Brazil’s leftist president recently told the country’s citizens not to purchase expensive grocery items in an effort to combat soaring food prices.
In a video being shared online, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva urged Brazilians to be frugal when grocery shopping.
“If you go to the supermarket in Salvador and you suspect that a certain product is expensive, don’t buy it,” he said. “Look, if everyone thought like that and didn’t buy things they thought were expensive, whoever is selling is going to have to lower the price in order to sell it.
HOW BRAZILIAN POLICE SAY BOLSONARO PLOTTED A COUP TO STAY IN OFFICE
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva speaks during the national technology conference in Brasilia, Brazil, July 30 2024. (Reuters/Adriano Machado//File Photo)
“Because if they don’t, it’s going to spoil.”
On Thursday, da Silva said he was worried about rising food prices but projected the increases would slow and voiced an optimistic tone about the economy.
“The Brazilian economy is living its best moment,” Lula said during an interview with radio stations, Reuters reported.
The leftist leader noted that Brazil’s real was still at a low level against the U.S. dollar but sees the rate “adjusting,” according to Reuters.
BERING AIR PLANE VANISHES IN ALASKA WHILE CARRYING 10 PEOPLE
A salesman at a vegetable stand at a supply center in Brasilia, Brazil, May 9, 2023. (Reuters)
In January, Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad said he expected food prices to decline this year due to strong agricultural production.
Prices tend to stay at high levels until food production “corrects this price distortion to an adequate level,” he told a local news outlet.
Haddad added that officials predict Brazil’s economy will grow 2.5% in 2025, slowing from an expected 3.5% last year.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva attends a ministerial meeting on plans to support Rio Grande do Sul state, which was affected by floods, at the presidential palace in Brasilia, Brazil, May 13, 2024.(AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
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“I believe we have room to grow 2.5% by reducing inflation,” he told RedeTV, according to Reuters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday warned that the only way Gaza can see a peaceful future is if Hamas is “destroyed,” though the tough rhetoric out of Washington this week has hostage families, and at least one former hostage, concerned that it could jeopardize the safe return of the hostages still held by the terrorist group.
“I was deeply moved by the reception that we got, the substantive things that we discussed, making sure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon, and also making sure that Hamas is destroyed,” Netanyahu said in reference to his meetings with President Trump and lawmakers on the Hill. “We’re not going to have a future for Gaza or for a future for peace in our part of the world if Hamas remains there.”
Netanyahu’s comments came just three days after Trump sent geopolitical shockwaves by announcing his supposed plans for the U.S. to “take over” the Gaza Strip and called for the mass removal of millions of Palestinians living there.
NETANYAHU GIFTS TRUMP CONTROVERSIAL ITEM THAT HELPED TURN TIDE IN WAR AGAINST HEZBOLLAH
President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Trump has promised there will be “hell to pay” if hostages being held by Hamas are not released prior to when he takes office on Jan. 20. (AP/Sebastian Scheiner)
Netanyahu, who spoke alongside House Speaker Mike Johnson from the U.S. Capitol and championed their “warm personal bond,” did not take any questions from the press.
Hamas, along with dozens of other nations in the Middle East and across the globe, not only rejected the plans but on Friday delayed the release of names for the next round of hostages set to be freed on Saturday under the agreements of the ceasefire deal.
Following an hours-long delay, Hamas on Friday said it would release Eli Sharabi, 52, Or Levy, 34, and Ohad Ben Ami, 56, the Times of Israel reported.
Sharabi was taken from Kibbutz Beeri while his wife and daughters were killed in their safe room. Levy was taken from the Supernova music festival where his wife was killed. Ami was taken alongside his wife from Kibbutz Beeri, and his wife Raz Ben Ami was freed in the November 2023 hostage deal.
The delay came as reports suggested that families of the hostages still held in Gaza, as well as mediators involved in the ceasefire talks, have grown concerned the comments coming from the Trump-Netanyahu meeting could derail the continued release of hostages.
