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Israeli FM's artificial island pitch is 'irrelevant', Borrell says

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Israeli FM's artificial island pitch is 'irrelevant', Borrell says

Israel’s foreign minister Israel Katz has sparked controversy after using a high-stakes meeting of EU foreign ministers to promote a plan to build an artificial island off the Gazan coast.

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The EU ministerial meeting on Monday was intended to discuss the humanitarian crisis engulfing the Gaza Strip and the potential first steps towards a peaceful resolution to the long-term conflict between Israel and Palestine.

The bloc’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, who earlier in the day had described the gathering as “exceptional”, said Katz’s intervention during the meeting – where he pitched an artificial island in the Mediterranean Sea near the Gazan coast – was “irrelevant” to the discussions.

“I think that the minister could have used his time better to worry about the situation in his country, or the high death toll in Gaza,” Borrell told reporters following the meeting.

Katz, who was recently appointed Israel’s foreign minister, showed his European counterparts two videos during the meeting, Borrell said.

The first promoted a rail infrastructure project connecting Gaza with the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank. The second showed a proposal to build an artificial island in the Mediterranean Sea off the Gazan coast that would serve as a commercial hub linking the Gaza Strip with the rest of the world.

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The infrastructure project dates back to Katz’s time as Israel’s transport minister and was first pitched in a 2017 video as “an answer to a reality that is bad for the Palestinians and not good for Israel,” according to Reuters.

But according to a diplomatic source who spoke on condition of anonymity, Katz’s decision to pitch the initiative during discussions centred around potential future peace negotiations had left EU ministers “perplexed.”

Katz did not suggest the island could be used to house Gazans, nor did he link the initiative to the so-called two-state solution, the diplomatic source added. 

But Borrell said the videos had “little, if not no relevance, to the question under discussion.”

The gathering came just a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state as part of the so-called two-state solution after the war, which has been raging since the October 7 attack on Israel orchestrated by the Hamas militant group that controls the Gaza Strip.

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The two-state solution – which would deliver statehood for the Palestinians – is the overarching goal desired by EU and Western allies after the war.

Borrell doubled down Monday on his own insistence that only the two-state solution can give Israelis and Palestinians the security guarantees they need. He also said that the EU and the wider international community had a “moral obligation” to find and propose a solution.

It comes after he made controversial comments on Friday claiming Netanyahu had been “personally boycotting” the two-state solution for the past three decades.

Foreign ministers representing the EU’s 27 member states, who have at times shown disunity in their response to the war between Israel and Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organisation by the bloc, were unanimous in their support for the two-state solution, Borrell said.

“The member states have all told him (Katz), of course, that they believe that the solution for a permanent and lasting peace that guarantees Israel’s security (…) comes about with the creation of a Palestinian state,” Borrell explained.

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“This surely didn’t make him change his mind, but we didn’t expect anything to the contrary,” he added.

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Vanity Fair parts ways with Olivia Nuzzi amid Robert F. Kennedy Jr. controversy

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Vanity Fair parts ways with Olivia Nuzzi amid Robert F. Kennedy Jr. controversy

NEW YORK (AP) — Vanity Fair is parting ways with West Coast editor Olivia Nuzzi amid ongoing controversy over her relationship with profile subject Robert F. Kennedy Jr. while she was the Washington correspondent for New York magazine.

A joint statement Friday from the magazine and Nuzzi said that they “have mutually agreed, in the best interest of the magazine, to let her contract expire at the end of the year.” She had been hired as its West Coast editor in September.

Nuzzi, 32, had been a star reporter for New York magazine known for colorful political profiles until the fall of 2024, when it was revealed she had an intense personal relationship with Kennedy, a presidential candidate at the time she wrote about him and now head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Nuzzi was fired by New York for not disclosing her relationship.

She reflected on their relationship and the fallout from it in the memoir “American Canto,” which refers to Kennedy as “The Politician” and ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza as “the man I did not marry.” It was excerpted in Vanity Fair but competed for attention with a series of Substack posts by Lizza that contained embarrassing allegations.

Their feud quickly gripped media insiders as Lizza alleged that Nuzzi had an affair with another profile subject and had given Kennedy political advice, both considered off limits for journalists. Lizza even posted salacious, cringeworthy text messages from Kennedy to Nuzzi that he had intercepted.

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Nuzzi denounced her ex-fiance’s posts, in a Substack interview with Emily Sundberg, as “fiction-slash-revenge porn.”

Friday’s announcement came only days after the publication of “American Canto,” disdained by critics and apparently of little interest to the reading public. The book ranked just 6,094 on Amazon.com’s bestseller list as of Friday afternoon.

