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      The ex-CIA scientist brothers perfecting Halloween

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      Crowley Place is a sleepy street in the Waynewood area of south Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb 30 minutes from DC. The unassuming homes are well-tended, and it’s a quick walk to six different churches.But each year at Halloween the police shut down the street as thousands of visitors flock to the area. It’s all due to two ageing brothers who spent 40 years working together in secret at a laboratory in the CIA.For six weeks, no matter what was going on in the world, the Park brothers would take leave from the agency – using vacation, sick days and anything else they could think of – and construct an elaborate front-yard Halloween display, often using CIA-inspired technology.View image in fullscreenThe espionage careers of Jeff and Brian Park spanned the cold war, the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, Ronald Reagan’s war to topple the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Gulf war, and the global “war on terror”.Among the true insiders in the intelligence community, they were something of a legend. Among their specialties in the CIA office of technical services was to help to sabotage Russian systems. It is an obscure discipline even for intelligence services – sabotaging weapons can mean anything from secretly ruining rifle ammunition to hacking the guidance systems for an anti-aircraft missile.Still, their CIA work was just one part of their lives. Their obsession and delight was Halloween.It was three years ago that I first heard of the duo. My sources, veterans of the CIA, just called them the “Park brothers” – and spelled out their unusual expertise, claiming they didn’t remember their first names. It was difficult to track them down because Park was such a common name, but this year I used public records databases, keying in what their ages must be, and scanning through hundreds of names to find adjacent homes, and finally got their address.Outside the two adjacent homes on Crowley last week – the brothers own both – there was an absolute mess of black tents and graveyards, dotted with skeletons, robots, pirates and gory monsters. Lines overhead guide the flying witch and giant spider.Once I showed up on their lawn, the Park brothers were happy to talk.Jeff Park, 78, was pondering a jumble of electronics underneath a witch and near some skulls. He wore a brown T-shirt tucked neatly into tactical grey pants.View image in fullscreen“It takes six weeks to put this together and six weeks to take it apart,” he told me. He said he and his brother Brian, who strolled by lugging some equipment in a handcart, had started their display in 1977, and have been enlarging it ever since.“When I retired in ’14 I was the senior scientist at the CIA,” Jeff said, “so we got to do a lot of cool things. Things that you would go to jail for anywhere else.”Jeff confirmed what sources had said – that they used to sabotage Russian missiles. “We basically specialized in doing in – my brother and I, in our careers – doing in‬ weapon systems. Not just that, lots of other things too. But that was what we did. We did a lot of sabotage on‬ ‭weapon systems to stop the bad guys from doing stuff that we didn’t want them to do.”Brian Park, 75, has longer hair and a big smile. He said getting hired at the office of technical services in the 1970s was “like marrying into an extended Italian family”. Jeff added: “A mafiosa family.”But before talking about the CIA, they wanted to discuss Halloween. Jeff speaks fast, like an enthusiastic professor or Doc Brown of Back to the Future. He pointed out where the displays were going. “There will be Igor, there,” he pointed, “and the Gremlin and Ninja Turtle and ET and Yoda goes over there.” All of them, he says, are animatronic.The hi-tech displays are everywhere – all made by the Parks out of raw materials or discarded electronic devices, rescued parts, or remnants of some CIA experiments. There are elaborate cameras with radar and sonar sensors and a home-engineered 12-channel digital surround sound system threaded through the yard. There’s a giant cauldron – inspired by Disney’s Fantasia – with a computer and a smoke machine inside that emits different colors of smoke. Put your face too close and there’s a sensor to launch a surprise.A couple of graveyards, and one tombstone that flickers with a name changed at will.Jeff collects gargoyle statues; he’s got 210 of them so far. The gargoyles aren’t really part of the Halloween display, however, so they are just piled in the backyard for the winter.The living room of one Park home has what appears to be an old and worn-down La-Z-Boy chair, and the faded wall-to-wall carpet is littered with robots they built for bomb-disposal operations many years ago. On the walls are Christmas ornaments the Parks’ mother used to make.One house has all the electrical engineering supplies, with walls crammed with industrial shelving for resistors and capacitors and electrical connectors. There’s a massive specialized machine for making circuit boards.The other house has a metalworking shop, where the lathe is still littered with brass shavings.View image in fullscreenJeff has been setting up the animatronic gremlin they built. “We wrote software to modify his personality,” Jeff said, “as a function of your body movement. So you have a series of doppler shift radars that measure your body motion and it modifies how he reacts. So if you’re very calm and collected, he will look at you, OK? And then if you get hyper, then he pays no attention to you whatsoever.”Jeff said the exhibit is the most interactive. “Little kids, even four-year-old kids, know there is something special about him. Like, one year we had to cut his head open to repair something and they cried because they thought we were hurting him.”Close by is the alien rocket ship, with blue windows through which the alien is visible. It’s abandoned radio frequency testing equipment. “The throttle is from a B-1 bomber prototype,” Jeff said, pointing inside. It emits huge clouds of smoke