CNN
 — 

Four people were killed and one severely injured when their cable car plunged into a ravine in Italy on Thursday, local authorities said.

The accident happened after a cable on the Monte Faito cableway near Sorrento snapped in severe weather, according to Vincenzo De Luca, the president of the Campania region in southern Italy.

Witnesses on the ground said the cable car plummeted into the valley below, hitting a pylon on the way down. It also reportedly hit a crane on a construction site.

De Luca said the car that fell had two couples and one worker from the cableway aboard.

One person survived the fall, according to Italy’s fire brigade, but was severely injured and air-lifted to a hospital in Naples.

The cableway, which reopened on April 10 after renovations, runs from Castellammare di Stabia between Naples and Sorrento some 1,092 meters to Monte Faito overlooking the bay of Naples and Mt. Vesuvius volcano.

Rescuers evacuated 16 people from the cable cars below the break in the cable, a spokesperson for Italy’s fire brigade told CNN.

There were no cable cars above the break, the fire brigade said.Strong winds hampered the rescue effort and it took first responders with helicopters working in extremely foggy conditions more than 90 minutes to locate the wreckage.

Foreign tourists and workers were among those rescued, De Luca said. An investigation into the incident has been opened by the local prosecutor’s office.

Italy’s President of the Senate Ignazio La Russa posted his condolences on social media. “I learn with deep sorrow of the tragedy that occurred on the Monte Faito cable car. I express my deepest condolences to the families of the victims and I address a thought of gratitude to all the rescuers involved.”

Local rail stations that connect Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast to Naples were closed.

London
CNN
 — 

Maintaining a good relationship between the United States and Europe has long been seen as a no-brainer by leaders on both side of the Atlantic. After all, it’s this friendship that has led to decades of peace, stability and prosperity.

And then came US President Donald Trump.

In his second term, Trump and his closest aides have repeatedly expressed a deep disdain for Europe, centered mainly around their belief that the continent is taking advantage of the US when it comes to security and trade.

They say the US has for decades been subsidizing Europe’s inadequate defense spending, while getting slapped with tariffs and trade barriers in return.

But their dislike seems to be at least partly rooted in ideology.

Majda Ruge, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that Trump’s foreign policy is an extension of the culture wars that he and his administration are leading against liberalism at home.

“And Europe is considered to be one of the bastions of that liberalism,” she said.

She said Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement has been largely inspired by people’s disappointment with globalization.

“It is based on grievances and backlash against globalization, elites, against international organization, supranationalism and everything that the European Union represents,” Ruge told CNN. “And then you have the backlash against progressive liberal policies on gender, on education, on immigration. Again, Europe finds itself there on the wrong side of the culture war,” she added.

Few in the Trump administration have shown as much contempt for Europe as Vice President JD Vance.

Just weeks into his tenure, Vance stunned European leaders by using his speech at the Munich Security Conference to berate them over free speech and migration. He went as far as suggesting that the biggest threat to European security wasn’t Russia or China, but “the threat from within,” which he characterized as “the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.”

He followed that up a wide-ranging interview with British website UnHerd on April 15 where he shared his and the president’s frustration with European leaders.

“The reality is – it’s blunt to say it, but it’s also true – that Europe’s entire security infrastructure, for my entire life, has been subsidized by the United States of America,” he said.

“It’s not in Europe’s interest, and it’s not in America’s interest, for Europe to be a permanent security vassal of the United States.”

But the extent of his dislike for the continent was laid bare when the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally added to a group chat of Trump’s top officials on the nongovernment messaging app Signal.

Vance suggested calling off a US attack on the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who had been disrupting key international shipping routes for months, because it would help European economies more than it would America’s.

“I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance said in the chat.

That remark was in line with Trump’s long-held belief that European countries have been able to underspend on defense because they knew the US would step in and bail them out.

He has threatened to take the US out of NATO and questioned Article 5 of the treaty, the principle of collective defense – a key pillar of the alliance that has only been invoked once in its history, after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US.

