Swiss International said that a flight from Delhi to Zurich had to abort its takeoff early on Sunday after an engine issue, adding that four passengers and one crew member were injured.

The airline did not elaborate, but the Economic Times reported that one of the engines had caught on fire as the plane was accelerating down a runway and that the passengers were injured during an emergency evacuation.

“Shortly after 1am local time on April 26, an issue occurred with one of the engines during the takeoff of flight LX147 in Delhi. The crew aborted the takeoff and, after assessing the situation, decided as a precaution to evacuate the aircraft,” Swiss International said in a statement.

It said that it had set up a task force to look into the incident, adding that the injured passengers were taken to a hospital, while the crew member had sustained a sprained ankle.

The airline had earlier said that six passengers had been injured but revised the number.

There were 228 passengers, four infants and 13 crew members on board the aircraft, which was an Airbus A330.

Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport declared an emergency following the incident, but runway operations have since resumed, said a source familiar with the matter who was not authorised to speak on the issue and declined to be identified.

In its statement, the airport said its operations remained unaffected.

The suspect arrested in the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner shooting on Saturday was identified by a law enforcement official as Cole Tomas Allen, a Los Angeles-area man who appears from social media sites to be a Caltech graduate working as a part-time teacher and game developer.

The official said Allen, approximately 31 years of age, is a resident of Torrance, California, a coastal town that is part of the South Bay area adjacent to Los Angeles abutting Santa Monica Bay.

The chief of the District of Columbia Police Department said investigators believe the suspect was a guest at the Washington Hilton hotel, where the annual dinner was taking place, but that no motive had been determined.

Meanwhile, Facebook posts appearing to relate to Allen show that he had been designated Teacher of the Month in December 2024 by the Torrance office of C2 Education, a nationwide private test-preparation and tutoring service for college-bound students.

A LinkedIn profile in the suspect’s name described him as a “mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, independent game developer by experience, teacher by birth”.

Allen obtained a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2017 and a master’s degree in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 2025, according to the profile.

Caltech said in a statement that a person of that name graduated in 2017.

Under job experience, the profile shows he has worked for the past several years as a part-time teacher at C2 Education and as a self-employed game developer.

He previously worked as a mechanical engineer for a company called IJK Controls in South Pasadena for a year, and before that, he worked as a Caltech teaching assistant.

The profile also included a local newspaper article “on a robotics competition my team won” at Caltech in 2016. Under “Causes,” it listed only: “Science and Technology.”

The Secret Service said the suspect was armed with a shotgun and was taken into custody after opening fire at a Secret Service agent in the Washington Hilton Hotel, outside the ballroom where the event was attended by US President Donald Trump, his wife Melania, Vice President JD Vance and several cabinet secretaries.

A gunman fired shots in the hotel hosting the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday, causing United States President Donald Trump and his cabinet to be rushed out before the suspect was taken into custody.

Here is a timeline of the incident and its immediate aftermath.

Around 8:35pm ET (5:35am PKT on Sunday): Guests at the Washington Hilton dinner took cover when shots were heard, video footage showed.

Soon after, Secret Service agents rushed towards Trump, escorting the president and his cabinet from the ballroom.

A sole gunman had rushed a Secret Service checkpoint in a lobby, Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and interim Police Chief Jeffery Carroll later told reporters.

The suspect charged the Secret Service checkpoint in the hotel’s lobby area and was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives, Carroll said.

As the suspect ran through that checkpoint, Secret Service members intercepted him.

A Secret Service agent was injured and transported to a local hospital, the mayor said, adding the suspect was also transferred to a local hospital where he was evaluated.

“We do know that law enforcement exchanged gunfire with the individual. … The suspect in this case, he was not struck by gunfire,” Carroll said.

“Law enforcement … they actually tackled him into the ground and handcuffed him.”

Around 9:17pm ET (6:17am PKT): Trump made his first comments after the shooting, saying law enforcement “acted quickly and bravely.”