Just 13 of the 33 hostages slated to be released during the first phase of the ceasefire have been freed.
At least eight of the hostages scheduled to be returned during the first 42 days were confirmed by the IDF to have been killed while in Hamas activity, though the fates of Shiri Bibas and her two children, Ariel who was four years old when he was abducted alongside his brother Kfir, who was nine months old, remain unknown despite claims by Hamas that they were killed by an Israeli airstrike.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU PRAISES TRUMP’S ‘REMARKABLE IDEA’ ABOUT A US TAKEOVER OF GAZA
The Bibas family, from left: Yarden, Ariel, Shiri, and Kfir.(Ofri Bibas Levy)
At least nine hostages are still believed to be alive who are scheduled to be released in the first round, while the release of the remaining 65 hostages, at least 26 of whom are believed to also have been killed, will be negotiated for release following the initial 42-day period.
Reports have indicated that officials are still set to travel to Qatar on Saturday to begin negotiations for the second phase of the ceasefire – a process that was delayed one week.
A spokesman for Netanyahu on Friday said that the prime minister views Hamas’ delay in releasing the names of the hostages intended to be released on Saturday as “serious” and a “violation” of the ceasefire agreement.
The prime minister’s office confirmed to Fox News Digital that he will be monitoring the fifth hostage release scheduled for Saturday from Washington, D.C., where he will remain through the weekend.
Hamas has named Yarden Bibas, Keith Siegel and Ofer Kalderon as the next three hostages to be released.(The Hostages and Missing Families Forum)
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Reports this week suggested that Netanyahu had presented Trump with a plan to end the war in Gaza in exchange for assurances from Hamas that it would relinquish its power in the war-torn region and that its leaders would go into exile.
Netanyahu’s office denied these claims to Fox News Digital.
Caitlin McFall is a Reporter at Fox News Digital covering Politics, U.S. and World news.
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JERUSALEM – President Donald Trump’s executive order sanctioning the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) will prevent a slippery slope of U.S. military and government officials facing prosecution from a nebulous judicial bureaucracy in the Netherlands, argue critics of the global criminal body.
Richard Goldberg, a former Trump official who served on his first National Security Council, told Fox News Digital, “This is a critical first step in defending American soldiers and officials from further lawfare illegitimately waged by radical anti-Americans at what’s become an international kangaroo court. Israel may be in the news today, but tomorrow it will be the Americans who are still being wrongfully investigated by the court for supposed war crimes in Afghanistan.”
Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, added, “These ICC officials have crossed a line, they have entered the battlefield against the United States and Israel by perverting international law and using it as a tool of warfare. The president has preserved an escalation ladder here, too. These sanctions only apply to officials and service providers, not to the court itself. We could absolutely go the next step and shut down the court if this lawfare isn’t terminated.”
TRUMP-NETANYAHU MEETING: RADICAL PROTESTS WAVE APPARENT HAMAS FLAG OUTSIDE WHITE HOUSE
A general view of the International Criminal Court building in The Hague, Netherlands, on April 30, 2024.(Selman Aksunger/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The ICC fired back in a statement and said it “condemns the issuance by the U.S. of an Executive Order seeking to impose sanctions on its officials and harm its independent and impartial judicial work. The Court stands firmly by its personnel and pledges to continue providing justice and hope to millions of innocent victims of atrocities across the world, in all Situations before it. We call on our 125 States Parties, civil society and all nations of the world to stand united for justice and fundamental human rights.”
Trump signed the executive order punishing the ICC on Thursday in response to its May 2024 arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Netanyahu praised the order in a statement. “Thank you, President Trump for your bold ICC Executive Order. It will defend America and Israel from the anti-American and antisemetic corrupt court that has no jurisdiction or basis to engage in lawfare against us. The ICC waged a ruthless campaign against Israel as a trial run for action against America. President Trump’s Executive Order protects the sovereignty of both countries and its brave soldiers.”
