NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte says the gathering next Tuesday and Wednesday will show Europeans are honouring pledges to hike defence spending to deter Russia from any attack

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NATO leaders gather next week in Ankara, where Europeans aim to set aside strife with U.S. President Donald Trump over Iran and Greenland and show they are stepping up to defend the continent as Washington cuts back on its commitments to the alliance.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte says the gathering next Tuesday and Wednesday will show Europeans are honouring pledges to hike defence spending to deter Russia from any attack, with arms deals worth tens of billions of dollars to be signed.

Leaders are also expected to vow to keep funding weapons for Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will attend a dinner hosted by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who will also hold bilateral talks with Trump.

European officials say they hope Trump’s strong relationships with Erdogan and Rutte will ensure a smooth summit but cannot be sure, given lingering transatlantic bitterness over the Iran war and the U.S. president’s frequent criticism of NATO.

In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump complained the United States was spending money to protect NATO members “without getting any benefit from so doing”.

Rutte and other NATO leaders have insisted the alliance contributes to the United States’ own security and that Europeans are heeding Trump’s longstanding calls to spend more on their own defence.

RUTTE SAYS EUROPEANS TAKING GREATER RESPONSIBILITY

“The summit next week will focus on turning extra spending into combat-ready capabilities, and significantly scaling up our defence industries,” Rutte said in Berlin on Wednesday.

“NATO is, and will always be, a transatlantic alliance but we need to rebalance it for the better,” he added. “Working closely with the United States, European allies and Canada are taking greater responsibility for conventional defence in Europe.”

Rutte said last month that NATO’s European members and Canada spent $90 billion more on defence in 2025 than in the previous year, to reach a total of more than $570 billion.

In The Hague last year, NATO leaders agreed to spend 3.5% of GDP on core defence items such as weapons and troops by 2035 – up from a previous goal of 2%. They also agreed to invest a further 1.5% of GDP on broader defence-related investments such as boosting cybersecurity.

EUROPEANS HOPE FOR REPEAT OF SMOOTH HAGUE SUMMIT

European officials are hoping for a repeat of that summit, where Trump reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to the 32-member alliance and its Article 5 mutual defence pact, as well as praising his fellow leaders.

But the past 12 months have severely strained the alliance, with Trump threatening to take Greenland from fellow NATO member Denmark and then waging a war against Iran that roiled the global economy without consulting European allies.

The U.S. has also announced troop withdrawals from Europe, cut the forces it assigns to NATO’s defence plans – including an aircraft carrier, refuelling aircraft, fighter jets and drones – and launched a six-month review of its military presence on the continent.

“The alliance is alive and kicking but a bit bruised,” said a European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

IRAN WAR ADDS EXTRA UNCERTAINTY TO SUMMIT

European officials worry that the Iran war could overshadow the summit – if there is a flare-up in the conflict, currently the subject of a fragile ceasefire, or if Trump vents his anger at Europeans for not doing more to assist U.S. military operations.

Trump suggested this meant the U.S. did not need to honour its commitment to aid a fellow NATO member under attack.

NATO officials also say the vast majority of allies honoured commitments to allow the U.S. to use their airspace and bases on their territory, even though the war was deeply unpopular in Europe and many European leaders did not support it.

The war also ruptured personal ties between Trump and European leaders such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and outgoing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, raising the possibility that those strains could resurface at the summit.

“I’m optimistic (that won’t happen) because I think the leaders know what is at stake,” a senior NATO diplomat said. “And if something like that does occur, then we always have the ultimate marriage counsellor, Mark Rutte, to smooth things over.”

Additional reporting by Lili Bayer, Jonathan Spicer, Sabine Siebold, John Irish and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Reporting by Andrew Heavens

Experts have said the heatwave, which lasted from about June 20-28, was the worst recorded in Europe, causing disruption to power generation, damaging infrastructure and overwhelming healthcare systems

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France, the Netherlands and Belgium have recorded 3,700 excess deaths during the June heatwave that sent temperatures soaring across Europe, with authorities warning that the numbers are preliminary and could rise.

