Six people were stabbed at Penn Station, New York’s main intercity rail hub and its busiest station. The attack occurred on Sunday after 7.00 p.m. local time (1.00 a.m. CEST) between 33rd Street and Seventh Avenue, the New York Fire Department told local media. The incident comes as the city is on a high security alert ahead of a planned presidential visit on Monday by U.S. President Donald Trump, Game 3 of the NBA Finals, and the start of the FIFA World Cup.

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WASHINGTON, June 12 — Rarely a week goes by without US President Donald Trump lavishing praise on the bodies of men he meets — fawning over “the muscles on this guy,” or an athlete’s “tree trunk” legs, or a UFC fighter who is “too good looking” to be in the ring.

While the remarks have sparked much online commentary about Trump’s sexuality, some experts link the president’s fascination with attractive men to his broader glorification of virility.

That trend has been further illustrated by his decision to host an MMA competition — a particularly brutal sport with scantily clad, musclebound men — at the White House for his 80th birthday on Sunday.

“It’s almost like he is trying to reach for this glorified manhood that he cannot embody anymore,” said Sabrina Karim, a political science professor at Cornell University.

“He is getting older so he cannot help but having this sense of loss,” she told AFP.

‘Touch his leg’ 

During a recent Coast Guard graduation, Trump invited onto stage “the only cadet who earned a perfect score on every single fitness test.”

As the cadet made his way to the stage, Trump remarked: “I want to check him out! Woah! Look at the muscles on this guy!”

While on a trip to Wisconsin, the president met Olympic speed skating champion Jordan Stolz, after which Trump lamented forgetting to touch his leg.

He’s also described a naval cadet’s arm “like steel” and called Jaxson Dart, quarterback for the New York Giants football team, a “beautiful guy” with “legs like tree trunks.”

Trump also sizes up foreign leaders, noting the good looks of Paraguayan President Santiago Pena and Syria’s Ahmad al-Chareh.

During the 2024 campaign, the billionaire raised eyebrows with his riff on golf icon Arnold Palmer’s manhood: “When he took showers with the other pros, they came out there, they said, ‘Oh my God, that’s unbelievable.’”

Gay magazine The Advocate recently noted that “Donald Trump loves a beautiful man,” adding that his UFC birthday party will be “the most elaborately homoerotic spectacle in the history of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

A viral lip-sync parody video by Bransen Gates (@Branhattan on Instagram) of Trump’s comments about men has racked up over a million likes.

“I’ll kiss every guy, man and woman, look at that guy, how handsome he is. Not — not with a lot of enjoyment but that’s OK,” the excerpt goes.

‘The irony is rich’ 

The president has even borrowed his favourite song to close rallies with — the Village People’s YMCA — from the gay community.

“The irony is rich” for an administration that has “worked tirelessly” to signal in every way “that gay men are not welcome in this America. Because DEI,” the Advocate article noted.

“In the US, presidential elections have always been masculinity contests,” Dan Cassino, a professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, told AFP.

“Trump took that subtext, and made it text, and that lack of subtlety has been his strength.”

As a former beauty pageant organiser, the president also notoriously comments on women’s looks, once causing a diplomatic stir by praising Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

He has also repeatedly attacked the appearance of White House reporters, calling a New York Times journalist who wrote about his health “ugly,” and reproaching a CNN anchor for not smiling.

That’s part of Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) playbook, Cassino said — to mobilise young men who turned out in large numbers for him in 2024.

“First, you have to denigrate women, to show that they don’t have the traits that men do,” Cassino said.

“Second, you have to highlight men who do have these traits. For the most revanchist, retrograde men, MMA fighters are a good example of the kinds of traits men should have: young, muscular, strong and willing to use violence.”

And it’s all connected to Trump’s self-image, Cassino said.

“These men look like the AI slop pictures that Trump posts of himself on his social media feeds,” he said.

“The message is clear: This is what men are like, and that’s why they should be in charge.” — AFP

Amid rhetoric, market uncertainty and tit-for-tat exchanges, the two sides are still trying to find a way out of the impasse

Great news! Donald Trump has said the US and Iran are on the verge of a peace agreement. Oil prices are down, and the stock market is up. This comes only hours after Trump warned Iran was about to be struck “VERY HARD”, a threat that had sent oil prices up and stocks down.