The ICC is reportedly still investigating U.S. citizens for war crimes committed in Afghanistan.(AP)
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Friday that Trump’s sanctions on the ICC are “absolutely understandable.” He added the ICC has become “a biased political tool” and that the central European country was evaluating its cooperation with the ICC.
Goldberg said, “The president wasn’t going to wait around on Schumer’s games to act. The minute Senate Democrats blocked the bill it was a guarantee you would see an executive order follow. But if Schumer now says he supports the order, Senate Republicans should move quickly to codify it and force Schumer back to a vote.”
‘LEVEL IT’: TRUMP SAYS US WILL ‘TAKE OVER’ GAZA STRIP, REBUILD IT TO STABILIZE MIDDLE EAST
President Donald Trump, right, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu answer questions during a joint press conference in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 4, 2025.( REUTERS/Leah Millis)
Dozens of countries expressed their “unwavering support” for the ICC on Friday, a day after Trump authorized potentially far-reaching economic and travel sanctions against the court’s staff.
“We reaffirm our continued and unwavering support for the independence, impartiality and integrity of the ICC,” a group of almost 80 countries said in a joint statement. “The court serves as a vital pillar of the international justice system by ensuring accountability for the most serious international crimes, and justice for victims.”
The signatories came from all parts of the world but make up only about two-thirds of the 125 member states of the permanent court for the prosecution of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and crimes of aggression.
Among the countries who agreed to the statement were France, Germany and Britain. Among those absent were Australia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Italy.
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Goldberg said that “The president wasn’t going to wait around on Schumer’s games to act. The minute Senate Democrats blocked the bill it was a guarantee you would see an executive order follow. But if Schumer now says he supports the order, Senate Republicans should move quickly to codify it and force Schumer back to a vote.”
Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer,D-NY., torpedoed a GOP-led bill to sanction the ICC in January.
Reuters and Fox News’ Diana Stancy contributed to this article
Two people are dead in Brazil on Friday after a small plane crashed into a bus on a busy road in São Paulo.
Video taken at the scene showed firefighters surrounding the smoldering wreckage of the aircraft, which plunged from the sky shortly after taking off from a nearby private airport.
A piece of the plane hit a bus, injuring one woman inside, while a motorcyclist was struck by another piece of wreckage, according to local firefighters.
“Unfortunately, we began the day with this tragic plane crash in the capital of São Paulo, with the confirmed deaths of the pilot and co-pilot of the aircraft,” São Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas wrote on X.
BERING AIR PLANE VANISHES IN ALASKA WHILE CARRYING 10 PEOPLE
Firefighters inspect a small plane that crashed on a road in São Paulo, Brazil, on Friday, Feb. 7.(AP/Ettore Chiereguini)
“Two people who were on the ground were injured and were taken to the Vergueiro Emergency Care Unit. It is worth highlighting the quick action of the Fire Department, which put out the flames of the accident in a few minutes, preventing an even greater tragedy,” he added. “My condolences to the families and friends of the victims.”
The plane went down in the busy Barra Funda neighborhood on the city’s west side, near its downtown.
US MILITARY SURVEILLANCE FLIGHT CRASHES IN PHILIPPINES, KILLING 4
Police inspect a bus that caught fire following the crash in Brazil.(AP/Ettore Chiereguini)
Images on local media showed the plane’s fuselage and the bus on fire, with firefighters working to extinguish the blaze. The avenue is home to office buildings and there is a key bus, train and subway station nearby.
The aircraft was heading to the city of Porto Alegre.
Firefighters inspect the small plane following the crash Friday in São Paulo, Brazil.(AP/Ettore Chiereguini)
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told air force officers in Teheran on Friday that nuclear talks with the U.S. “are not intelligent, wise or honorable.”
Khamenei added that “there should be no negotiations with such a government,” but did not issue an order to not engage with the U.S., according to The Associated Press.
