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Trump promised 200 deals by now. He’s gotten 3, and 1 more is getting very close

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3 days ago

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CNN
 — 

At the conclusion of his first 100 days in office in late April, President Donald Trump made a stunning statement about his progress on tariff negotiations: He had completed trade deals with 200 countries. More than two months later, Trump has announced just three of those agreements – with China, the United Kingdom and Vietnam.

So what happened?

Wednesday marks the day that Trump had set three months ago as a deadline for all countries to reach a deal or face higher “reciprocal” tariffs. Trump has since publicly acknowledged that pausing those “Liberation Day” tariffs until July 9 left insufficient time to negotiate with practically every country around the world.

Trump had initially expected to complete more trade deals by Wednesday’s deadline, but in recent weeks he’s been convinced that landing those deals can’t happen more swiftly, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN. That’s why his public rhetoric has shifted in recent weeks to saying he would send out letters that set higher tariffs on America’s trading partners, effectively getting results on the board while talks continue.

So Trump agreed to push the deadline back to August 1 to give countries that are close to a deal a little more time for talks – particularly the European Union, which is on the verge of announcing a trade deal with the United States.

EU and US trade negotiators are nearing a framework agreement that would set in place 10% tariffs and lay out the parameters for extensive trade discussions going forward, according to three officials familiar with the matter.

The progress in negotiations with the EU, in particular, was a key consideration in extending the deadline beyond July 9. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pointed to the EU talks, as well as the view that several other key negotiations were in their final stages, as he advocated for more time, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Trump still needs to sign off on any final agreement and talks between the two sides are ongoing, but the officials said the agreement would be announced before the end of the week. Olof Gill, trade spokesperson for the European Commission, confirmed in a press briefing Wednesday that EU trade negotiators are in active discussions with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and that a deal is expected to be announced in the coming days.

The progress marks a dramatic turn in Trump’s long-standing, long-public disdain for the EU, a view that served as the backdrop to months of frustrating and intractable trade discussions this year.

But Trump’s tone – and behind the scenes, the tenor and tempo of the negotiations – shifted dramatically in the weeks since he threatened 50% tariffs on the EU in a morning social media post in late May. That unexpected and dramatic threat sparked an immediate response from the EU and set the stage for an urgent effort to reach some form of an agreement before Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs snapped into place.

EU officials have been in the midst of briefing member countries about the framework and proposed negotiating process, one of the EU officials said, adding that despite the often-divergent equities of the bloc’s nations, the deal has been presented as the best and likely only way to avoid a dramatic escalation in tariffs on August 1.

Trump’s negotiators have maintained a hardline on the EU’s push for exemptions to sectoral tariffs already in place or forthcoming, the officials said. For instance, a push to reduce Trump’s 25% tariff on autos is a central late-stage focus of the discussions, as has an effort to cut the 50% levies on steel.

US negotiators have indicated some willingness to consider key EU industries and products for possible rate reductions, including airplanes, alcoholic beverages and some agricultural products. But it would require Trump’s final sign-off, the officials said.

EU officials have also pledged to significantly increase purchases of US energy and defense sector goods.

If a deal can’t be reached, the EU has vowed to introduce countermeasures targeting billions of dollars’ worth of US exports to the bloc.

Those retaliatory steps have been due to come into force on July 14. It is not yet clear if the EU will push back that date to account for Trump’s extension of his “reciprocal” tariffs deadline to August 1.

“If no agreement is reached by the stated deadline, the EU is prepared to activate targeted and proportionate countermeasures in defense of its legitimate interest,” Marie Bjerre, Denmark’s minister of European affairs, reminded the European Parliament Wednesday, noting that there are limits to the bloc’s patience.

Trump has been frustrated by a lack of progress on trade. During a cabinet meeting Tuesday, he said his tariff threats have successfully brought trading partners to the table – but the deals other countries have offered the United States are unacceptable.

“They say … ‘We will give you total access, and you don’t have to pay any tariffs, but please don’t charge us tariffs,’ and we don’t like that deal,” Trump said. “We’re not hard-line, but it’s about time the United States of America started collecting money from countries that were ripping us off – ripping us off – and laughing behind our back at how stupid we were.”

Trump this week has sent out several letters setting new tariffs, including 25% tariffs on Japan and South Korea. Other letters are expected to be publicized Wednesday.

Other deals have been harder to come by.

India has long been viewed as the most likely major partner to sign onto a framework with the US. But Indian trade negotiators have hardened their positions in recent days, according to US officials. India is also a member of the BRICS group, so it’s unclear what Trump’s 10% tariff threat on BRICS countries Sunday means for trade negotiations.

South Korea had also been viewed for weeks as likely to reach an agreement, though Trump’s auto tariffs remain a key sticking point in those talks, and Trump’s letter on Monday may have thrown a wrench in those gears.

