U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee slammed France’s recent efforts to promote unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, calling the move “revolting” and ill-timed amid Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas. In an interview with Fox News, Huckabee said the push for Palestinian statehood is out of touch with the current Israeli sentiment following the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre that triggered the war in Gaza. “It’s incredibly inappropriate in the midst of a war that Israel is dealing with to go out and present something that I think increasingly Israelis are steadfast against,” Huckabee said.

President Donald Trump on Friday told Pennsylvania steelworkers he’s doubling the tariff on steel imports to 50% to protect their industry, a dramatic increase that could further push up prices for a metal used to make housing, autos and other goods. In a post later on his Truth Social platform, he added that aluminum tariffs would also be doubled to 50%. He said both tariff hikes would go into effect Wednesday. Trump spoke at U.S. Steel’s Mon Valley Works–Irvin Plant in suburban Pittsburgh, where he also discussed a details-to-come deal under which Japan’s Nippon Steel will invest in the iconic American steelmaker. Trump told reporters after he arrived back in Washington that he still has to approve the deal.

Elon Musk’s effort to dramatically cut government spending is expected to fall far short of his grand early pronouncements, and perhaps even his most modest goals. It didn’t have to be that way. According to experts across the ideological spectrum, a major problem was a failure to deploy people who understood the inner workings of government to work alongside his team of software engineers and other high-wattage technology talent. Even that might not have achieved Musk’s original target of $2 trillion, which is roughly the size of the entire federal deficit. Musk, whose last day spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency is Friday, slashed his goal for savings from $2 trillion to $1 trillion to finally only $150 billion.

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Roughly 17,000 residents in the Canadian province of Manitoba have been evacuated because of nearly two dozen active wildfires, officials said Saturday. More than 5,000 of those are from Flin Flon, where there is no rain in the immediate forecast. There have been no structure fires in the city located nearly 645 kilometers (400 miles) northwest of the provincial capital of Winnipeg as of Saturday morning, but officials worry that a change in wind direction could bring the fire into town. Manitoba declared a state of emergency on Wednesday as the fires burning from the northwest to the southeast forced evacuations in several communities in the province directly north of the U.S. states of Minnesota and North Dakota.

President Donald Trump is withdrawing the nomination of tech billionaire Jared Isaacman, an associate of Elon Musk, to lead NASA, a person familiar with the decision said Saturday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the administration’s personnel decisions. The White House and NASA did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment. Trump announced last December during the presidential transition that he had chosen Isaacman to be the space agency’s next administrator. Isaacman has been a close collaborator with Musk ever since he bought his first chartered flight on Musk’s SpaceX in 2021. He is the CEO and founder of Shift4, a credit card processing company.

North Korea deploys mystery balloon-like objects to stricken warship, satellite photos show New satellite images show that North Korea has deployed what appear to be balloons alongside its damaged 5,000-ton warship that has been laying on its side and partially submerged since a botched launch last week. While the purpose of the objects is unclear, experts said they could be used to help get the ship back upright, or protect it from the prying eyes of drones. The stricken destroyer was the country’s newest warship and was meant to be a triumph of North Korea’s ambitious naval modernization effort.

PBS sues Trump over executive order to cut funding PBS sued President Donald Trump to block his effort to cut off federal funding for the public broadcaster. The lawsuit from PBS and one of its member stations in Minnesota came three days after NPR filed a similar suit against Trump and his administration. Trump had signed an executive order accusing both PBS and NPR of failing to present “a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”

PARIS (AP) — Authorities in Paris have launched an investigation after several Jewish