Trump made defense spending a major issue when he first became US commander in chief and 22 out of NATO’s then 27 members were spending less than the agreed upon 2% of their GDP on defense.

Things have changed since then – partly because of Trump’s pressure, but mostly because of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which was a major wake-up call for Europe.

In 2024, only eight out of the expanded alliance’s 32 members didn’t meet the target.

And while it is true that the US has invested a lot of money and manpower into Europe’s security, experts say the picture is a lot more nuanced than how Vance and other top Trump lieutenants present it.

“Americans didn’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts,” Ruge said. “Regardless of the administration, the US has rarely done something on the foreign policy front, which hasn’t been to the benefit of or in line with (the) national interests of the United States.”

Sudha David-Wilp, vice president of external relations and senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, agreed with that assessment – and warned that pulling away from the time-tested alliance could end up costing the US.

“Yes, the United States is the one that invests more blood and treasure, but the United States has also benefited from this network that has been created in the last 70 years,” she told CNN.

The US was able to rely on the support of its European allies on a number of occasions, even when it didn’t necessarily benefit their own political standing – such as when they refused to condemn the decision by the US to kill Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani in Iraq, or when they supported the US invasion of Afghanistan and contributed troops to the multinational force there as required by NATO’s Article 5, even though majorities of their citizens opposed it.

“Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Does it need reform? Yes. But by tearing it all down, it could make (the world) more dangerous and riskier for the United States,” David-Wilp said.

Trump and those close to him have long pushed for the US to pull back from its traditional role as the world’s policeman, warning against America’s involvement in foreign conflicts.

The paradox of this, Ruge said, is that Vance and other “restrainers” are aligned with many European countries who have in the past criticized US interventions abroad.

Vance said as much in the interview with UnHerd, when he suggested that if Europe was a “little more willing to stand up” to the US, it “could have saved the entire world from the strategic disaster that was the American-led invasion of Iraq.”

Both Germany and France opposed the 2003 Iraq invasion, a stance which greatly angered the Bush administration. The then-Secretary of State Colin Powell threatened France with “consequences” over its decision to stand up to Washington. An anti-French sentiment took hold across the US — with actions like “French fries” being renamed “freedom fries” in establishments around the country.

“If you think about the Signal chat, where they’re going into the action of bombing of Houthis in Yemen and saying ‘we’re going to give the bill to Europeans,’ well, there’s an amount of hypocrisy, because American action – especially in the Middle East and North Africa – has produced huge amounts of liabilities for Europe,” Ruge said.

The US has a vast network of military bases across Europe, with some 80,000 service members deployed there, down from a 20-year peak of 105,000 at the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The current number is roughly one fifth of what it used to be during the Cold War.

The strategy of stationing American troops closer to conflict zones dates back to World War II and has proven to be beneficial time and time again.

While different administrations have tinkered with the number of troops and locations of bases, the US has always maintained a significant military presence around the world.

“One can certainly make credible arguments that it’s important to move assets to regions like the Indo-Pacific, but it still makes sense to have a presence in Europe, because having a presence in Europe also helps the United States when it comes to out-of-area conflict,” David-Wilp said.

According to research by the Atlantic Council, it would cost the US taxpayer nearly $70 million more per year to rotate military forces in and out of Europe rather than have them based in Germany and Poland.

The huge investments the US has been making into defense in Europe and elsewhere have also directly benefited the American economy.

Because while Trump and others often make it sound like the US is pouring cash into Europe, and Ukraine in particular, what the US is mostly doing is pouring money into American defense contractors.

“In terms of what the alliance has given to the US, besides all the other benefits, just in terms of the economy – the benefit (the) American economy has drawn from this in terms of weapon sales and weapon production is huge,” Ruge said.

Of the more than $175 billion in aid that the US Congress has appropriated to Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion, more than $120 billion has been spent directly with US companies or on US Forces, according to conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute.