Khamenei’s remarks on Friday seem to contradict his previous indications that he was open to negotiating with the U.S. over Iran’s nuclear program. In August, Khamenei seemed to open the door to nuclear talks with the U.S., telling his country’s civilian government that there was “no harm” in engaging with its “enemy,” the AP reported.
IRAN’S FOREIGN MINISTER RESPONDS TO TRUMP ‘MAXIMUM PRESSURE’ CAMPAIGN AMID REGIME PANIC
President Donald Trump floated the idea of a “verified nuclear peace agreement” with Teheran in a post on his Truth Social platform. In the same post, he also slammed “greatly exaggerated” reports claiming that the U.S. and Israel were going to “blow Iran into smithereens.”
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, left, and President Donald Trump.(Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz/File Photo)
“I would much prefer a Verified Nuclear Peace Agreement, which will let Iran peacefully grow and prosper. We should start working on it immediately, and have a big Middle East Celebration when it is signed and completed,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
In 2018, during his first term, Trump exited the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, saying that it was not strong enough to restrain Iran’s nuclear development. At the time, President Trump argued that the deal, which was made during former President Barack Obama’s second term, was “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei alongside a look inside a Uranium plant.(Getty Images)
Just days before his call for a “verified nuclear peace agreement” with Iran, Trump signed an executive order urging the government to put pressure on the Islamic republic. He also told reporters that if Iran were to assassinate him, they would be “obliterated,” as per his alleged instructions.
According to the AP, on Friday, Khamenei slammed the U.S. because, in his eyes, “the Americans did not hold up their end of the deal.” Furthermore, Iran’s supreme leader referenced Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA, saying that he “tore up the agreement.”
“We negotiated, we gave concessions, we compromised— but we did not achieve the results we aimed for.”
Iran has insisted for years that its nuclear program was aimed at civilian and peaceful purposes, not weapons. However, it has enriched its uranium to up to 60% purity, which is around 90% the level that would be considered weapons grade.
An Iranian military truck carries surface-to-air missiles past a portrait of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a parade on the occasion of the country’s annual army day on April 18, 2018, in Tehran, Iran.(ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images)
IRAN’S WEAKENED POSITION COULD LEAD IT TO PURSUE NUCLEAR WEAPON, BIDEN NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER WARNS
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi told Reuters in December 2024 that it was “regrettable” that there was no “diplomatic process ongoing which could lead to a de-escalation, or a more stable equation.”
In addition to his remarks on Iran, President Trump made global headlines with his proposal that the US take over Gaza as the Israel-Hamas war rages on. Khamenei, according to the AP, also seemed to reference the president’s remarks on Gaza without mentioning them outright.
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“The Americans sit, redrawing the map of the world — but only on paper, as it has no basis in reality,” Khamenei told air force officers, according to the AP. “They make statements about us, express opinions and issue threats. If they threaten us, we will threaten them in return. If they act on their threats, we will act on ours. If they violate the security of our nation, we will, without a doubt, respond in kind.”
Rachel Wolf is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital and FOX Business.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave President Donald Trump an unusual gift during his most recent trip to Washington, D.C., this week — a gold-plated pager.
The present was a nod to the controversial mass attack believed to have been carried out by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency against Hezbollah Sept. 17, 2024, in which thousands of pagers, walkie-talkie-like devices and radios simultaneously exploded across Lebanon and Syria around 3:30 p.m.
A statement from Netanyahu’s office to Fox News Digital said, “The pager symbolizes the prime minister’s decision that led to a turning point in the war and marked the beginning of Hezbollah’s strategic collapse.
ISRAELI DEFENSE MINISTER ORDERS IDF TO PLAN FOR GAZANS TO LEAVE IN LINE WITH TRUMP’S CONTROVERSIAL PROPOSAL
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave President Donald Trump a gold-plated pager during a visit to the White House Feb. 6, 2024. (Israeli Government Press Office)
“This strategic operation reflects Israel’s strength, technological superiority and tactical ingenuity in confronting its adversaries.”