for Halloween.In one back shed is a virtual reality device they first engineered in the 1970s for the CIA. Now it’s used to control a handmade, four-legged Star Wars Imperial Walker about five feet tall. “It’s got a 3,000-watt second strobe,” Jeff said. “You can feel it on the back of your neck at 20 feet.”The Parks joined the CIA in 1973. Brian Park was first, part of a fellowship program, and he convinced his bosses to meet with Jeff. Jeff insisted his first CIA interview – just to informally screen him – was at a downtown DC strip club that’s gone out of business.Brian said one early assignment was designing a specialized camera for a now well-known Russian spy for the CIA. “We had to build him a super tiny camera that would digitally store all this stuff so he wouldn’t have to put himself at risk. And so the first technology we used in the camera, the only way you could store digital, non-mechanically, was magnetic bubble memory.”It was the early days of digital memory. “We did something audacious. We shoveled four chips into one coil set and spent millions of dollars.”Whatever they did couldn’t protect the spy, whom the Russians executed in 1985. The story is the subject of a 2015 book and an upcoming movie starring Russell Crowe. And the technology they used – “bubble memory” – soon vanished from memory, obsolete.The CIA stories are never far away. Brian was lugging some Halloween display parts in a cleverly made cart, a one-handed wheelbarrow fashioned to distribute weight laterally.Jeff claimed the cart’s deck, fashioned out of a honeycombed aluminum material, used to reinforce the deck of racing boats he said were sent to the Contras, rigged with machine guns with massive recoil. He pointed at the cart. “That’s what’s left over!”Speedboats were indeed deployed to the region and provided to US proxies. Some speedboats were used in 1984 in CIA efforts to mine Nicaraguan harbors, an operation the international court of justice at The Hague declared illegal. It’s unclear if the specific boats the Park brothers refitted were used for that operation.Most of the year Brian and Jeff also have a railroad track made of aircraft-grade aluminum that encircles their property, over hills and bridges. It is for a miniature working steam engine that they handcrafted, with a seat so kids can ride it. Jeff said they built it using aircraft-grade aluminum. Unprompted, that launched him on a story about working on the track helped him as he engineered an early drone program in 1990, targeting Iraq.View image in fullscreenHe said the agency developed and deployed 25 of the unmanned aerial systems, with 7ft wingspans, prop driven gas engines – for reconnaissance, distributing propaganda leaflets, and finally for kamikaze bombing runs – and he boasted that earned him a promotion to the senior intelligence service level.It’s unusual to find people willing to chat about intelligence technology, even outdated gear. The CIA declined to comment on the Park brothers’ revelations.One of the things they’re proud of – “the coolest thing we ever did” – was an ambitious plan to destroy Scud missiles deployed by Russian client states.Earlier sources had referenced this when explaining the genius of the Park brothers, so hearing the details directly from them was like watching a movie where I’d only seen the trailer.View image in fullscreenBy engineering one key part, the brothers believed that deployed Scud missiles would make a U-turn and hit their own launching sites.“At the time the Soviet Union had come apart and so they were selling off to the black market a lot of the components that are used in Russian missiles,” Jeff said. “And so we basically went out, bought a bunch of them, brought them back to our contractors, modified them with my circuit.”In the end, the operation never moved forward. He said it was canceled because of resistance from the state department, worried about blowblack.Jeff boasted of another invention that he says he designed for US special operations. “It was the thing that probably put my name on the map. I had this crazy, wild-ass idea about how to build an infra-red beacon that you could see 10 miles away with night-vision glasses, and if you were two inches away from it you couldn’t see anything, using light-emitting diodes.”To convince the Navy Seals it worked, the brothers said, they invited the special operations forces to the Halloween festivities, and hid a beacon in a hedge a couple of streets over.After that, “for five years, I personally made all the night-vision beacons for the entire US military, including the Seals, Delta Forces, the Rangers. And that made me world famous.”View image in fullscreenJeff described one of their final plots – sabotaging Russian-made batteries, intercepted by the CIA, that Iran planned to install as an underground power back-up system for a nuclear facility.On this mission, the way he describes it, they went somewhat rogue. “Since it was two days after Christmas, all the bosses were on leave. And so there was just us in there. And so a whole bunch of us got together and we said, ‘Let’s screw the bad guys.’ So I trained a group of 10 people to drill holes randomly in the batteries, the diameter of a sewing machine needle.”The undetectable holes would slowly leak out the hydrogen and oxygen, to raise the internal resistance, and heat, of the battery to an explosive level.The brothers retired before they ever found out if the plan worked.View image in fullscreenCertainly their CIA, the one they talk about, is an agency where the notorious baggage and failures and scandal don’t play a leading role.This version of the CIA is not necessarily troubled by the old enhanced interrogation program, the “salt pit” death in Afghanistan, or “renditions”, or involvement in the mistaken shooting down of a plane carrying an American missionary family.Jeff said about two-thirds of all he did at the CIA never came to fruition, rejected by higher-ups or unsuccessful.But the Park brothers’ huge Halloween spectacle is at least a successful mission for them – where kids can be tricked and still be happy, where covert technology and deception actually work.View image in fullscreen More