Experts have said the heatwave, which lasted from about June 20-28, was the worst recorded in Europe, causing disruption to power generation, damaging infrastructure and overwhelming healthcare systems. The extreme heat was almost certainly driven by climate change, scientists said.

There were 2,025 excess deaths recorded in France during the heatwave, with a particular increase in deaths among people aged over 45, French Health Minister Stephanie Rist told local television on Friday.

Deaths at home rose 91% between June 22-28 compared to the previous week, while deaths in nursing homes and healthcare facilities also increased, the country’s public health authority said in a bulletin.

“Mortality will … be higher than these initial figures suggest,” the authority warned.

‘UNPRECEDENTED’ MORTALITY DATA

In Belgium, the Health Ministry said on Thursday it had registered excess mortality of about 1,200 deaths between June 18 and June 29, adding that 530 of the deaths were among people aged 85 or older. People aged under 65 accounted for 180 of the excess deaths.

“Such excess mortality during a heatwave is unprecedented in our country,” the ministry said in a statement.

Authorities in the Netherlands said the heatwave led to about 480 excess deaths, mainly among the over 80s.

Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Inti Landauro; Editing by Makini Brice and Helen Popper

Their task is the management of a shelter for victims of the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 quakes, which devastated this part of the South American country after striking less than a minute apart, killing more than 2,200, according to the latest tally

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The command center hums with activity as radios crackle to life, medical staff stop in to say hello and supplies are arranged in orderly piles.

Though this organization would not be out of place at a military barracks overseen by generals, the deployment is taking place at the ‘Republic of Panama’ school in La Guaira, the Venezuelan state hardest hit by twin earthquakes last week, and the commanders – casually dressed volunteers – are aged between 20 and 27.

Their task is the management of a shelter for victims of the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 quakes, which devastated this part of the South American country after striking less than a minute apart, killing more than 2,200, according to the latest tally. 

The dozen or so staff – members of the youth wing of Venezuela’s socialist party – have designed a digital system to register residents, most of whom have lost loved ones, their homes, or both in the disaster.

The volunteer team is also largely homeless after the quakes, and rotate work shifts to staff the command center 24 hours a day. Like other shelter residents, they sleep in a classroom stuffed with metal bunk beds delivered by the commerce ministry.

The group’s system has information about each of the more than 350 people staying at the shelter, where an average of three families sleep per classroom. The program records their previous addresses, injuries, and who has yet to grab lunch in the cafeteria.

“We’re like the Titanic. We go down with the ship,” said Daniel Rivas, 25, as his colleagues searched the registry for a missing person sought by a relative standing at the school gate.

Showers, a medical clinic, a laundromat and cafeteria are available to the residents, whose children play in stairwells and on the basketball court.

Each of the nine shelters in La Guaira is run by a different team, the staff at this school said.

‘FULL OF RAGE’

“People are 50% very sensitive and 50% full of rage, lost,” said Jose Mendez, who is also part of the team. “They are angry about not finding their family members, about losing everything. But we’re ready to help.”

All the team members were born just before or in the years after La Guaira’s last major disaster – a 1999 landslide that killed up to 30,000 people.

Last week’s quakes have killed 2,295, according to government figures published on Wednesday.

An unofficial but widely used list of the missing stands at 40,567. A United Nations envoy this week said it was procuring 10,000 body bags for Venezuela and the USGS has estimated more than ⁠10,000 deaths were possible due to the quakes.

The school has functioning bathrooms and places for play, but other shelters lack privacy, safe spaces for children and hygiene facilities, said Geraldine Gomez of NGO Plan International.

“There are no separate spaces for mothers, there are no separate spaces for children. Children have no space for recreation, for play, for talking,” she said.