It has been another ride on the Trump rollercoaster, keeping traders on edge, most of the world poorer, and people of the Middle East constantly whiplashing between fear and hope. But whether the ride veers up or down, the management always makes money.

US President Donald Trump is due to visit China on May 14-15, where he is expected to meet leader Xi Jinping, after delaying an earlier summit because of the Iran war.

Here is what Beijing could be hoping to achieve:

What does China want?

Beyond diplomatic niceties and behind closed doors, Beijing will be looking for small, concrete achievements, analysts said, but will stay “realistically pragmatic” given Trump’s unpredictable nature.

China wants a broad reset in ties but knows this would be unlikely, said Benjamin Ho from Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Beijing and Washington had been locked in a blistering trade war in which US levies on many Chinese goods reached an eye-watering 145 percent.

The tit-for-tat escalation cooled off after Trump and Xi agreed in October to a one-year truce, with experts saying Beijing’s baseline goal for the upcoming meeting would be to extend that agreement.

“What China needs is for Trump to follow through on his promise to engage, with at least a few concrete outcomes discussed at the highest level,” said Yue Su from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Beijing will be satisfied with “targeted” results such as limited tariff reductions that would justify a measured rollback of its own tariffs or export restrictions, she said.

What about the Iran war?

The topic of Iran will be “hard to avoid” in the Trump-Xi meeting, experts said, but “this is not a domain China is eager to engage deeply on”.

“The US is already raising pressure pre-summit on China by targeting its economic ties with Tehran,” said Lizzi Lee at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

Trump warned last month he would hit China’s goods with a 50 percent tariff if it provided military assistance to Iran.

Beijing is a close partner of Tehran and has called US-Israeli strikes on Iran illegal, but it has also criticised Iranian attacks on Gulf countries and called for the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened.

However, China will not accept pressure from the United States to take action on Iran or Russia, over whom it “may have some influence but not decisive control”, the EIU’s Su said.

Beijing will also aim to avoid “additional complications” such as new US tariffs linked to China’s trade with Iran being introduced into an “already complex relationship”, Su said.

The Iran war will add “another layer of mutual pressure”, Lee said, but the real negotiating terrain remains in trade and investment.

What are China’s bargaining chips?

One of China’s key bargaining chips is its rare earths — metals crucial in the production of everything from smartphones to electric cars.

China’s dominance in the rare earths industry, from natural reserves and mining through processing and innovation, is the result of a decades-long drive.

It remains China’s strongest tool if meaningful concessions from the United States are needed, Su said.

Trump has shown that he “cares a lot about” rare earths, said Joe Mazur, a geopolitics analyst at Beijing-based consultancy Trivium China.

“I think that’s sort of something that the US doesn’t really have an answer to,” he said.

Mazur thinks that China is “going to line up… quick wins” before the visit, which may include buying more US agricultural products or Boeing jets.

China, he said, might hope “that will put Trump and his team in a positive frame of mind when they’re then discussing more complex, thornier issues”.

How has Beijing prepared?

China has hedged against instability brought about by Trump through diversifying trade towards Southeast Asia and the Global South, and strengthening regional ties, said the Asia Society’s Lee.

Beijing has also sharpened its legal and regulatory toolbox, she said, and “has a potentially more extensive playbook”, as seen in the recent blocking of tech giant Meta’s acquisition of AI firm Manus.

However, a lot of these measures, including diversification of energy imports, a push towards electrification and tech self-sufficiency, predate Trump’s second term, Mazur said.

“If this meeting goes exceptionally well, it’s not going to change the trajectory that China’s on,” he said.

“This push to America-proof the Chinese economy is going to continue, no matter what happens.”

Is China confident?

Beijing will enter talks “cautiously confident”, Lee said.

It believes it can absorb pressure better now and is more comfortable playing “a long game” than Trump, who is facing midterm election pressure, she said.

A visit to Beijing by Russian President Vladimir Putin is also on the cards, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov — who met Xi in April — saying it would happen in the first half of this year.

A back-to-back visit would send the message that “just because he (Xi) had a good meeting with Trump, it doesn’t mean that Chinese support for Russia is going anywhere”, Mazur told AFP.

“That relationship is rock solid.”

It’s midday and the bread still hasn’t arrived in one of the neighborhoods of central Havana. The open oven reveals empty shelves. Employees give an explanation that all the local residents have already heard: without electricity, there’s nothing to bake.

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