Trump posted on Truth Social that “the shooter has been apprehended”. Trump said he recommended that the event continue.

About 20 minutes later: Trump posted again, saying law enforcement asked him and others to leave the premises and that he was complying with that request. The event will be rescheduled “within 30 days”, Trump said.

Around 10:30pm ET (7:30am PKT): Trump addressed the media in a press conference at the White House, accompanied by the director of the FBI and the acting US attorney general.

Trump and other law enforcement officials said preliminary information suggested the suspect was a lone shooter.

Around 11:13 pm ET (8:13am PKT): Jeanine Pirro, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, told reporters the suspect was being charged with using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.

The US State Department has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it says are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including AI startup DeepSeek, to steal intellectual property from US artificial intelligence labs, according to a diplomatic cable seen by Reuters.

The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models”.

“A separate demarche request and message has been sent to Beijing for raising with China,” the document states.

Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones as part of an effort to lower the costs of training a powerful new AI tool.

This week, the White House made similar accusations. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that DeepSeek was targeting the ChatGPT maker and the nation’s leading AI companies to replicate models and use them for its own training.

China rejects accusations

The Chinese Embassy in Washington on Friday reiterated its stance that the accusations are baseless.

“The allegations that Chinese entities are stealing American AI intellectual property are groundless and are deliberate attacks on China’s development and progress in the AI industry,” it said in a statement to Reuters.

DeepSeek, whose low-cost AI model stunned the world last year, on Friday launched a preview of a highly anticipated new model, called the V4, adapted for Huawei chip technology, underlining China’s growing autonomy in the sector.

DeepSeek also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It has previously said that its V3 model used naturally occurring data collected through web crawling, and it had not intentionally used synthetic data generated by OpenAI.

Many Western and some Asian governments have banned their institutions and officials from using DeepSeek, citing data privacy concerns. Nevertheless, DeepSeek’s models have consistently been among the most used on international platforms that host open-source models.

The State Department cable said its purpose was to “warn of the risks of utilising AI models distilled from US proprietary AI models, and lay the groundwork for potential follow-up and outreach by the US government”.

It also mentioned Chinese AI firms Moonshot AI and MiniMax. Neither company immediately responded to a request for comment.

The cable said, “AI models developed from surreptitious, unauthorised distillation campaigns enable foreign actors to release products that appear to perform comparably on select benchmarks at a fraction of the cost but do not replicate the full performance of the original system.”

It added that the campaigns also “deliberately strip security protocols from the resulting models and undo mechanisms that ensure those AI models are ideologically neutral and truth-seeking”.

The White House accusations and the cable come just weeks before US President Donald Trump is set to visit Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

They could well raise tensions in a long-running tech war between the rival superpowers, which had been lowered by a detente brokered last October.

India will bid to host the 2038 Asian Games in Ahmedabad, the country’s Olympic chief told Reuters on Saturday, in its latest push to stage elite multi-sport events.

The world’s most populous nation will stage the 2030 Commonwealth Games in Ahmedabad and is also bidding for the 2036 Olympic Games in the western Indian city.

“Indian Olympic Association has already sent an expression of interest to OCA (Olympic Council of Asia) for organising the 2038 Asian Games in Ahmedabad,” IOA President P. T. Usha told Reuters by telephone from China.

“I met the OCA president and other functionaries here and they are all happy and want to support us.”

Former Olympian Usha is in China to attend the Asian Beach Games in Sanya.

“They had an EC (executive committee) meeting here where they discussed it. They will be sending an evaluation committee to India very soon,” she added.

India hosted the inaugural Asian Games in 1951 in New Delhi and again in 1982 in the capital city.

The country hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games, which were mired in mismanagement and allegations of corruption.

Nagoya in Japan will host this year’s Asian Games, while Doha has been awarded the 2030 edition and Riyadh 2034.

The US Senate will vote as soon as next week on a Democratic-led effort to prevent US President Donald Trump from launching an attack on Cuba, Senate aides said on Friday, responding to the Republican’s threats to take military action against the island.