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      Why is Trump talking about nuclear weapons? – podcast

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      Archive: NBC News, BBC News, WHAS11, Sky News, The White House, NewsNation, NPR, ABC News
      Listen to Science Weekly’s three-part series, all about how science solved a tea mystery.
      Buy Jonathan Freedland’s new book, The Traitors Circle, here.
      Send your questions and feedback to politicsweeklyamerica@theguardian.com
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      US will limit number of refugees to 7,500 and give priority to white South Africans

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      The Trump administration is going to restrict the number of refugees it admits into the United States next year to the token level of just 7,500 – and those spots will mostly be filled by white South Africans.The low number represents a dramatic drop after the US previously allowed in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution from around the world.The administration published the news on Thursday in a notice on the Federal Registry.No reason was given for the drop in numbers, which are a dramatic decrease from last year’s ceiling set under the Biden administration of 125,000.The Associated Press previously reported that the administration was considering admitting as few as 7,500 refugees and mostly white South Africans.The government memo said only that the admission of the 7,500 refugees during 2026 fiscal year was “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest”.The figure had previously been reported after documents about the plans were leaked.The announcement swiftly drew criticism from refugee organizations, with the International Refugee Assistance Project saying: “This determination makes it painfully clear that the Trump administration values politics over protection.”“By privileging Afrikaners while continuing to ban thousands of refugees who have already been vetted and approved, the administration is once again politicizing a humanitarian program. It is egregious to exclude refugees who completed years of rigorous security checks and are currently stuck in dangerous and precarious situations,” it added.Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, CEO of the US-based Global Refuge, took issue with the ethics of the decision.She said: “This decision doesn’t just lower the refugee admissions ceiling. It lowers our moral standing. For more than four decades, the US refugee program has been a lifeline for families fleeing war, persecution, and repression. At a time of crisis in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Venezuela to Sudan and beyond, concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the program’s purpose as well as its credibility.”Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council posted on X.He wrote: “Since the US Refugee Program was created in 1980, it has admitted over two million people fleeing ethnic cleansing and other horrors. Now it will be used as a pathway for white immigration. What a downfall for a crown jewel of America’s international humanitarian programs.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn February, Trump signed an executive order to cut financial aid to South Africa after he accused its Black-led government of “unjust racial discrimination” to white Afrikaners, a minority group who are descendants of Dutch and French colonial settlers.The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the South African government is implementing anti-white policies through a new land expropriation law that allegedly targets Afrikaners’ land.The South African government has pushed back, calling the claims false as well as denying US accusations that Afrikaners are being subjected to racially motivated violence in rural areas.Across South Africa, 72% of farms and agricultural holdings are owned by white individuals, who make up 7.3% of the total population of the country, according to Action for Southern Africa. Meanwhile, Black Africans, who make up 81.4% of the country’s population, only own around 4% of the land.Thursday’s announcement is not the first time Trump has slashed refugee resettlement numbers.During his first term, in 2020, Trump set a limit of 15,000 refugees for the 2021 fiscal year. The previous year, in 2019, he had already reduced the limit to 18,000 for the 2020 fiscal year. More

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      Britain would do well to remember where its power over China lies | Simon Jenkins