And according to the Kiel Institute, which monitors aid to Ukraine, European countries have provided even more aid to Ukraine than the US – first by using their own existing arsenals and then by procuring weaponry from Western defense industries. With four out of the top five global defense contractors being American companies, US industry is getting a sizable chunk of this new business.

Trump has made his personal contempt for the European Union clear on multiple occasions in recent months. He even complained to Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, incorrectly, that the bloc was making it difficult for him to expand his golf resort in Ireland.

Last month, Trump claimed the EU was “formed to screw the United States” when announcing his “Liberation Day” tariffs.

It was a strange suggestion given that the EU would likely not exist if it wasn’t for the post-war push by the US to help form it. President Harry Truman was a great advocate of European unity and his and subsequent US administrations have supported European integration, seeing a united Europe as a more prosperous trade partner and stable ally.

In Trump’s worldview, the US is being “screwed” by the EU because it is running an overall trade deficit with the bloc. But, just like with defense spending, the issue is more complex than Trump might suggest.

The US and the EU have the largest trading relationship in the world, having traded $1.4 trillion worth of goods and services in 2023, according to the latest available official data. And while the US ran a trade deficit with the EU in goods, it had a surplus in services.

The two sides have been balancing on the edge of a trade war after Trump unveiled 25% tariffs on European steel, aluminum and car exports, and 20% “reciprocal” tariffs on all other goods. The EU said it would retaliate but then put a pause on the planned countermeasures after Trump announced he’d temporarily halt the tariffs.

But while a full-blown trade conflict has been avoided for now, trust between the two sides of the Atlantic has been fractured – perhaps irreparably.

CNN
 — 

Last month a private jet belonging to Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff winged its way from Abu Dhabi to Doha to Moscow and Baku, before finally flying to Florida, where Witkoff briefed President Donald Trump on his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin — all within the span of a few days.

It was just another week for Witkoff, whose globetrotting is now taking him well beyond his original job as it becomes increasingly clear that he has what few others, if any, in the administration do: the absolute faith of President Trump.

The pace in recent weeks has not abated. Witkoff met with Ukrainians and Europeans in Paris on Thursday to discuss driving an end to the Ukraine War, before he was scheduled to zip over to Rome for a second round of talks with Iran to pave the way for a possible nuclear deal.

In three short months, Witkoff has become Trump’s defacto point-man on some of the most urgent foreign policy challenges facing the new administration. His expansive remit has at times verged into territory usually reserved for secretaries of state and CIA directors.

For someone who’s never worked in government, that’s raised questions in Washington and abroad over how Trump views the other more traditional and experienced foreign policy hands on his team — and whether Witkoff is truly equipped to operate at such a high level on the world stage.

“Very few people outside the White House inner circle have worked with him. He operates as quite the lone ranger,” said a longtime US official who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity in order to talk freely. “Doing this shuttle diplomacy without a single expert is definitely unusual. I really can’t explain that. It’s odd and it’s not ideal.”

Though it’s early going, so far results have been mixed. Witkoff has been unable to resurrect the truce in Gaza that fell apart last month. Russia has so far rejected the ceasefire the US called for in Ukraine over a month ago. And this week, the Iranian foreign minister called Witkoff’s shifting position on their nuclear program “contradictory and conflicting.”

On the Ukraine front, frustration is mounting over the lack of progress. Speaking to reporters on Friday from Paris, where he was joined by Witkoff for high-level talks with European and Ukrainian officials, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the US could end its efforts to seek peace.

“If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” Rubio told reporters before departing Paris. “We need to determine very quickly now, and I’m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable.”

Witkoff, a New York real-estate developer whose relationship with Trump stretches back decades, is the closest person to family serving in the president’s second term — leading some sources familiar with their dynamic to compare his role to the one Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner had during Trump’s first administration.