An image obtained by Fox News Digital showed the pager mounted to a wooden plaque with a message on the device that said, “Press with both hands,” accompanied by a double downward arrow sign, the same message that reportedly showed moments before the devices detonated.
The plaque also came with a message to Trump calling him Israel’s “greatest friend and ally.”
The statement appears to be the first time Netanyahu’s office has publicly commented on the strike against the terrorist network in the summer.
Though the attacks were intended to target Hezbollah terrorists, the explosions also injured, maimed and killed civilians, including at least two children. In total, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that 32 people were killed and 3,250 others were injured.
ALLIES AND FOES REJECT TRUMP’S ‘RIVIERA’ PLANS FOR GAZA: ‘NEW SUFFERING AND NEW HATRED’
A symbolic portrait of a young Lebanese girl who was killed in a deadly pager attack is pictured next to flowers placed in front of the Lebanese embassy in northern Tehran, Iran, Sept. 18, 2024. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
U.N. Human Rights experts condemned the operation and said the indiscriminate nature of the attacks amounted to “war crimes.”
“These attacks violate the human right to life, absent any indication that the victims posed an imminent lethal threat to anyone else at the time,” one expert told the OHCHR. “Such attacks require prompt, independent investigation to establish the truth and enable accountability for the crime of murder.”
Despite the limited number of terrorists killed in the widespread attacks, Israeli officials have championed the operation as a successful psychological blow to Hezbollah.
TRUMP’S GAZA ‘TAKEOVER’ RANKLES AMERICA FIRST CONSERVATIVES, ALLIES SUGGEST NEGOTIATOR-IN-CHIEF IS AT WORK
Though Israel was immediately suspected of being involved in the reported years-in-the-making operation, Jerusalem had not officially confirmed its role publicly before.
However, by November 2024, Israeli reports revealed comments leaked from a Cabinet meeting in which Netanyahu was quoted as saying, “The pager operation and the elimination of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah were carried out despite the opposition of senior officials in the defense establishment and those responsible for them in the political echelon.”
President Donald Trump hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in Washington, D.C., Feb. 4, 2025. (Avi Ohayon (GPO)/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
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The prime minister’s comments were an apparent dig at former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who he fired just weeks prior to the comments over disagreements regarding the war effort against Hamas and Hezbollah.
Neither the White House nor the U.N. immediately responded to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
Yael Rotem-Kuriel contributed to this report.
Caitlin McFall is a Reporter at Fox News Digital covering Politics, U.S. and World news.
President Donald Trump’s second administration has made the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) a prime target for spending cuts. Under Trump, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, is taking a serious look at the foreign aid agency — and America’s allies and enemies alike are taking notice.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital at the United Nations, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó didn’t hide his disdain for USAID. While insisting that he was not interested in interfering with US domestic issues, Szijjártó did speak about what he saw from the agency under former President Joe Biden.
“The former administration couldn’t digest that we weren’t ready to give up our national positions. We were not ready to give up representing our national interests,” Szijjártó told Fox News Digital. “And we were not ready to give up our non-liberal, patriotic, conservative type of approach.”
Former President Joe Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Sept. 15, 2023.(Chris Kleponis/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
‘VIPER’S NEST’: USAID ACCUSED OF CORRUPTION, MISMANAGEMENT LONG BEFORE TRUMP ADMIN TOOK AIM
Szijjártó also accused the Biden administration of using USAID to “destabilize the situation in other countries” and to fund “programs which were totally alien and strange compared to the culture and the heritage of other countries.”
“If you ask me whether it’s good to us that there’s a revision period of 90 days when it comes to payments regarding USAID and others, we are very happy,” Szijjártó added.
USAID HAS ‘DEMONSTRATED PATTERN OF OBSTRUCTIONISM,’ CLAIMS TOP DOGE REPUBLICAN IN LETTER TO RUBIO
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a longtime ally of Trump, also ripped USAID after it was reported that the agency was funding Politico.