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      The US has backed down in its tariff war with China. Thanks to Donald Trump’s egotistical diplomacy, rare earths can again flow one way, soya beans the other, and less of the chemicals used to make fentanyl in between. No matter that the war was Trump’s own idea and seems to have been a stunt. The stunt is over. Trump has played his favourite game of dealmaker, much to the discomfort of millions.Meanwhile Britain still cannot make up its mind if China is its enemy. In 2008 British officials visited the Beijing Olympics authorities to discuss the next games in London in 2012. The government told them to “raise” human rights issues, about which the British government was most concerned. I am told the Chinese reacted with sympathy at the Britons’ embarrassment at broaching the matter, and then everyone got down to business. Soon China was a friend, certainly to David Cameron and George Osborne.Not today. China is now a much-enhanced world power, and in the eyes of some, a threat to Britain’s national security. The recent confusion over whether two British officials were Chinese spies has largely and absurdly revolved around whether the Chinese “threat” was greater to a Tory government than to a Labour one. China was clearly recruiting spies everywhere, as do most countries. It sought a huge London embassy, befriended Prince Andrew and required Boris Johnson to send two aircraft carriers to patrol the South China Sea.Pompous countries crave enemies. They have large military empires heavily reliant on them, empires fiendishly resistant to dismantling. After the fall of the Soviet Union a senior advisor to Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev joked to American officials: “We are going to do a terrible thing to you – we are going to deprive you of an enemy.”Who is the US’s new enemy? The answer is clearly China. But as Trump has found, it is an enemy with which it is hard to come to terms. It does not send its armies overseas. As it challenges the US for world economic supremacy, it snaps the bond once thought to hold capitalism in the arms of democracy. It gets richer and richer. China’s Brics-plus alliance with India and others has overtaken the G7 in world trade. The Beijing policy expert Henry Wang even mooted this week that a China-led Brics force could police a ceasefire border in Ukraine. It would be a sensational intervention.GK Chesterton wrote that “those who appeal to the head rather than the heart … are necessarily men of violence. We speak of ‘touching’ a man’s heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.” Trump could yet be that blow to the head. He is forcing Nato to ask itself what it is really about. He is telling the world not to rely on the US to police its conflicts, in the manner trumpeted by Kennedy, Johnson and the two Bush presidents. Washington may be about to turn in on itself and deny its manifest destiny to set the world to rights. After all, it was founded to turn its back on the arguments infesting the outside world.Since Britain, too, enjoyed global fantasies, it of all nations should understand this. It cannot refuse to come to terms with the new Beijing. Yes, China does terrible things to its minorities. It denies freedom of speech and neurotically spies on foreign states. In the new age of artificial intelligence, China is clearly out to rival the US.Since this rivalry will probably encompass attacks on other countries’ cybersecurity, it makes sense for any country to guard its digital space. Whether that extends to embassy buildings is a matter for experts. But clearly, to locate a foreign embassy just five minutes’ walk from a centre of global financial intelligence is a bad idea. China must understand this. Would it let MI6 erect a headquarters overlooking Tiananmen Square?Britain is no longer a superpower and must deal with superpowers, as must all second-division states. But in one respect it is unique. Its soft power is probably equal to none, notably its cultural and teaching assets. It has educated more world leaders – apparently 50 – and takes in more Chinese students than any other country including the US. It also welcomes half a million Chinese tourists a year, many drawn by aspects of British popular culture. We do not measure soft power, but its influence cannot be negligible – and is certainly profitable.It is therefore absurd that the British government is planning to splurge billions more on defending Britain from a purely notional third world war. At the same time it is slashing the budget of its overseas cultural institution, the British Council. The council is being forced to withdraw from 60 countries and sell its entire property portfolio.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe message of current events in China is simple. The world has changed from the one on which Britain has long founded its foreign and defence policy. It needs to reassess the impact its limited power may still have on the world outside. That must include getting on well with China, and not hyping it as an enemy.

      Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Senate postpones hearing for Trump’s surgeon general pick after she goes into labor

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      The Senate hearing for Donald Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, Casey Means, has been postponed after the nominee went into labor with her first child.Means had planned to make history as the first nominee to appear virtually before the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee due to her pregnancy on Thursday. The hearing was originally scheduled for two days after her due date, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. It remains unclear when the hearing will be rescheduled.In a statement shared with the Guardian, Emily Hilliard, press secretary for the department of health and human services (HHS), said: “Everyone is happy for Dr Means and her family. This is one of the few times in life when it’s easy to ask to move a Senate hearing.”Trump nominated Means in May to serve as US surgeon general, the president’s second pick for the role often referred to as “the nation’s doctor”. Means, a wellness influencer and physician with an inactive medical license, follows the abrupt withdrawal of Trump’s first nominee, Dr Janette Nesheiwat, whose confirmation hearing was canceled amid rightwing criticism and questions about her credentials.Means, 38, is a Los Angeles-based medical entrepreneur who rose to prominence in conservative wellness circles for her critiques of mainstream medicine and her advocacy for improving the nation’s food supply.She is the author of the bestselling book Good Energy and a leading figure in the “Make America healthy again” (Maha) movement. Her selection underscores the growing influence of the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, within the Trump administration.In a social media post, Trump said that Means “has impeccable ‘Maha’ credentials”.“Her academic achievements, together with her life’s work, are absolutely outstanding,” Trump said. “Dr Casey Means has the potential to be one of the finest Surgeon Generals in United States History.”Asked about the nomination shortly after it was announced, Trump said: “I don’t know her. I listened to the recommendation of Bobby.”Means, through her book, blog and speaking appearances, has championed holistic health with a focus on whole and natural foods, exercise, and curbing pharmaceutical prescriptions for chronic ailments.The Stanford Medicine-trained doctor has also suggested that psychedelics such as psilocybin can be beneficial for mental health, decried broad pesticide use and warned against long-term use of hormonal birth control.Means and her brother, former lobbyist Calley Means, served as key advisers to Kennedy’s long-shot 2024 presidential bid and helped broker his endorsement of Trump last summer. The pair made appearances with some of Trump’s biggest supporters, winning praise from conservative pundit Tucker Carlson and podcaster Joe Rogan.Calley Means is now a White House adviser who appears frequently on television to promote restrictions on Snap benefits, removing fluoride from drinking water and other Maha agenda items. More

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      Donald Trump says rare earths dispute ‘settled’ after Xi Jinping meeting in South Korea – live updates