Like Kushner, Witkoff sees the president almost daily, texts with Trump’s family members, has walk-in privileges to the Oval Office, and enjoys a longer leash than nearly anyone else in the Trump administration, sources explained. That operational freedom though has at times led to some internal chaos — like when Witkoff books himself for TV interviews, a process that typically runs through the president’s national security team. White House communications director Steven Cheung pushed back saying in a statement that every media booking runs through the White House.

As Witkoff’s responsibilities have expanded — first handling Gaza talks, then adding Russia and now leading on Iran – he has grown to rely on a small team of officials at the White House and has become a regular consumer of US intelligence, sources said.

Witkoff also takes no salary from the US government and pays for travel on his personal plane without reimbursement from the federal government, according to an administration official. Witkoff expects to log more than 1,000 hours this year on his efforts for the Trump administration, the official added.

Witkoff has some of the trappings of a traditional special envoy’s office but in many ways ignores them. At the White House, he keeps his own West Wing office—the one that belonged to Ivanka Trump in the first term—so that he can be closer to Trump.

Meanwhile, about a mile away at the State Department, some of Witkoff’s small but expanding team works out of a space last used by John Kerry when he was President Joe Biden’s climate envoy.

While he initially intended to work out of the State Department, the unexpected calls into the Oval Office that come most afternoons have anchored Witkoff in the White House, sources said.

That at times leaves his team of less than a dozen officials at the State Department operating with little information. They often don’t know Witkoff’s daily schedule – which sources close to him say may be a product of that agenda evolving by the hour. They also sometimes don’t get advance notice of Witkoff’s planned engagements, including with Putin and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, multiple sources said.

An outsider and deal maker

Witkoff’s close relationship with Trump has given him immense cache when he engages with foreign diplomats.

“We know he is talking for Trump so conversations with him are extremely valuable,” said one foreign diplomat in Washington.

A Middle Eastern official who has worked with Witkoff praised him as a “smart negotiator” and said his go-it-alone approach can result in “efficient and effective execution of deals.”

“No doubt he’s on a learning curve, but he is not afraid to learn and very open for considerations and angles he had not previously seen,” the official said.

In a statement to CNN, Rubio, who works closely with Witkoff, offered his robust support.

“From spearheading efforts to bring Americans home to his commitment to restoring peace across global conflicts, Steve has been an incredible leader in the America First movement,” Rubio said. “He has shown tremendous passion and has employed innovative ways to advance our national interests at home and abroad. The American people are better off for the contributions he has already made in just three months as part of this administration.”

Still, questions remain over how much Witkoff will use the team that is being built for him, and how effective he will ultimately be in driving negotiations that produce major deals.

Speaking privately to CNN, a number of career US and European diplomats were skeptical of Witkoff’s ability to deliver final agreements that, whether it’s Gaza, Ukraine or Iran, will inevitably require extensive discussion of complex technical details.

“This is somebody who appears to be launching out on his own with no diplomatic experience,” said one veteran US diplomat who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity in order to talk candidly. “On the Russian side he is up against very experienced diplomats and operators,” the person said. “The concern is that you have someone who is outmatched by his counterparts and that is not a good place to be.”

Sources close to Witkoff say he is happy to hand off nitty gritty technical negotiations and that he has no interest in trying to own the entire process on any of these fronts.

On Ukraine though, Witkoff has raised concerns among some American and foreign officials with his habit of praising Putin and erring on the Russian leader’s position.

“I think that Mr Witkoff has taken the strategy of the Russian side,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday. “I think it is very dangerous because he is consciously or unconsciously, I don’t know, disseminating Russian narratives.”

Those points are sometimes repeated by Witkoff behind closed doors in meetings with senior Trump officials, “certainly to the discomfort of some in the room,” the longtime US official said. “Witkoff seems very susceptible to certain Russian narratives, and that’s a real problem.”

Sources close to Witkoff say he is aware of the criticism that he is a novice to diplomacy, but that he also believes that not having the training of career diplomats comes with benefits.

“He is not new to dealing with foreign actors, he has dealt with them throughout his real estate and business career,” said one source close to Witkoff. “What is new is that he is dealing with them for the US government. But it still requires a level of trust to get anything done,” the person said.