Prime Minister Orbán followed up in another tweet saying, “We had to endure for years that the ultra-progressive, self-proclaimed human rights champions of the mainstream media demonized Patriotic political forces for years. They did it because they were paid to do so by USAID and the previous, left-wing US administration. I agree with President [Trump]: this is too big and too dirty to hide from.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed during Wednesday’s press briefing that “more than $8 million taxpayer dollars” went to Politico, adding that DOGE is “working on canceling those payments.” However, the publication denied that it has ever been a “beneficiary of government programs.”
Musk, who is heading up Trump’s cost-cutting efforts through DOGE, described the agency as a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.”
Elon Musk leads the Department of Government Efficiency.(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
On Monday, Trump’s White House issued a list of examples of “waste and abuse” at USAID. This included $6M to fund tourism in Egypt, $1.5M in funding for DEI programs in Serbia’s workplaces, $47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia and more.
The White House also accused the agency of spending “hundreds of millions of dollars” on “irrigation canals, farming equipment, and even fertilizer used to support the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan,” adding that this was “benefiting the Taliban.”
Trump and Musk watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on Nov. 19, 2024, in Brownsville, Texas.(Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
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At the end of its list, the White House noted that the highlighted examples were part of a longer list of projects.
“Under President Trump, the waste, fraud, and abuse ENDS NOW,” the White House added.
Rachel Wolf is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital and FOX Business.
A U.S. military service member and three defense contractors died Thursday in the Philippines after their surveillance flight crashed, officials say.
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said the aircraft contracted by the Department of Defense went down in the southern province of Maguindanao del Sur and “was providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support at the request of our Philippine allies.”
“The incident occurred during a routine mission in support of U.S.-Philippine security cooperation activities,” U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement to Fox News.
“We can confirm no survivors of the crash. There were four personnel on board, including one U.S. military service member and three defense contractors,” it added.
The wreckage of the plane in Maguindanao del Sur province, Philippines, following the crash on Thursday, Feb. 6.(Sam Mala/UGC via AP)
The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
The names of those involved are being withheld pending next of kin notification.
Windy Beaty, a provincial disaster-mitigation officer, told the Associated Press that she received reports that residents saw smoke coming from the plane and heard an explosion before the aircraft plummeted to the ground about half a mile from a cluster of farmhouses.
A water buffalo on the ground was also killed as a result of the plane crash, local officials said.
U.S. forces have been deployed in a Philippine military camp in the country’s south for decades to help provide advice and training to Filipino forces battling Muslim militants, the AP reported.
The region is the homeland of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic nation.
NEW YORK CITY, NY – President Donald Trump, who echoed former President Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” mantra, has the credibility to end the nearly three-year-long war between Ukraine and Russia, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó told Fox News Digital.
“If he doesn’t have the ability, no one has the ability,” Foreign Minister Szijjártó said.
In the nearly three years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, world leaders from several countries have tried to step in and end the conflict. Szijjártó believes there’s a reason that European leaders and the Biden administration “totally failed” to end the war. The foreign minister believes world leaders were fighting for an “impossible” victory, saying it was “obvious from the very beginning” that Ukraine could not win.
“If you look at the current situation, regardless of the huge money, regardless of the huge weapon deliveries which have been poured into Ukraine, the battlefield reality shows the advance of the Russians,” Szijjártó said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pictured.(Sputnik/Alexei Danichev/Pool via REUTERS/Leah Millis/Alina Smutko)
TRUMP’S ‘RARE’ PRICE FOR US MILITARY AID TO UKRAINE CALLED ‘FAIR’ BY ZELENSKYY
Szijjártó believes that Trump has credibility with both the Ukrainians and Russians, and that while other leaders have had this, they lost it by taking “a very clear position in favor of Ukraine against Russia.”