Democratic Senators Tim Kaine, Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallego introduced the Cuba War Powers Resolution last month. Under Senate rules, the Senate’s Republican leaders must allow it to come up for a vote.

“The president’s saber rattling toward Cuba makes clear where his sights are next,” Schiff said in a statement when the resolution was introduced.

Exact timing of the vote has not yet been announced, but aides said they expected it before May 1.

Under Trump, US forces have launched strikes on boats off Venezuela and gone into Caracas to seize President Nicolas Maduro, and, with Israel, waged war on Iran since February 28, all without authorisation from Congress.

Trump has since said “Cuba is next,” while touting US military action in Venezuela and Iran. He did not specify what he plans to do with the island nation, but has frequently said he believes its government is on the verge of collapse.

Democrats have tried, and failed repeatedly in both the Senate and House of Representatives, to force Trump to stop military action and obtain lawmakers’ authorisation before launching military operations.

Trump’s fellow Republicans, who hold a slim majority in both the Senate and House, have almost unanimously voted to block the resolutions that have come up to date and there has been no indication yet that any are shifting position.

Although the US Constitution says that Congress, not the president, can declare war, that restriction does not apply to short-term operations or to counter an immediate threat.

The White House says Trump’s actions are within his rights as commander-in-chief to protect the US by ordering limited military operations. Congressional Republicans accuse Democrats of filing the resolutions only to attack Trump.

NEW DELHI: Ankit Yadav, a seafarer from India, has been stuck on a boat at an inland Iranian port for about 2-1/2 weeks, surviving with his three fellow mariners on limited rations of tomatoes and potatoes.

He is one among thousands of seafarers from India and other nations who are stranded in and around the Strait of Hormuz, as the war in Iran disrupts trade along one of the world’s busiest ship routes.

Ankit, who is in his early 30s, was on a small vessel carrying steel and plying between Iran, Kuwait and Oman. He said he could have left the conflict zone had the vessel received permission to sail to Oman and then be repatriated to India, but that could not happen because of the blockade imposed by the US Navy.

“The shipping company I work for is not ready to give us the sign-off because they do not want to pay higher air ticket prices, and we cannot afford to buy them on our own. The only way out is the governments help, he told Reuters by phone.

Conflict disrupts vital routes, delays rescue

Salman Siddiqui, another Indian seafarer, is also at an Iranian port on a Comoros-flagged cargo vessel that was bound for Oman from Iran.

The only thing we do here is plan how to spend the night and pray to God that we do not get hit during an attack, Siddiqui said, speaking to Reuters from the vessel that is currently harboured at Khorramshahr.

It is a kind of relief that a ceasefire is in place and we do not hear the same number of explosions like we used to see and hear earlier,” he told Reuters by phone.

India ranks among the world’s top three suppliers of seafarers with a workforce of more than 300,000. The attacks on vessels have raised security concerns among seafarers who are unwilling to return to sea.

“We have heard more than 100 explosions. It is scary when you see projectiles flying and exploding very near your vessel, Siddiqui said.

Surindra Kumar Chaurasia was among the lucky ones who were repatriated to India. He had been on a vessel near Sharjah port with 20 other crew members waiting for approval to load urea when the conflict broke out.

We were stranded in the Persian Gulf for about four days, and then our shipping company was able to negotiate with Iran for safe passage. While stranded, we saw ships being attacked by drones, warning messages from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on VHF radio, fighter jets and more, Chaurasia said.

His captain received a route from the IRGC, and they sailed close to Iranian and Omani waters because there were sea mines on the other side, he said. India’s shipping ministry has facilitated the repatriation of about 2,680 Indian seafarers since the outbreak of the conflict.

Published in Dawn, April 25th, 2026

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that he had received successful treatment for early-stage prostate cancer, without specifying when the treatment took place.

