictions — are part of a shadow fleet, a network of older tankers used to transport goods that are subject to international sanctions, notably from Russia and Iran. The U.S. sanctions aim to prevent the targeted Iranians from doing business with Americans or accessing U.S. accounts.

    Friday’s action is part of an ongoing buildup of tensions between the U.S. and the theocratic nation as an American aircraft carrier group inches closer to the Middle East. President Donald Trump called the group an “armada” in comments to journalists aboard Air Force One late Thursday.

    Trump added that the U.S. was moving the ships toward Iran “just in case” he wants to take action against Iran’s government. The Republican president has repeatedly boasted that his threats on Iran have prevented the execution of more than 800 dissidents.

    Iran’s top prosecutor on Friday called Trump’s repeated claims “completely false.”

    Meanwhile, the death toll in Iran from the bloody crackdown on nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 5,032, activists said.

    The U.S. issued sanctions this month against Iranian officials and firms accused of helping to repress the nationwide protests, which challenged Iran’s theocratic government, including the secretary of the Supreme Council for National Security, whom the Treasury accuses of being one of the first officials to call for violence against protesters.

    Trump on Thursday declined to say whether the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should be removed from office.

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