Japan steadily moved further away from an outcome in recent weeks, and Trump cast significant doubt on talks that once seemed on a path to a certain agreement. Japanese trade negotiators, who just weeks ago were scrambling to lay the groundwork for an announcement by last month’s Group of Seven summit, have delivered far more pessimistic messages in their public statements in recent days.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said Tuesday that despite “earnest and sincere discussions,” Japan has been unable to reach a deal, according to remarks translated by CNN. “We deeply regret that the US government has imposed additional tariffs and announced plans to raise tariff rates,” Ishiba said.

Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand have all delivered substantial offers to their US counterparts in the last two weeks in an effort to move to the front of the line for an agreement and are likely candidates for any near-term deal in the next few days, US officials said.

Brazil has ramped up its efforts to secure an agreement, including bilateral talks at the end of last week designed to expand on an earlier offer to sharply reduce tariffs on certain US products, American administration officials said.

The most prevalent point of contention among foreign trade teams has been a lack of clarity on what their US counterparts envision for any final agreement.

But the biggest roadblock in the more expansive negotiations has been the existence – or promised imposition – of Trump’s sectoral tariffs on autos, steel and pharmaceuticals, US officials said.

CNN’s Alayna Treene, James Frater and Anna Cooban contributed to this report.



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Scotland faces up to its drug crisis by offering the UK’s first supervised injection facility

Published

11 hours ago

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July 11, 2025

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CNN
 — 

In a quiet corner of Glasgow’s East End, a radical public health experiment is underway. For the first time in the United Kingdom, people who inject illicit drugs such as heroin and cocaine can do so under medical supervision – in a safe environment and indoors.

No arrests. No judgment. No questions about where the drugs came from – only how to make their use less deadly.

The facility, known as the Thistle, opened in January amid mounting political and public health pressure to confront Scotland’s deepening drug crisis. With the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Europe, Scottish health officials say, there have long been calls for a more pragmatic, compassionate response.

Funded by the devolved Scottish government and modelled on more than 100 similar sites across Europe and North America, the pilot safe drug consumption facility marks a significant departure from the UK’s traditionally punitive approach to illegal drug use.

Dorothy Bain, who heads Scotland’s prosecution service and advises the government, told a UK parliamentary committee in May that “it would not be in the public interest to prosecute users of the Glasgow safer drug consumption facility for possession of drugs for personal use.”

She added that the approach would be kept under review to ensure it “is not causing difficulties, raising the risk of further criminality or having an unlawful impact on the community.”

Supporters describe it as a long-overdue shift toward harm reduction. Critics warn it risks becoming a place where damaging addiction is maintained, not treated.

Located in a low-slung clinical building near the city center, the Thistle is a space where individuals bring their own drugs, prepare them on site, and inject under the watchful eyes of trained staff.

The service provides no substances, nor does it allow drug sharing between users. What it offers instead is clean equipment, medical oversight, and a protected environment for a population who might otherwise use in alleyways, public toilets or dumpster sheds, with the associated risks for themselves and the wider community.

“We’ve had almost 2,500 injections inside the facility,” Dr. Saket Priyadarshi, the clinical lead of the Thistle, told a CNN team who visited the facility in early June. “That’s 2,500 less injections in the community, in parks, alleyways, car parks.”

sakat intw.jpg

Dr. Saket Priyadarshi tells CNN about types of drug use at the Thistle

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All users must register before receiving support, providing only their initials and date of birth. Staff ask what drugs they plan to use and how. Then, they observe – not intervene – ready to act in the event of an emergency.

“We’ve had to manage over 30 medical emergencies inside the facility,” Priyadarshi said. “Some of them were severe overdoses that most likely would have ended in fatalities if we hadn’t been able to respond to them immediately here.”

Nurses work with patients to reduce harm wherever possible, advising on injection technique, equipment, and vein placement.

“We’ll spend a bit of time with them. Just (to) try and get the vein finder working,” said Lynn MacDonald, the service manager at the facility, referring to a handheld device that uses infrared light to illuminate veins beneath the skin.

“People have often learnt technique from other people who are using it and it’s not particularly good,” she told CNN. With equipment such as vein finders, she said, the staff at the Thistle are able to highlight “better” sites of injection to “reduce harm and make the injection safer.”

Service manager Lynn MacDonald demonstrates how to use the vein finder.

The Scottish government told CNN that the service has already delivered results in terms of public health.

“Through the ability of staff to respond quickly in the event of an overdose, the Thistle service has already saved lives,” Scottish health secretary Neil Gray said. The service, he said, is “helping to protect people against blood-borne viruses and taking used needles off the street.”

The Thistle bears little resemblance to a medical clinic. There are no fluorescent white lights, no clinical uniforms, and no sterile white rooms. Even the language has been reimagined: users aren’t brought into “interview rooms,” but welcomed into “chat rooms.”