In a statement on social media, as his annual medical report was released, Netanyahu, 76, said an early stage malignant tumor had been discovered during a routine checkup.

He said “targeted treatment” had removed “the problem” and left no trace of it.

According to the medical report, which otherwise said the prime minister was in good health, Netanyahu was treated with radiation therapy for early-stage prostate cancer.

Neither the medical report nor Netanyahu said when the treatment occurred.

Israel’s longest-serving prime minister said that he had delayed the release of the medical report by two months to prevent Iran from spreading “false propaganda against Israel”.

In March, during the US-Israeli war on Iran, rumors that circulated on social media and aired on Iranian state media alleged that Netanyahu had died.

The Israeli leader later recorded a video of himself visiting a Jerusalem cafe in March to refute the claims.

Netanyahu underwent surgery on his prostate in 2024 after he was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection resulting from a benign prostate enlargement. In 2023, he was fitted with a pacemaker.

Elections are due to be held in Israel by October.

The traditional global asset correlations that collapsed when the war in the Middle East erupted remain broken, leaving investors to piece together strategies to trade the road to resolution with a faulty instrument panel.

Record highs for Wall Street stocks belie concerns about fraught geopolitics, how long energy supplies might be disrupted for and long-term economic damage.

BMO chief FX strategist Mark McCormick reckons the next three to six months will not resemble the “pre-conflict normal”.

“The growth factor is recovering, but remains below late-2025 levels, the rates (monetary policy) factor remains elevated, correlations are shifting, and drawdown risk is rising. Something new is forming,” he said in a note.

Here’s a look at the disruption to classic correlations in stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities that have traditionally provided a steer on economic trends.

A hard test for fixed income

Stocks and bond yields usually move together, as investors tend to hedge economic growth worries, which hit stocks, by buying bonds, sending yields lower and vice versa. That relationship has been more erratic since the pandemic, as higher inflation and government debt undermine the ability of bonds to act as a hedge against equity risk.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in a pre-war blog in February, warned that investors and policymakers must rethink risk management for “a new era” where traditional hedges fail.

Two-year bonds, sensitive to inflation and interest rate expectations, have been in the eye of the storm.

The one-month rolling correlation between two-year Treasury yields and the S&P 500 has collapsed to around -0.8 from an average of 0.23 over the last five years.

Since the war started, that metric is at -0.63. A near-identical pattern emerges for two-year German yields and European stocks.

“There definitely wasn’t a move into sovereign fixed income in March, which, at least at the front end, you might have expected,” said State Street head of macro strategy Michael Metcalfe.

“This was a hard test for fixed income, because it was an inflation shock and also potentially a growth shock, which doesn’t help the long-term fiscal concerns.”

Gold is misbehaving

Gold has ditched its safe-haven credentials since the war began, moving unusually closely with equities and even volatile crypto. It remains 10 per cent below pre-war levels.

Gold usually boasts a robustly negative correlation to the dollar. When volatility picks up to the point where investors ditch stocks, bonds and other markets, the dollar emerges as the main beneficiary, as has been the case during the war.

Since late February, the correlation between gold and the dollar has softened to around -0.19 from an average of -0.4, while the correlation between gold and stocks has been around 0.55, up from a five-year average of 0.22.

This probably speaks more to the correlation of the dollar to stocks, which has hit a record -0.94 this week, indicating an almost-perfect inverse relationship, versus a five-year average of -0.28.

Meanwhile, the bitcoin/stocks correlation is at a record 0.96, from an average of 0.4 pre-war, denting the case for crypto as a diversifier.

Extraordinary events have unusual effects

The prospect of an inflation shock has prompted traders to price in rate hikes, particularly in Europe, and to lower expectations of rate cuts in the United States.

Higher rates in one region than another usually imply strength for one currency over another, but even this relationship has broken down.

The European Central Bank is expected to hike rates twice this year, while the Federal Reserve leans towards a cut. Yet the euro, at around $1.17, has barely recovered its war-driven losses.