The Hungarian official also accused European leaders of treating the war between Russia and Ukraine as their own, adding to the list of possible reasons why they have failed to bring an end to it.
“So, if you really think that Ukraine should negotiate in its best shape, then we have to stop the war today because tomorrow Ukraine will be in a weaker position than today,” Szijjártó told Fox News Digital. He went on to accuse his European colleagues of not respecting the “reality” of the current state of the war.
This week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Kyiv would accept either a fast-track to NATO or nuclear weapons. However, Ret. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy for Russia and Ukraine, doubts that the Ukrainan leader’s demands will be met.
“The chance of them getting their nuclear weapons back is somewhere between slim and none,” Kellogg told Fox News Digital.
President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met at Trump Tower in New York City, New York, on Sept. 27, 2024. (REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo)
ZELENSKYY WANTS NUKES OR NATO; TRUMP SPECIAL ENVOY KELLOGG SAYS ‘SLIM AND NONE’ CHANCE
Late last month, Trump called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a deal with Zelenskyy to end the war. However, this has yet to happen. The president also said that Zelenskyy was ready to negotiate a deal to end the war.
“The only person that Putin will really want to talk to – because he’s kind of denigrated other leaders that are out there – is President Trump, and President Trump’s the only one who can bring this to a conclusion,” Kellogg told “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Sunday. He described Trump and Putin’s relationship as “very transactional.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin (l) and President Donald Trump (r) are pictured.(Contributor/Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)
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In September 2024, before he won re-election, then-candidate Trump met with Zelenskyy in New York City at Trump Tower.
After meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump told Fox News that “we both want to see this end and we both want a fair deal made. And it’s got to be fair.”
Fox News Digital’s Caitlin McFall contributed to this report.
Rachel Wolf is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital and FOX Business.
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Last month, the United Nations (U.N.) released its “Action Plan to Enhance Monitoring and Response to Antisemitism,” partially in response to a “surge in antisemitic incidents targeting Jews and Jewish institutions in Europe, the United States of America and elsewhere.
Anne Bayefsky, the director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and the president of Human Rights Voices, told Fox News Digital that the Action Plan was a “phony exercise in futility,” that was “produced by what she claimed is the leading global purveyor of antisemitism…to pretend to do something to combat antisemitism.”
Developed by the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), the U.N.’s Action Plan emphasizes that “the ability to understand and identify antisemitism is crucial to global efforts to combat hatred and prejudice.” Despite the critical nature of understanding antisemitism, the plan wholly fails to define what constitutes antisemitism.
The Action Plan mentions, but does not adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which 45 member states have endorsed and which Bayefsky said “the vast majoriy of major Jewish organizations and institutions around the world accept,” because it “recognizes the connection with Zionism and Israel.”
ISRAELI PRESIDENT HERZOG HIGHLIGHTS ANTISEMITISM IN UN SPEECH AS NEW REORT SHOWS SHOCKING TREND
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023.(AP Photo/Richard Drew)
“The U.N. champions the idea that victims of hate and intolerance define their own experience of discrimination, isolation, and violence – except when it comes to Jews,” she said.
UNAOC Director Nihal Saad was asked by Fox News Digital why the Action Plan does not define antisemitism and whether lacking this definition would hinder efforts to identify and curtail anti-Jewish prejudice.
Saad said that “the Action Plan underlines the importance of understanding antisemitism rather than focusing on the definition of antisemitism and entering into a debate about it, which proved distracting from the real goal here, which is enhancing our responses to antisemitism.”
Referencing other issues where there is no consensus over “definition of the subject matter,” Saad explained that a lack of a “definitive agreement among member states on the definition of terrorism” had not hindered the development of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, which Saad called “a unique global instrument to enhance national, regional and international efforts to counter terrorism.”
Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior advisor to the Counter Extremism Project and a former U.N. Monitoring Team coordinator, told Fox News Digital that “the CT[counterterrorism] strategy is a mess.”