The space itself is soft and deliberate, – furnished with books, jigsaws, warm lighting and a café-style area where people can sit, drink tea, shower, or have their clothes washed.

“The whole service is just designed to that ethos of treating people with a bit of dignity, a bit of respect, bringing them in, making them feel welcome,” Macdonald told CNN. “We want them to leave knowing somebody cares about them and we’re looking forward to seeing them safe and well again.”

For Margaret Montgomery, whose son Mark began using heroin at 17, the existence of the Thistle offers a degree of solace that once felt impossible.

Margaret Montgomery says her son struggled with drug addiction for 30 years.

Now in his fifties, Mark is no longer using – but it took years, and distance, to get there.

“My son went into treatment and it’s like six weeks, three months, six months. That’s not enough time. There’s no aftercare,” Montgomery told CNN.

She added that she’d asked her son whether he would have used the Thistle “all those years ago.”

“He said, ‘yes, I probably would have used it because of the other facilities that they’re offering in there.’” Mark declined to speak with CNN himself but was happy for his mother to recount his experience.

What the Thistle represents, for Montgomery, is not approval – but reprieve. “Nobody wants to think their children are taking drugs anywhere,” she said. “There must be parents that are sat out there and they’re going, ‘well thank god he’s going in there and he’s doing that in there, not in a bin shed.’”

Her support is unflinching – and practical. She is the chairperson of a family support group that was consulted about the Thistle.

“I think the Thistle’s the best thing that’s happened in Glasgow,” she told CNN.

‘Ethical and moral question’

Others see the facility not as an act of compassion, but as a quiet surrender.

Annemarie Ward, who has been in recovery for 27 years, believes that without a clear route to abstinence, harm reduction risks becoming a form of institutionalized maintenance.

“Have we given up trying to help people? Are we just trying to maintain people’s addictions now?” she told CNN.

Ward, who is from Glasgow, is the chief executive of the charity Faces and Voices of Recovery UK (Favor UK), and a campaigning voice for better access and treatment choices for those seeking help with addiction.

For Ward, the danger lies not in what the Thistle does, but in what it omits: a vision of freedom from dependency. Without that, she argues, the ethics of such facilities become blurred.

Discarded paraphernalia used by drug users is pictured in Glasgow in December 2020.

“If our whole system is focused on maintaining people’s addiction and not giving them the opportunity to exit that system,” she said, “I think there’s an ethical and moral question that we need to ask.”

The Thistle is “just prolonging the agony of addiction,” she said. “If you know anybody who’s suffered in that way or loved anybody that’s suffered that way you would see how inhumane this actually is.”

But Glasgow City Council says that the facility is one strand of a broader strategy.

The council says that the Thistle does not divert “from other essential alcohol and drug services in the city,” adding that the local authority “also invests heavily in treatment and care and recovery services.”

“Comparing these interventions is not helpful,” the council said in a statement. “All services are equally important – and needed – to allow us to support people who most need them.”

The idea itself is not new.

The world’s first safer drug consumption room opened in Switzerland in 1986 -– a clinical counterpoint to street-level chaos. Since then, the model has spread across Europe, from Portugal and the Netherlands to Germany, Denmark and Spain, and beyond to Canada and New York City.

The Thistle, the UK’s first iteration, operates 365 days a year, and shares its premises with addiction services and social care teams.

The

As of June, 71.9% of drugs injected inside were cocaine, with heroin making up a further 20%. The users are overwhelmingly male. Most have been injecting for years; all are at risk.

Still, resistance remains. CNN spoke to several people in the area who were concerned about the facility’s opening and said it had encouraged more drug users to come to the area in the six months since opening.

Others, however, told CNN that they had noticed there were fewer needles and less discarded drug paraphernalia on the ground since the clinic opened.

Chief Inspector Max Shaw, of Police Scotland, told CNN that the force was “aware of long-standing issues in the area” and was “committed to reducing the harm associated with problematic substance use and addiction.” He added that officers would continue to work with local communities to address concerns.

For the nurses, doctors and support staff who work in the building, the mission remains immediate: delivering potentially life-saving support to those in need.



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German tourist found alive 12 days after she was lost in the Australian Outback

Published

14 hours ago

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July 11, 2025

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Melbourne, Australia
AP
 — 

German tourist Carolina Wilga was found alive in Australia’s remote Outback on Friday, 12 days after she went missing and a day after her abandoned van was discovered, police said.

The last known sighting of the 26-year-old backpacker, and the last day family and friends heard from her, was June 29. She was seen at a general store in the wheat farming town of Beacon, 320 kilometers (200 miles) northeast of the Western Australia state capital Perth. Beacon had a population of 123 during the 2021 census.

A member of the public found Wilga wandering on a forest trail late Friday, Western Australia Police Force Insp. Martin Glynn said.

