Category: Global

US Senator Bernie Sanders has criticised job cuts at The Washington Post on Wednesday, questioning owner Jeff Bezos’ decision to reduce staff while spending heavily on personal ventures.

“If Jeff Bezos could afford to spend $75 million on the Melania movie & $500 million for a yacht to sail off to his $55 million wedding to give his wife a $5 million ring, please don’t tell me he needed to fire one-third of the Washington Post staff,” Sanders said in a post on X. “Democracy dies in oligarchy.”

The remarks came as the newspaper began layoffs affecting multiple newsroom desks, sharply reducing staff across the organisation.

Executive Editor Matt Murray told employees during a staff call that the cuts would impact the international, editing, metro and sports desks. The layoffs followed a recent decision by the newspaper to scale back coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics.

“For too long, we’ve operated with a structure that’s too rooted in the days when we were a quasi-monopoly local newspaper,” Murray said. “We need a new way forward and a sounder foundation.”

One reporter at the Post, who requested anonymity, described the scale of the layoffs as a “bloodbath”.

Affected journalists include Amazon beat reporter Caroline O’Donovan and Cairo bureau chief Claire Parker, along with other Middle East correspondents and editors. O’Donovan and Parker confirmed the job losses in posts on X.

In a statement, the newspaper said it was taking “several difficult but decisive actions” as part of restructuring across the company, adding that the steps were aimed at focusing on journalism that engages subscribers.

Murray said all newsroom departments were affected, adding that politics and government would remain the largest desk. He said the sports department would be closed in its current form.

The Washington Post made changes to business operations last year and announced job cuts, saying at the time that newsroom roles would not be affected. The newspaper, owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, offered voluntary separation packages across all functions in 2023 after reporting losses of $100 million.

The Washington Post Guild criticised the layoffs on X, saying that if Bezos was no longer willing to invest in the mission of the paper, it should have a different owner.

White House reporters at the newspaper wrote to Bezos last week, saying their reporting depended on collaboration with teams facing job losses and that maintaining a diverse newsroom was necessary during financial strain.

Uncertainty surrounding crucial talks between Iran and the United States of America came to an end on Wednesday after officials from both sides indicated that negotiations were expected to proceed later this week.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said late on Wednesday that discussions with US would take place in Muscat, Oman, on Friday morning. “Nuclear talks with the United States are scheduled to be held in Muscat on about 10 am Friday. I’m grateful to our Omani brothers for making all necessary arrangements,” he said in a post on X.

A US official also confirmed that the talks remained on schedule. The confirmation came after reports suggested that negotiations had been called off following disagreements over the format and location of the meeting.

Earlier, Axios reported that the talks had stalled after the United States declined Iran’s request to alter both the venue and format  of the discussions. US officials had considered the proposal before rejecting it. “We told them it is this or nothing, and they said, ‘Ok, then nothing,’” a senior US official was quoted as saying.

The news outlet later said that the talks were revived after diplomatic outreach from several  states. Citing two US officials, Axios reported that at least nine countries contacted the White House at senior levels on Wednesday, urging the administration not to abandon the meeting.

Officials familiar with the matter said regional actors had pressed for the talks to continue that had earlier been expected to participate in discussions planned for Turkiye but were later excluded after the venue was shifted to Oman. Countries including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye were among those that maintained contact with US, citing the potential regional consequences of a conflict.

Iranian officials speaking to a private media outlet from Tehran said that regional states were not expected to participate directly at this stage. However, Qatar’s prime minister was seen as a possible participant alongside Omani intermediaries.

Reports of a breakdown in talks followed remarks by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said any engagement with Tehran would need to cover Iran’s ballistic missile programme, its regional role and domestic governance, in addition to nuclear issues. Iranian officials interpreted the comments as a sign that  US was moving away from a limited negotiating framework.

A senior Iranian official said the scope of the talks would be restricted to Iran’s nuclear programme, adding that the missile issue was “off the table”.