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      In case you’re just joining us, here’s a rundown on what happened at the high-stakes talks between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in South Korea.Trump said afterwards that Washington’s dispute with Beijing over the supply of rare earths had been settled, China would resume buying US soybeans and Washington would reduce its tariffs on China.Trump shook hands with Xi after their talks and boarded Air Force One to return to Washington, saying onboard that the meeting had been a “great success”.He told reporters the Chinese leader had agreed to work “very hard” to prevent the production of the synthetic opioid fentanyl – blamed for many American deaths – and in exchange the US would reduce fentanyl-linked tariffs from 20% to 10%, lowering the overall tariff burden from 57% to 47%.Trump also said he would visit China in April and that Xi would come to the US some time afterwards.In key developments:

      Xi said after the meeting that he and Trump had reached “consensus” on trade issues, Chinese state media reported. Xi said both sides should “finalise follow-up work as soon as possible, maintain and implement the consensus and provide tangible results to set minds at ease about the economies of China, the United States and the world”.

      Trump said they had agreed to work together on Ukraine, adding that the war “came up very strongly” as an issue. “We talked about it for a long time, and we’re both going to work together to see if we can get something.”

      Taiwan was not discussed at the meeting, Trump said. Earlier, both leaders ignored a question about the self-governing democracy, amid concern in Taipei that Trump may be willing to make concessions to Xi.

      Before the meeting at Gimhae airbase in Busan, South Korea – their first face-to-face meeting in six years – Trump and Xi shook hands in front of their countries’ flags and the US president said: “We’re going to have a very successful meeting.” He added: “He’s a tough negotiator – that’s not good,” before patting the Chinese leader on the back.

      Trump had suggested before the meeting – at which their delegations faced each other across a negotiating table – that it could last three or four hours. The two leaders parted after one hour and 40 minutes.

      Xi said China and the US should “stay on the right course” and “be partners and friends” and should “work together to accomplish more great and concrete things for the good of our two countries and the whole world”.

      The optimism in Busan was in stark contrast to the recent exchanges of aggressive rhetoric over trade that had threatened to set the US and Chinese on an economic collision course, with potentially disastrous consequences globally. China’s yuan retreated from a near one-year high against the dollar on Thursday after the meeting met expectations but gave investors few new reasons for trade optimism.

      Minutes before meeting Xi, Trump said in a social media post that he had ordered the Pentagon to start nuclear weapons testingat the same level of China and Russia. He did not respond to a reporter’s question about the decision as he and Xi began their summit.With Justin McCurry and agencies
      Donald Trump has used his Truth Social platform to declare the trade tensions with China are “very close to being resolved” as he urges US farmers to go out and buy “more land and bigger tractors” as Beijing ends its soya bean embargo.The US exports about £18bn worth of soya bean a year, half of which goes to China, but China stopped buying the product leaving Trump contemplating a multi-billion dollar bailout for farmers.Trump said on Truth Social:
      I had a truly great meeting with President Xi of China. There is enormous respect between our two Countries, and that will only be enhanced with what just took place.
      We agreed on many things, with others, even of high importance, being very close to resolved. I was extremely honored by the fact that President Xi authorized China to begin the purchase of massive amounts of Soybeans, Sorghum, and other Farm products.
      Our Farmers will be very happy! In fact, as I said once before during my first Administration, Farmers should immediately go out and buy more land and larger tractors.
      The deal covers Fentanyl, rare earths and critical minerals such as refined lithium used in electric vehicle car batteries – a sector in which China dominates the world.China has also agreed to liberalise the sale of magnets used in everything from dishwasher doors to car window openings, he said.It will also buy oil and gas from Alaska, Trump added.Donald Trump had first laid out his intention to pursue nuclear arms control efforts in February, saying he wanted to begin discussions with both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping about imposing limits on their arsenals, reports Reuters.Most major nuclear powers except North Korea stopped explosive nuclear testing in the 1990s. North Korea conducted its last nuclear test in 2017. Russia’s last confirmed test was in 1990, followed by the last US test in 1992, and by China’s in 1996.The reaction to Donald Trump’s announcement on nuclear testing was swift in the US also.Representative Dina Titus, a Democrat from Nevada, said on X:
      I’ll be introducing legislation to put a stop to this.
      Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association, said it would take the US at least 36 months to resume contained nuclear tests underground at the former test site in Nevada. Kimball said on X:
      Trump is misinformed and out of touch. The US has no technical, military, or political reason to resume nuclear explosive testing for the first time since 1992.
      Apart from providing technical data, a US test would be seen in Russia and China as a deliberate assertion of Washington’s strategic power. Russian president Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that Russia will test if the US does.In August, Trump said he had discussed nuclear arms control with Putin and wanted China to get involved. Beijing responded by saying it was “unreasonable and unrealistic” to ask the country to join in nuclear disarmament negotiations with the two countries, since its arsenal was much smaller.Reuters has some reaction to Donald Trump’s post on Truth Social about the US defence department to immediately begin nuclear testing on a par with Russia and China’s testing (see 1.49am GMT)A senior Russian lawmaker said Trump’s decision would herald a new era of unpredictability and open confrontation, state news agency RIA reported, while China’s foreign ministry called for the US to abide by its commitment to a moratorium on nuclear testing and uphold the global strategic balance and stability.It was not immediately clear whether Trump was referring to nuclear-explosive testing, which would be carried out by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), or flight testing of nuclear-capable missiles. No nuclear power, other than North Korea, has carried out explosive testing in more than 25 years.Russian senator Vladimir Dzhabarov said on Thursday that US president Donald Trump should negotiate with Russia, rather than imposing sanctions on it, state news agency RIA cited him as saying.US president Donald Trump said on Thursday he has given South Korea approval to build a nuclear-powered submarine, a dramatic move that would admit Seoul to a small club of nations possessing such vessels.The submarine will be built in a Philadelphia shipyard, where South Korean firms have increased investment, Trump wrote on social media.Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform:I have given them approval to build a Nuclear Powered Submarine, rather than the old fashioned, and far less nimble, diesel powered Submarines that they have now.The US president, who met South Korean president Lee Jae Myung and other regional leaders during his visit, also said Seoul had agreed to buy vast quantities of US oil and gas.Trump and Lee finalised details of a fraught trade deal at a summit in South Korea on Wednesday. Lee had also been seeking US permission for South Korea to reprocess nuclear fuel.However, South Korea’s industry ministry said its officials had not been involved in any detailed discussions about building the submarines in Philadelphia.While South Korea has a sophisticated shipbuilding industry, Trump did not spell out where the propulsion technology would come from for a nuclear-powered submarine, which only a handful of countries currently possess.One opposition lawmaker said on Thursday the Philadelphia shipyard does not have facilities to build submarines, reports Reuters.Asked about Trump’s submarine announcement, Hanwha Ocean, which owns the shipyard with another Hanwha affiliate, said it was ready to cooperate with both countries and provide support with advanced technology, but did not mention specifics.Defence minister Ahn Gyu-back told lawmakers that plans called for South Korea to build its own submarins and modular reactors, and receive a supply of enriched uranium fuel from the US.US president Donald Trump said on Thursday that China agreed to begin the process of purchasing US energy.Trump said in a Truth Social post:
      China also agreed that they will begin the process of purchasing American Energy. In fact, a very large scale transaction may take place concerning the purchase of Oil and Gas from the Great State of Alaska. Chris Wright, Doug Burgum, and our respective Energy teams will be meeting to see if such an Energy Deal can be worked out.
      Chinese state media reported shortly after the meeting that the US and China had reached a “consensus” on trade, but the language was a little vague.We’ve now had more information which confirms the consensus Xi referred to in the meeting was actually developed by the US and China trade negotiation teams which met last Sunday in Kuala Lumpur. After that meeting we were told they had developed a “framework” for trade deals, including the forthcoming sale of TikTok.A short time ago, China’s commerce ministry told reporters that consensus included:

      The US will remove the 10% fentanyl tariff on goods from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao, and will extend its suspension of a 24% equitable tariff for another year. In return China will “adjust its countermeasures against the aforementioned US tariffs accordingly”. Both sides also agreed to extend certain tariff exclusions.

      The US will suspend its 50% penetration rule on export controls, and in return China will suspend its own export control measures – understood to be its ban on sales of rare earths to foreign countries for suspected dual-use purposes.

      The US will suspend for one year its Section 301 (harmful trade practises) investigations against China’s maritime, logistics, and shipbuilding industries for one year. In return China will suspend its related countermeasures.
      The ministry said the two sides also reached agreement on issues including fentanyl control, the expansion of agricultural trade, and “handling individual cases involving relevant companies”, which could refer to trade blacklists or investigations against US or American firms based in the other country.“Both sides further affirmed the outcomes of the Madrid trade consultations, with the US side making positive commitments in areas such as investment, and China agreeing to work with the US to properly resolve issues related to TikTok.”Additional research by Lillian YangChina’s defence ministry has said Beijing maintains an open attitude towards developing military relations with the US.Zhang Xiaogang, a spokesperson for the defence ministry, told a press briefing that China hopes the US will work with them to jointly build equal, just, peaceful and stable military ties.Oil prices have fallen slightly as investors digest the new trade deal between Trump and Xi.The two world leaders met in South Korea this morning, with Trump agreeing to reduce tariffs on China from 57% to 47% in a one-year deal, in exchange for Beijing resuming purchases of US soybeans, the continuation of rare earth exports and a crackdown on the trade of fentanyl.Brent crude futures dropped by 0.31% to $64.72 a barrel this morning, while US West Texas Intermediate crude futures dropped by 0.33% to $60.28.The drops suggest that some investors are sceptical that the new agreement marks an end to the trade war. But president Trump has said his discussions with Xi were “fantastic”, and emphasised their “great relationship”.You can follow more market reaction to the meeting in our business live blog:Earlier we reported that Donald Trump said he would visit China next year.A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson has now confirmed that, saying the trip has been scheduled for April.In case you’re just joining us, here’s a rundown on what happened at the high-stakes talks between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in South Korea.Trump said afterwards that Washington’s dispute with Beijing over the supply of rare earths had been settled, China would resume buying US soybeans and Washington would reduce its tariffs on China.Trump shook hands with Xi after their talks and boarded Air Force One to return to Washington, saying onboard that the meeting had been a “great success”.He told reporters the Chinese leader had agreed to work “very hard” to prevent the production of the synthetic opioid fentanyl – blamed for many American deaths – and in exchange the US would reduce fentanyl-linked tariffs from 20% to 10%, lowering the overall tariff burden from 57% to 47%.Trump also said he would visit China in April and that Xi would come to the US some time afterwards.In key developments:

      Xi said after the meeting that he and Trump had reached “consensus” on trade issues, Chinese state media reported. Xi said both sides should “finalise follow-up work as soon as possible, maintain and implement the consensus and provide tangible results to set minds at ease about the economies of China, the United States and the world”.

      Trump said they had agreed to work together on Ukraine, adding that the war “came up very strongly” as an issue. “We talked about it for a long time, and we’re both going to work together to see if we can get something.”

      Taiwan was not discussed at the meeting, Trump said. Earlier, both leaders ignored a question about the self-governing democracy, amid concern in Taipei that Trump may be willing to make concessions to Xi.

      Before the meeting at Gimhae airbase in Busan, South Korea – their first face-to-face meeting in six years – Trump and Xi shook hands in front of their countries’ flags and the US president said: “We’re going to have a very successful meeting.” He added: “He’s a tough negotiator – that’s not good,” before patting the Chinese leader on the back.

      Trump had suggested before the meeting – at which their delegations faced each other across a negotiating table – that it could last three or four hours. The two leaders parted after one hour and 40 minutes.

      Xi said China and the US should “stay on the right course” and “be partners and friends” and should “work together to accomplish more great and concrete things for the good of our two countries and the whole world”.

      The optimism in Busan was in stark contrast to the recent exchanges of aggressive rhetoric over trade that had threatened to set the US and Chinese on an economic collision course, with potentially disastrous consequences globally. China’s yuan retreated from a near one-year high against the dollar on Thursday after the meeting met expectations but gave investors few new reasons for trade optimism.

      Minutes before meeting Xi, Trump said in a social media post that he had ordered the Pentagon to start nuclear weapons testingat the same level of China and Russia. He did not respond to a reporter’s question about the decision as he and Xi began their summit.With Justin McCurry and agencies
      On his Truth Social account before the meeting, Trump had described the Busan catch-up as the “G2”, a nod to the US and China being the world’s biggest economies and a play on the names of other formal multilateral groupings like the G7 and G20.Even though it’s not an official name, “G2” has been welcomed by some Chinese people online.“Clearly, the core of the global order is the US-China relationship”, said one popular post on Weibo.Another said:
      Americans’ attitudes are shifting quickly; they are gradually adapting to the idea that the US and China are starting to stand on equal footing, and the world is big enough to accommodate a G2.
      With Lillian Yang More

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      Trump directs Pentagon to match Russia and China in nuclear weapons testing

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      Donald Trump has instructed the Pentagon to immediately start matching other nuclear powers in their testing of nuclear weapons, specifically citing Russia and China.In a post to Truth Social, Trump said “because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.”The post came less than an hour before Trump met the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in South Korea on Thursday morning in an effort to come to a trade war truce. The meeting was the first between the two since 2019.The United States last held a full nuclear weapons test in 1992, and China and Russia are not known to have held any such tests since the same era. Trump’s reference to “on an equal basis” left it unclear what weapons testing could take place, or whether he was referring to displays of power similar to those recently conducted by Russia.Since 1998, no country other than North Korea is confirmed to have conducted a full explosive nuclear test. But nuclear-armed countries such as the US have subsequently carried out simulated nuclear explosions using high-powered computers, as well as related nuclear physics experiments, tests of nuclear-capable missiles, warhead mechanisms and “subcritical” tests of nuclear materials to ensure their arsenals remain viable.Pentagon officials did not immediately respond to questions about the announcement from Trump.Speaking on Air Force One after his meeting with Xi, Trump said he would “like to see” denuclearisation, adding that the US was “talking to Russia about that”.“And China would be added to that if we do something,” he said, without elaborating.On Thursday China’s foreign ministry told a regular press conference that Beijing hoped the US would honour the non-proliferation treaty “and take actions that contribute to regional peace, rather than the opposite”.“We would like to emphasise that China remains committed to the path of peaceful development, pursuing defensive national security policies and friendly diplomatic policies,” said spokesperson Guo Jiakun. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said on Sunday that Russia had successfully tested its “unique” nuclear-propelled Burevestnik cruise missile, which can carry a nuclear warhead. The Kremlin described it as part of efforts to “ensure the country’s national security”. Trump later described Putin’s announcement as “not appropriate”. Sergei Ryabkov, a close aide to Putin, told Russian media that Moscow had notified the US in advance about the test.The timing of Russia’s Burevestnik testing is notable, coming amid the Kremlin’s intensified nuclear posturing and a break in US-Russia talks over the war in Ukraine.On Wednesday, Putin said Russia also carried out a test of a Poseidon nuclear-powered super torpedo that military analysts say is capable of devastating coastal regions by exploding a nuclear warhead and triggering vast radioactive ocean swells that would swamp and contaminate cities.Trump also falsely noted in his Truth Social post that the US had more nuclear weapons than any other country, a claim he repeated during his Air Force One press conference. Russia currently has the most confirmed nuclear weapons, with more than 5,500 nuclear warheads, while the US has 5,044 nuclear weapons, according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.The last full nuclear test by the US, codenamed “Divider,” was carried out on 23 September 1992 at what is now called the Nevada National Security Site. The then president, George HW Bush, announced a moratorium on underground nuclear testing that same year. The US still, however, has the ability to resume tests at the Nevada National Security Site.In response to Trump’s post, Nevada congresswoman Dina Titus posted on X: “Absolutely not. I’ll be introducing legislation to put a stop to this.”Despite repeated statements from both Moscow and Washington about wanting to halt the arms race, little progress has been made. The Kremlin has recently criticised Trump’s push to develop a missile shield – known as the Golden Dome – which he claims would make the US impervious to attack.During his first term, Trump reportedly sought to increase the US nuclear arsenal “tenfold”.In December 2016, he tweeted: “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”Additional reporting by Helen Davidson in Taipei and Jason Tzu Kuan Lu More