“Extraordinary events can have unusual effects on financial markets, often altering traditional relationships between financial variables,” UniCredit said, adding that the relationship between euro/dollar and rate differentials is one of those casualties.

Using the difference between two-year US and euro zone swap rates, the correlation between rate differentials and the euro itself is at 0.5, up from near 0 at the start of the year and compared with an average of -0.3 in the last two years.

“We do not think that rate differentials are likely to return to being the key driver for euro/dollar until the war-driven risk premium has dissipated,” UniCredit added.

Divorced from fundamentals

Rising oil prices would normally lift inflation expectations, but these have fallen since the war started. The five-year forward US inflation swap, a gauge of investors’ long-term inflation expectations, is around 2.4pc, from closer to 2.45pc. Oil prices are still around 40pc higher.

The correlation between the two is around -0.7, above the five-year average of 0.2. During the 2022 energy shock, it hit a high of 0.7 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Deutsche Bank says this switch could be partly down to an expected increase in US fiscal deficits as Washington funds the war.

“But another possibility is that forward inflation compensation has become increasingly divorced from fundamentals,” the bank said.

MILAN: The suggestion that Iran should be replaced by Italy at this year’s World Cup drew a mix of embarrassment and apathy from fans of Italy’s national football team on Thursday, with the Italian media reminding readers that the idea has a very familiar feel.

Donald Trump’s US special envoy Paolo Zampolli told the Financial Times that he made the suggestion to the US president and FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

“I’m an Italian native and it would be a dream to see the Azzurri [Italy’s national football team] at a US-hosted tournament. With four titles, they have the pedigree to justify inclusion,” said Zampolli, an Italian-American who is Trump’s envoy for “Global Partnership” but has no official connection with the World Cup or Italian football.

The plan seems to be an effort to repair ties bet­ween Trump and Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni after the two fell out amid the US president’s attacks against Pope Leo XIV over the Iran war.

Italy’s main sports news websites have given the story only a passing reference.

Sports Minister Andrea Abodi told the Italian news agency LaPresse: “Firstly it is not possible, secondly it is not appropriate … You qualify on the pitch.”

Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti went further, saying the idea was “shameful”.

Leading Italian coach Gianni De Biasi told Reuters it was an unlikely proposal with any theoretical Iranian absence logically filled by the team behind them in their qualification group.

“Furthermore, I believe Italy doesn’t need Trump’s support on an issue like this. I think we can manage on our own,” he said.

Soccer’s world governing body FIFA responded by pointing to Infantino’s previous comments on Iran’s participation.

“The Iranian team is coming, for sure,” he said last week: “Iran has to come if they are to represent their people. They really want to play, and they should play. Sport should be outside politics.”

The White House, the Italian Football Federation and Asian Football Confederation did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Currently there is no suggestion that Iran will withdraw or be banned from the tournament, which Italy missed out on after losing in a playoff for the third World Cup in a row.

Iran qualified for a fourth successive World Cup last year but, after the start of the war, requested that FIFA move the team’s three group matches from the US to Mexico — which was rejected.

Iran is seemingly proceeding as planned. “We are preparing and making arrangements for the World Cup, but we are obedient to the decisions of the authorities,” Iranian football federation President Mehdi Taj told reporters at a pro-government rally in Tehran on Wednesday.

The World Cup, which is also being co-hosted by Mexico and Canada, gets underway on June 11 with Iran scheduled to kick off their campaign against New Zealand in Los Angeles four days later.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2026

Navy Secretary John Phelan has been fired, a US official and a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, in another wartime shakeup at the Pentagon coming just weeks after Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth ousted the Army’s top general.

The Pentagon announced his departure in a brief statement, saying he was leaving the administration “effective immediately.” But it did not provide a reason or say whether it was his decision to go.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Phelan was dismissed in part because he was moving too slow to implement reforms to speed shipbuilding and because he had fallen out with key Pentagon leadership.