Residents have criticized the government of interim President Delcy Rodriguez for what they call a slow and inadequate response by the state, while NGO the International Rescue Committee on Tuesday said the scale of the response was not meeting humanitarian needs.

Rodriguez in a post on X said that authorities continue helping those affected, as well as supervising recovery efforts. “I know that many Venezuelans feel pain and frustration. I deeply share those feelings,” she said, before declaring seven days of national mourning.

NEXT STEPS

The volunteer team at the school is waiting on two major next steps: visits from the registration authority, to replace lost government identification cards, and from the housing ministry, to clarify what people who lost their homes should do to get aid.

“I feel like I still have the earthquake within me,” said shelter resident Deisy Tapias, 36, who is staying at the shelter with two of her five children. “I wish I could go home.”

Her apartment further down the coast was nearly destroyed, though her 17-year-old son was able to rescue their identity cards and tank of cooking gas from the ruins.

Tapias said she was willing to move out of state if that is how she can replace her home.

Her mother, Deisy Bermudez, 55, has an intact home in a nearby community and arrived with clothing and food for her family.

“I can’t stand shelters,” said Bermudez, who lost her house in the 1999 disaster and said she missed out on government housing constructed afterward for victims.

As the women spoke with Reuters, an army transport truck pulled up outside, and soldiers helped eight new families carrying in  sparse bags of belongings, where they were welcomed by the team.

Many of those arriving now have been living alongside the ruins, the team said, and searching for loved ones trapped under rubble.

STILL SEARCHING

Dozens of police officers line the road deeper into La Guaira, some directing traffic while others gestured waves of cars, trucks and motorcycles onward. Soldiers carrying automatic weapons stood guard at several intersections.

Deep into the rubble at the Hugo Chavez housing complex, known colloquially as Los Cocos, alongside what used to be a basketball court, a ragtag civilian rescue team, assisted by a handful of army soldiers, removed three bodies they began uncovering yesterday. 

The volunteers first pulled the remains onto bed sheets gathered from the rubble and then hoisted the bodies into black plastic body bags. One bag ripped at the top.

The two women and one man died holding onto each other.

Just below them, civilian rescuers digging a different tunnel say they can hear a scratching sound, though not knocking or any voices. They do not know whether they are hearing a human or an animal.

Twenty-seven-year-old Yiscar Yzaguirre sat outside the tunnel, watching as her husband John Berroteran, 26, worked to remove debris from inside it.

He hopes to recover Yzaguirre’s father, Oscar Yzaguirre, 43, stepmother Elizabeth Vargas, 44, and eight-year-old half-sister Kristal.

Clad for safety in a black motorcycle helmet, Berroteran ordered silence on at least three occasions, so he could listen for a response from beneath the rubble.

Yzaguirre, who has been in Los Cocos since Saturday, said she was not sure whether those being sought could actually turn out to be her family.

“But it doesn’t matter. We have to get them all out,” she said.

Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb and Vivian Sequera; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb and Oliver Griffin; Editing by Bill Berkrot

A New York City Police Department spokesman said police responding to an emergency call made around 6:30 p.m. ET (2230 GMT) on Thursday found the man badly burned

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Police in New York City said on Thursday a man died from severe burns near the United Nations headquarters, and activists and a media outlet of exiled Tibetans identified him as a Tibetan who set himself on fire in an appeal for independence.

A New York City Police Department spokesman said police responding to an emergency call made around 6:30 p.m. ET (2230 GMT) on Thursday found the man badly burned.

He was taken to Bellevue Hospital where he was pronounced dead, police said, adding an investigation was ongoing. Police did not name the man and did not provide any potential motive for his action.

Voice of Tibet, a media outlet of exiled Tibetans, said Tibetan activist Lobga Rangzen “self-immolated outside the UN headquarters in New York after a live appeal for Tibetan independence and unity.”