Cheung said that Witkoff doesn’t have “ulterior motives” which has boosted his efforts, and some Trump allies argue an outsider is exactly what is needed in these types of negotiations.

“He’s an outsider, but that’s what makes him such a good deal maker,” said Ohio Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno, who got to know Witkoff and his family closely during Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. “We need to reject that old mindset with a new outsider’s view on all these things. And that’s exactly what Steve’s doing, and that’s exactly what’s needed.”

Second only to himself, Trump believes Witkoff is the ultimate deal maker. He thinks their shared background in the real estate business as developers makes them similar in their approach to foreign leaders, Trump administration officials and people close to the president told CNN.

That’s in large part how Witkoff landed what has become one of the most crucial and legacy-defining roles of Trump’s second term.

Trump initially gave Witkoff the Middle East portfolio because he wanted to find his friend a meaningful role in his administration – and knew he had connections to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Middle Eastern officials thanks to his business dealings, sources close to both the president and Witkoff told CNN.

But Trump was so pleased with how Witkoff pushed through the initial ceasefire and hostage agreement — struck in the final days of the Biden administration — that he directly told Witkoff to serve as a chief negotiator for talks between Russia and Ukraine, and now Iran, the sources said.

“Witkoff proved early on that he had the chops to be a dealmaker,” a second Trump administration official said. “He helped reached a breakthrough where others couldn’t. That success led the president to give him more jobs.”

After Trump lost the 2020 election, Witkoff was a constant presence in his inner orbit, even as many former allies abandoned him. During the 2024 campaign, Witkoff grew close to many of Trump’s most senior advisers, including Susie Wiles, Trump’s campaign manager and now White House chief of staff, sources familiar with their relationship said.

“Witkoff doesn’t just have the trust of President Trump. He has the trust of the president’s entire family, and the trust of the president’s closest aides,” a person close to the Trump family told CNN. “Steve is someone who stood by Trump when it was tough to stand by him.”

Donald Trump Jr., who has become close personal friends with Witkoff and a key advocate of his role in his father’s administration, is effusive in his praise for Witkoff.

“Not only is Steve Witkoff one of the most amazing businessmen of this generation, but he’s also one of the most decent human beings you will ever meet,” Trump Jr. told CNN. “When a lot of fake friends ran for the hills after the 2020 election, Steve always stayed loyal to my father and our entire family and that is something we will never forget.”

Added Trump Jr, “No one is better suited to lead peace negotiations in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine than he is. His ability to cut deals and succeed in tough negotiations is second to none and America will be better off because of his hard work.”

‘Steve can handle it’

When preparing for his overseas engagements, Witkoff doesn’t ask for a thick briefing book or a series of departmental briefings to be setup. Instead, he relies on his almost daily communications with the president, impromptu meetings, interactions with members of Trump’s National Security Council and his now-regular intelligence briefings as the primary sources of preparation, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

Witkoff takes two identical notebooks with him everywhere, the source added. One is for general information; the other is for more sensitive information.

Witkoff’s small circle includes his girlfriend, Lauren Olaya, a former professional golfer who joined Wikoff at Trump’s inauguration. Olaya often accompanies him on visits to sensitive engagements, flying with him on his private jet, two sources explained. She also joined Witkoff on his second trip to Moscow, one person said, but does not attend Witkoff’s meetings with foreign leaders and top officials. She does, however, often serve as a sounding board for him, the sources said.

Witkoff initially told people that he would remain in the role for a year, though sources say that he has indicated that he will stay around until he crosses the finish line on deals he has been tasked to clinch.

And while there are no current plans to expand Witkoff’s role, US officials say that it is not out of the realm of possibility – especially as questions arise about who might lead discussions with China.

“Steve can handle it,” Trump and his national security team often joke when discussing a wide range of topics, explained a source familiar with the matter.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Jennifer Hansler and Avery Schmitz contributed to this report.