One source cited bad relationships with Hegseth, Hegseth’s deputy, Steve Feinberg, as well as the Navy’s No 2 civilian, Hung Cao, who the Pentagon said will now take over as acting Navy secretary.

The source also cited an ethics investigation into Phelan’s office.

A billionaire seen as having close ties to President Donald Trump, Phelan is the first administration-picked service secretary to be fired since Trump came back into office last year.

His departure fits within a broader context of upheaval at all levels of leadership at the Pentagon under Hegseth’s watch, including the firing last year of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C Q Brown, as well as the chief of naval operations and Air Force vice chief of staff.

On April 2, Hegseth fired Army Chief of Staff Randy George without citing a reason. Two US officials said the decision was tied to tensions between Hegseth and Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll.

Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called Phelan’s dismissal “troubling”.

“I am concerned it is yet another example of the instability and dysfunction that have come to define the Department of Defence under President Trump and Secretary Hegseth,” Reed said.

The latest departure comes during a tense ceasefire with Iran, as the US flows more naval assets into the Middle East.

The US military is relying on naval assets to carry out a blockade of Iran, which President Donald Trump is hoping will pressure Tehran to negotiate an end to the conflict on his terms.

The Navy is under intense pressure to expand its fleet. China’s shipbuilding industry now dwarfs the US, which was once a global powerhouse.

Trump’s $1.5 trillion defence budget request for fiscal year 2027 includes over $65 billion to procure 18 warships and 16 support ships made by General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries.

It is part of what the Pentagon is calling the “Golden Fleet” initiative, which officials say is the largest shipbuilding request since 1962.

The US Department of Justice said on Thursday that it was immediately loosening restrictions on some marijuana products and accelerating the process of reclassifying the drug as less dangerous in one of the biggest changes to US drug policy in decades.

The Trump administration immediately moved FDA-approved marijuana products and state-regulated medical marijuana from a group of drugs classified as highly addictive to one that has a low to moderate potential for abuse.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the US government would also fast-track a broader consideration of marijuana under federal law, moving the psychoactive plant from a so-called Schedule I drug to a Schedule III.

The move would list marijuana alongside common painkillers, ketamine and testosterone rather than its current status with drugs like heroin and LSD.

The measures are likely to reshape the pot industry, lowering barriers to researching the drug’s potential health benefits, easing tax burdens and making it easier for firms to secure funding.

The announcement does not legalise marijuana across the United States.

“This rescheduling action allows for research on the safety and efficacy of this substance, ultimately providing patients with better care and doctors with more reliable information,” Blanche said in a statement.

The move follows a December executive order from President Donald Trump directing the Justice Department to loosen marijuana restrictions.

The measure is expected to be a boon to a growing cannabis industry in the United States, benefiting companies like Canopy Growth, Tilray Brands, and Trulieve Cannabis.

US-listed shares of cannabis companies jumped following the decision. Shares of Cronos Group, Aurora Cannabis, Canopy, and Tilray jumped between 6 and 13 per cent.

“Today marks a pivotal moment for the United States. With President Trump’s action to reschedule cannabis, federal policy is finally aligning with science, medicine, and most importantly, patient needs,” Irwin Simon, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Tilray, said in a statement.

Marijuana’s continued status as a Schedule I drug, meaning it has a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use, has been widely criticised as anachronistic, particularly as nearly half of US states have moved to legalise cannabis.

The drug is legal in some form in about 40 states. Legal sales are expected to top $47 billion in 2026, according to market researcher BDSA.

Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the world and the United States. Nearly one in five US residents use it every year, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Millions of Americans have been arrested for possession of the drug, even while growing businesses listed on stock exchanges sell cannabis-related products.

The Biden administration embarked on a similar move in 2024, but the measure was not finalised when Trump returned to office and the US Drug Enforcement Administration scrapped the effort.

Blanche, the acting attorney general, said a hearing will begin June 26 to gather evidence and expert opinion on reclassifying the drug.