He was an Uber driver and went to the scene with a Tibetan flag, local news site amNewYork reported. The website quoted fellow Uber driver Lobsang Paljor as saying he knew Rangzen from gatherings in the Tibetan community.

Paljor told the news website that Rangzen “was enraged by the restrictions the Chinese government had placed on his countrymen.”

ETHNIC UNITY LAW ENACTED

The United States and the European Union have expressed concern about China’s new ethnic unity law, which went into effect this week and gives Beijing the legal basis to take action against people outside its borders. 

The law creates a “shared” national identity among the country’s 55 ethnic minority groups, including Tibetans and Uyghurs, some of whom chafe under Chinese governance. Tibetans around the world have opposed the law.

Tibetans have also previously committed acts of self-immolation in protest against Beijing’s policies in Tibet and nearby regions with large Tibetan populations.

China seized control of Tibet in 1950 in what it describes as a “peaceful liberation” from feudalistic serfdom.

Responding to the immolation at a daily news conference on Friday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Tibet has been an inalienable part of the country’s territory since ancient times and Beijing believes “relevant countries will handle the matter in accordance with domestic laws.”

International human rights groups and exiles, however, have routinely condemned what they call China’s oppressive rule in Tibetan areas. China rejects such assessments.

Ethnic minority issues are highly sensitive in China, with Tibetans and other minorities put under heavy surveillance for any sign of alleged “separatism”. Beijing has exerted greater institutional control in Tibet since Xi Jinping became the country’s president in 2012.

Tencho Gyatso, president of the International Campaign for Tibet, described Rangzen as “a tireless advocate for Tibet” and said she was “deeply saddened” by his death.

The International Campaign for Tibet says there were more than 150 self-immolations by Tibetans between 2009 and 2022. According to its data, 10 self-immolations by Tibetans have occurred while people were in exile.

Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington, Additional reporting by Joe Cash in Beijing; Editing by Donna Bryson, Kate Mayberry and Thomas Derpinghaus

The research by the German Economic Institute, or IW, found a 7.7% rise in EU exports to the U.S. to €580 billion, while U.S. imports into the EU climbed 2.2% to €295 billion

International News via Reuters:

Trade in goods between the European Union and the U.S. reached a record €875 billion ($1.00 trillion) last year despite tariffs, but the figures mask significant economic damage, notably to Germany’s auto sector, a study published on Friday found.

The research by the German Economic Institute, or IW, found a 7.7% rise in EU exports to the U.S. to €580 billion, while U.S. imports into the EU climbed 2.2% to €295 billion, pushing the EU’s trade surplus to nearly €285 billion.

The report attributed some of the increase to front-loading of exports ahead of tariffs that took effect in April and said European manufacturing had suffered.

“This first impression is misleading,” said IW economist Samina Sultan.

EU car and parts exports to the U.S. fell 20.4% in 2025, with Germany, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of EU auto exports to the United States, posting an 18.9% drop.

Ireland bucked the trend with a 52.7% surge in exports, driven by tariff-exempt pharmaceutical and chemical products.

Most EU member states recorded a decline in their goods exports to the U.S. Apart from Ireland only the Czech Republic (+5.1%), Italy (+7.2%), Denmark (+10.6%) and Finland (+10.8%) reported growth.

TRANSATLANTIC SERVICES ALSO HIT A RECORD

Transatlantic services trade also hit a record €865 billion, though the EU ran a €178 billion deficit in that category.

“The transatlantic trade relationship is therefore much more balanced, when considering both goods and service trade,” the study said, contrasting the EU deficit in services and the surplus in goods.

Intellectual property fees – covering software licences, patents and trademarks – accounted for more than 40% of EU service imports from the U.S., rising 13.7%.

Although the services sector has so far avoided the impact of U.S. tariffs, the trade conflict has had a negative effect.

EU imports of travel services from the U.S. fell by around 8%. “This decline is likely attributable to the reduced number of European tourists in the U.S. last year,” said co-author Galina Kolev-Schaefer.