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      Meta reports mixed financial results amid spree of AI hiring and spending

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      Meta reported mixed financial results for the third quarter of 2025. The company brought in record quarterly revenue but reported a major tax bill that dampened earnings per share, the company announced on Wednesday. The financial results come as Meta ends a multibillion-dollar hiring spree focused on artificial intelligence talent.The tech giant earned $51.24bn in quarterly revenue, beating Wall Street’s expectations and the company’s own projections for third-quarter sales. However, it reported earnings per share (EPS) of $1.05, far below Wall Street expectations of $6.70 in EPS. The major drop was due to a one-time non-cash income tax charge of $15.93bn. The EPS would have been $7.25 without this one-time charge, the company said.The report, and the scheduled investor call, gives investors another opportunity to find out whether the company’s lavish spending on AI infrastructure is justified. The company projected full-year total expenses would be between $116 to $118bn, upping the lower end of the range from $114bn. The company also expects 2025 capital expenditures to be between $70 and $72bn, up from a previously projected range of $66 and $72bn. Meta said its fourth-quarter revenue would likely fall somewhere between $56 and $59bn.“We had a strong quarter for our business and our community,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and CEO. “Meta Superintelligence Labs is off to a great start and we continue to lead the industry in AI glasses. If we deliver even a fraction of the opportunity ahead, then the next few years will be the most exciting period in our history.”Jesse Cohen, senior analyst at Investing.com, said the latest report reveals “the growing tension between the company’s massive AI infrastructure investments and investor expectations for near-term returns”.It’s the first financial update since Meta said it planned to lay off 600 staffers from its AI unit – the same unit the company went on a spending and hiring spree to restructure and fill with the top AI talent from other companies. The company said the layoffs were an effort to reduce the bloat within the company’s “super-intelligence” unit and brought the number of employees there down to just under 3,000.Investors will also likely be hearing more about the company’s latest move to fund and support the development of its network of data centers. Earlier this month, the company announced a new joint venture with Blue Owl Capital that would help the firms build and finance the new $27bn Hyperion data center campus in Louisiana, the biggest Meta is involved in developing.The company’s stock has been on a steady rise over the past six months. Its previous two earnings reports have beaten Wall Street expectations. The wider US stock market likewise reached record highs the week.Meta also launched its new Ray-Ban Display glasses last month, which feature a screen embedded in the lenses, and analysts are eager to hear sales figures. Meta’s original camera glasses, simply dubbed Meta Ray-Bans, proved to be a popular gadget. Both types of glasses have already prompted privacy concerns. While Meta has designed the glasses not to work if a light that notifies people that the glasses are recording is covered, a $60 modification can disable the light, 404 Media reported.“I suspect these glasses, in particular, will predominantly appeal to early ‘tech-curious’ adopters, and that scheduled demos will far outpace sales,” said Mike Proulx, Forrester VP, research director.On the advertising side, Meta lost its accreditation from the Media Rating Council, a non-profit that sets industry wide standards for brand safety, after the company decided to pull out of the organization’s annual audits. The accreditation signals to advertisers that the content on the platform that their ads may appear next to would not be harmful to their brand. Meta received the accreditation just four months before it was stripped.Analysts were optimistic that the loss of accreditation would not ultimately hurt Meta’s ability to attract advertisers.“While this may raise eyebrows among advertisers, it won’t deter them from investing in Meta due to its sheer audience reach and brand reliance,” Proulx said. “Brands will overlook potential brand safety risks as long as their Meta media investments continue to perform.” More