Critics were harsh: “A tell-all memoir? Ha. This is a tell-nothing memoir,” wrote Helen Lewis in The Atlantic.

Through a miserable week, Nuzzi posted a humorous Substack column of “Signs Your Book Rollout Has Gone Awry.”

Among them: “Monica Lewinsky reaches out to check on your mental health.”

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Canadian politician arrested after claiming threatening voicemail was AI

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Canadian politician arrested after claiming threatening voicemail was AI

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A Canadian politician who claimed a voicemail she allegedly left a potential mayoral candidate last summer was artificial intelligence has been arrested and charged with making threats.

Ontario Councilor Corinna Traill was arrested on Wednesday and charged with two counts of uttering threats, the Peterborough Police Service in Ontario said.

In September, former mayoral candidate Tom Dingwall wrote on his Facebook that in August Traill left him a voicemail, telling him not to run for mayor so a friend of hers could run unencumbered.

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Ontario Councilor Corinna Traill was arrested on Wednesday and charged with two counts of uttering threats, the Peterborough Police Service in Ontario said. (Corinnatraill.ca; Kirill Kudryavtsev/ AFP via Getty Images)

“Miss Traill made it clear that if I did not, she would come to my home, kill me, and sexually assault my wife, then sexually assault her again,” he alleged.

He called for Traill to step down, adding, “To be clear, no elected official, paid to represent us, should utilize intimidation or threats to dissuade anyone from pursuing elected office or engaging in public service, especially to the benefit of their friend.”

In her own statement posted to Facebook in September, Traill denied having sent the voicemail.

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“I want to state clearly and unequivocally: I did not create this message,” she wrote. “I have been advised that artificial intelligence technology was involved. Portions of the voicemail were my voice, but other parts were artificially generated.”

She wrote at the time that her team was trying to figure out who created the message.

“For more than a decade I have worked to represent the best interests of our community, advocate for our residents, and ensure that local decision-making reflects the values and priorities of the people I serve,” she added. “That dedication will not waver in light of these circumstances.”

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Traill has been released from jail on her own recognizance and is expected to next be in court in January, the police department said.  

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Fox News Digital has reached out to Traill for comment.

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US Supreme Court to consider Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship

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US Supreme Court to consider Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship

The Supreme Court is likely to hear oral arguments early next year, with a ruling in June on a matter that has been blocked by several lower courts as being unconstitutional.

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The United States Supreme Court has agreed to decide the legality of President Donald Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship, as the Republican administration continues its broad immigration crackdown.

Following its announcement on Friday, the conservative-dominated court did not set a date for oral arguments in the blockbuster case, but it is likely to be early next year, with a ruling in June.

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Several lower courts have blocked as unconstitutional Trump’s attempt to put restrictions on the law that states that anyone born on US soil is automatically an American citizen.

Trump signed an executive order on January 20, his first day in office, decreeing that children born to parents in the US illegally or on temporary visas would not automatically become US citizens.

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Lower courts have ruled the order to be a violation of the 14th Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Trump’s executive order was premised on the idea that anyone in the US illegally, or on a visa, was not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the country, and therefore excluded from this category.

The Supreme Court rejected such a narrow definition in a landmark 1898 case.

The Trump administration has also argued that the 14th Amendment, passed in the wake of the Civil War, addresses the rights of former slaves and not the children of undocumented migrants or temporary US visitors.

In a brief with the court, Trump’s solicitor general, John Sauer, argued that “the erroneous extension of birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens has caused substantial harm to the United States”.

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“Most obviously, it has impaired the United States’ territorial integrity by creating a strong incentive for illegal immigration,” Sauer said.

Trump’s executive order had been due to come into effect on February 19, but it was halted after federal judges ruled against the administration in multiple lawsuits.

District Judge John Coughenour, who heard the case in Washington state, described the president’s executive order as “blatantly unconstitutional”.

Conservatives hold a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, and three of the justices were appointed by Trump.

Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has spearheaded the legal challenges to the attempt to end birthright citizenship, said she is hopeful the top court will “strike down this harmful order once and for all”.

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“Federal courts around the country have consistently rejected President Trump’s attempts to strip away this core constitutional protection,” Wang said.

“The president’s action goes against a core American right that has been a part of our Constitution for over 150 years.”

The Supreme Court has sided with Trump in a series of decisions this year, allowing various policies to take effect after they were impeded by lower courts that cast doubt on their legality.

Among these policies were Trump’s revocation of temporary legal protections on humanitarian grounds for hundreds of thousands of migrants, deportations of migrants to countries other than their own and domestic immigration enforcement raids.

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