She was in a “fragile” state but had no serious injuries and was flown to a hospital in Perth for treatment, Glynn told reporters.

“I think once we do hear her story, it will be a remarkable story,” Glynn said, adding it was a “great result” for the backpacker’s family and those involved in the search.

“You know, she’s obviously coped in some amazing conditions,” he said. “There’s a very hostile environment out there, both from flora and fauna. It’s a really, really challenging environment to cope in.”

Carolina Wilga in an undated image posted to social media by police.

The reserve where Wilga was lost covers more than 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres). The Thursday-Friday overnight temperature was 2.6 degrees Celsius (36.7 Fahrenheit) in the area with no rain.

The crew of a police helicopter spotted her van Thursday in wilderness in the Karroun Hill Nature Reserve, 36 kilometers (22 miles) north of Beacon, Glynn said.

“Very difficult country. Huge area. So it’s a miracle they’ve actually spotted the car, to be honest,” Glynn told reporters before she was found.

Ground searchers on Friday scoured a heavily wooded radius of 300 meters (1,000 feet) beyond the van. Police assume Wilga’s van, a 1995 Mitsubishi Delica Star Wagon, became stuck in mud on the day she left Beacon, Glynn said.

The van, which has solar panels and reserves of drinking water, had recovery boards under its rear wheels that are used to give vehicles traction when they are stuck.

Police believed Wilga became lost and was not the victim of crime.

Australian serial killer Ivan Milat, who died in prison in 2019, notoriously kidnapped and murdered seven backpackers from 1989 to 1992, including three Germans, two Britons and two Australians.



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Ukrainian doctor drives a child’s heart through Russian attack to perform a life-saving transplant

Published

16 hours ago

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July 11, 2025

By



CNN
 — 

Kyiv was burning as Dr. Borys Todurov sped through the city in an ambulance, undeterred by the deep thuds of explosions and the terrifying sounds of Russian drones flying overhead.

He was determined to deliver his precious cargo: a human heart.

Todurov’s patient – a child – was seriously ill in a hospital. He had hours to act.

The child has been living with a heart disease for several years, but her condition deteriorated earlier this week and Todurov knew a new heart was her only chance.

So when one became available from a child donor on the opposite side of the city, he didn’t wait for the Russians to stop attacking.

Russia has ramped up its aerial attacks against Ukraine in recent weeks. It fired more than 400 drones and 18 missiles, including eight ballistic and six cruise missiles overnight into Thursday.

As the Ukrainian authorities called on people to hide in bomb shelters and basements, Todurov and his staff made the 10-mile drive from the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in western Kyiv to the city’s Heart Institute on the eastern bank of the river while missiles and drones were flying around.

While the Ukrainian Air Force managed to shoot down or disable the vast majority of the drones and missiles, two people were killed and dozens more injured in the attack on Thursday.

Thursday’s mass attack on Kyiv was just the latest in a deadly string of Russian assaults. Just the day before, Moscow launched more than 700 drones – a new record – against Ukraine on a single night.

Todurov, the director of the Heart Institute, and his team worked non-stop throughout the two nights of attacks.

After performing a heart surgery at the institute on Wednesday, he traveled across the city to Okhmatdyt where he removed the heart from the body of the donor.

He then personally escorted the organ across the city.

Crossing the Dnipro by a bridge is extremely dangerous during an attack on Kyiv, because vehicles are exposed and Ukrainian air defences target Russian drones and missiles when they are above the river to minimise the impact from falling debris.

A video taken during the frantic drive shows a large fire burning near the road as Todurov drives on. “We’re carrying a heart,” he says calmly.

The Russian attack on the capital was still underway when Todurov got into the operating theater at the Heart Institute, heading a large medical team and transplanting the heart into the body of his patient.

In a stunning moment captured on camera and shared with CNN, the new heart is seen beating inside the patient’s chest, just hours after it was driven through Kyiv as Russian drones and missiles rained down on the city.

“The heart is working, and the pressure is stable. We hope that … (the patient) will recover and live a long and full life,” the doctor said.

The Ukrainian Transplant Coordination Centre said in a statement that the donor was a four-year-old girl who was declared brain-dead by a medical council after suffering serious injuries.

The girl’s mother, herself a medical worker, agreed to have her daughter’s organs donated.

And so, just as Todurov was transplanting the girl’s heart into his patient’s body at the Heart Institute, her kidneys were being transplanted to a 14-year-old boy and her liver to a 16-year-old girl, the center said. The two other patients were at the Okhmatdyt hospital, so no transport was required to get the organs to them.

The coordination center said that two of the three recipients were in critical condition and had they not received the transplants, they would have just days or weeks to live.

“May the little donor rest in peace. Our condolences to her family and gratitude for their difficult but important decision,” the center said.



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