The study said the Turnberry trade deal between the EU and the U.S. asymmetrically benefited the U.S., but still it was a workable solution that should be honoured by both sides. 

“New tariff threats would cause new uncertainty that only hampers business activities on both sides of the Atlantic,” the IW said. 

($1 = 0.8730 euros)

Reporting by Maria Martinez and Rene WagnerEditing by Miranda Murray and Barbara Lewis

While thousands of immigrants packed up and left South Africa ahead of the June 30 protests, many more feel their best option is to stay, even though the country has turned hostile

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Ethiopian refugee Helana Wolde locked his home and watched on television as thousands of angry demonstrators marched through South Africa this week calling for foreigners like him to leave.

His wife and their three South African-born children were terrified, he said in the shop in downtown Durban where he sells coffee and lentils.

But after leaving Ethiopia 21 years ago to escape political persecution, he does not see going back as an option.

While thousands of immigrants packed up and left South Africa ahead of the June 30 protests, many more feel their best option is to stay, even though the country has turned hostile.

“I have no place, no property, no family” in Ethiopia, said Wolde, adding his brothers there had been jailed. He reopened his shop, which unlike others wasn’t looted, the morning after the protest and was hoping for the best.

Although Tuesday’s nationwide marches were largely peaceful, there were several pockets of attacks on foreigners and looting of migrant-owned businesses.

“We’re all extra-scared,” Wolde said.

PROTESTERS BLAME IMMIGRANTS FOR ECONOMIC WOES

South Africa hosts over 167,000 refugees and asylum-seekers, according to the United Nations, a small number compared to many African countries — Uganda has 1.8 million, according to the U.N. refugee agency; Chad has 1.2 million; Kenya, 850,000.

The overall immigrant population in South Africa stands at about 3 million, or 4% of the total, low by global standards.

The main group behind the protests, March and March, says it only objects to illegal immigration and is not xenophobic.

But the vigilantes it has riled up often target foreigners indiscriminately, and their frequent demands that immigrants show their documents are themselves illegal — as the government has pointed out in several statements — as only police have the authority to ask for them.

Several South African protesters said that what really bothered them was seeing foreign-owned shops on their streets, while they were struggling to make a living.

“This economy belongs to our people and it has been hijacked,” the group’s leader, Jacinta Ngobese, a former radio presenter, said in a speech on Tuesday.

She has called for marches every Thursday until its demands — including mass deportation — are met.

A third of South Africans are unemployed and frustration with overstretched public services and rampant crime has boiled over, although researchers say that immigration is not to blame for these problems.

“Foreigners are not taking jobs from South Africans. We are starting some small jobs here in South Africa. We are paying rent,” said Daniel Abide, 33, whose small convenience store in Clermont, a township near Durban, was looted on Tuesday night.

“If you want to open a shop, you must open a shop like us,” he said.

BUSINESS DOWN FOR FOREIGN SHOP OWNERS

Abide came from Ethiopia a decade ago and has two shops, one of which was not targeted. He hopes to eventually re-open the other one, which was broken into and emptied out by looters. He employs one South African in his small business.

Other shops that were looted in Clermont were run by people from Somalia and Pakistan, locals told Reuters.

Outside one, men were working to fix the broken doors before nightfall, when they were afraid looters might come back.

Wolde keeps a laminated stack of documents — his refugee certificate, tax and bank statements — on hand to show anyone who questions his legal status.

Sometimes he has to show them two or three times a day to police or other people who come into his shop, which is on a bustling street with mostly Ethiopian businesses.

“Now business is no good,” Wolde said. “Everybody is scared to come here.”

He has soured on South Africa. But having already survived a shooting in 2008, and xenophobic looting in 2015 and 2021, he plans to stick it out anyway.

“I make business here. I don’t know why they’re angry.”

Reporting by Nellie Peyton;Editing by Tim Cocks, William Maclean