ISRAEL ORDERS UNRWA TO CEASE OPERATIONS IN COUNTRY OVER TERROR TIES: ‘MISERABLY FAILED IN ITS MANDATE’
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivers a statement at U.N. headquarters on the situation in the Middle East following the terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel.(Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Though he said that some U.N. efforts to counter terrorism are effective, he said that given the lack of agreement over what constitutes terrorism, the U.N. particularly struggles with identifying groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis as terrorists. “If something really dramatic happens, then often a group will find it is being accused of being a terrorist group,” Fitton-Brown said, noting how the U.N. condemned the Houthis in the aftermath of their 2022 attack on Abu Dhabi airport but failed to designate them as a terror group. “On Hezbollah, the U.N. has been hopelessly weak,” he explained.
He said that Hamas was “a good example of where the absence of a definition is problematic because you get something like the 10/7 attack…and the U.N. just completely failed in its response to that, and that is partly because of its failure to judge that a group that adopts terrorist tactics is a terrorist group.”
Bayefsky said that the U.N. Security Council “has never condemned Hamas for October 7th because they can’t agree on what counts as terrorism. That isn’t a success story. It’s a malevolent dereliction of duty.”
A view of the United Nations Headquarters building in New York City on July 16, 2024.(Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
No Plan for Self-Monitoring
Among the Action Plan’s proposals are the implementation of training modules to help staff “recognize and understand antisemitism,” and the requirement that senior U.N. officials “continue to denounce antisemitic manifestations as and when they occur.”
Bayefsky questioned the implementation of these plans. “The U.N. says it is committed to educating U.N. staff about antisemitism without knowing what counts as antisemitism. Any actual educator gives that lesson plan an ‘F,’” she explained.
ISRAEL BANS UN SECRETARY-GENERAL OVER ANTI-ISRAEL ACTIONS: ‘DOESN’T DESERVE TO SET FOOT ON ISRAELI SOIL’
U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese attends the Maghreb-Mashreq Social Forum in Tunis, Tunisia, on May 11, 2024.(Mohamed Mdalla/Anadolu via Getty Images)
From the highest levels, Bayefsky claimed that the world body is not currently standing up against anti-Jewish prejudice. Though U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the world on International Holocaust Remembrance Day that “we must condemn antisemitism wherever and whenever it appears,” Bayefsky said that “if the when and the who are inside the U.N., [Guterres is] not only sitting down, he goes mute.”
“Take the cases of U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese and U.N. Commission of Inquiry head Navi Pillay, both widely condemned for egregious antisemitic behavior,” Bayefsky claimed. “The Secretary-General claims their ‘independence’ leaves him impotent. Nothing prevents him from using his platform to speak out about right and wrong. He’s mute by choice.”
Fox News Digital asked Saad whether the Action Plan would allow for the U.N. to make critical comments when special rapporteurs make antisemitic remarks in the name of the institution. “Special Procedure Mandate Holders/Special Rapporteurs are independent human rights experts appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council,” Saad responded. “They act in an individual capacity, and exercise their functions in accordance with their mandate, through a professional, impartial assessment of facts based on internationally recognized human rights standards. The views expressed by special procedures mandate holders remain those of the mandate holder and may not represent positions held [by] the wider United Nations system.”
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Fox News Digital asked Farhan Haq, spokesperson for Guterres, whether the Action Plan would allow him to comment on antisemitism emanating from the U.N., including from its special rapporteurs. “The Secretary-General has no authority over the independent experts who report to the Human Rights Council, and he does not comment on their activities or remarks,” Haq said. “But the UNAOC plan is designed to educate U.N. staff about antisemitism.”
Bayefsky said that the U.N. “can’t combat antisemitism without acknowledging its guilt and starting with ‘mea culpa.’”
Neither Navi Pillay nor Francesca Albanese responded to Fox News Digital questions concerning the allegations of antisemitism leveled against them.