The diplomatic effort comes amid heightened tensions after US President Donald Trump threatened military action against Iran last month and ordered additional US naval deployments to the Gulf. Concerns have grown across the region following Israeli and US strikes on Iran last summer.

Trump said on Wednesday that Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should be “very worried” as the United States increased its military presence. “I would say he should be very worried, yeah, he should be”.

Trump also said Iran had considered establishing a new nuclear site following US strikes. “They were thinking about starting a new site in a different part of the country,” he said. “We found out about it, I said, you do that, we’re going to do very bad things to you.”

The United States (US) military has shot down an Iranian drone that allegedly approached the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, the US military said.

As per the details, the incident occurred amid ongoing diplomatic efforts to arrange nuclear talks between the US and Iran.

“No American service members were harmed during the incident and no US equipment was damaged,” a military official said, describing that the drone had “aggressively” approached the carrier.

The Lincoln carrier strike group is part of US military presence in the Middle East following violent domestic unrest in Iran last month, which marked the deadliest anti-government demonstrations in the country since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

US President Donald Trump has warned that with US warships approaching Iran, “bad things” would probably happen if a nuclear deal could not be reached. He has also demanded that Tehran make nuclear concessions. 

Meanwhile, the Foreign Office (FO) has confirmed an invitation to Pakistan for participation in the Iran-US talks amid record high tensions between Tehran and Washington.
 

“Pakistan has received the invitation for the upcoming talks between Iran and the United States,” FO Spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said while responding to a query Tuesday.
 

Reports quoted sources as saying that Pakistan’s participation was seen as crucial to defusing tensions as Islamabad had been quietly working to facilitate the talks.
 

It was also reported that Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar is expected to participate in the meeting likely to take place in Turkiye on Friday.
 

The priority of the talks is to avoid any conflict and de-escalate tensions between the two sides, a regional official told Reuters, adding that some regional powers were also invited.
 

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some of the countries invited to the talks at the foreign ministers’ level included Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
 

Earlier, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian confirmed that he has instructed FM Araghchi to pursue “fair and equitable negotiations” provided that an environment “free from threats and unreasonable expectations”.
 

The talks will be held “within the framework of our national interests”, he said in a series of posts on X.

Melinda French Gates has said that her ex-husband, Bill Gates, must answer questions arising from newly released documents connected to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as fresh details from the files have reignited public scrutiny.

In emails included in the documents, Epstein claimed that Gates had asked him to help arrange meetings with married women and to obtain medication to treat a sexually transmitted infection. Epstein also alleged that Gates wanted to give that medication to French Gates without her knowledge. One email attributed to Epstein described his anger over requests to delete messages related to the alleged infection and other details.

A spokesperson for Bill Gates rejected the claims, “These claims are absolutely absurd and completely false. The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein’s frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame.”

Speaking in an interview on NPR’s Wild Card podcast, Melinda French Gates said the disclosures were difficult for her to revisit. “For me, it’s personally hard whenever those details come up, right? Because it brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage,” she said.

The comments follow the release of around three million pages of Epstein’s personal communications by the US Justice Department. Bill Gates is among several prominent figures referenced in the material.

Melinda said that she was not in a position to respond to the allegations mentioned in the files. “Whatever questions remain there of what I can’t even begin to know all of it, those questions are for those people and for even my ex-husband,” she emphasised. “They need to answer to those things, not me.”

In the interview, French Gates also said the latest documents filled her with “unbelievable sadness.” She also referred to the impact of Epstein’s actions on his victims. “I think we’re having a reckoning as a society, right? No girl should ever be put in the situation that they were put in by Epstein and whatever was going on with all of the various people around him,” she said.

French Gates, who finalised her divorce from Gates in 2021, has previously said his association with Epstein was one factor among others that led her to leave the marriage and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Reflecting on her response to the revelations, she said: “I’m able to take my own sadness and look at those young girls and say, ‘My God, how did that happen to those girls?’ At least for me, I’ve been able to move on in life”.