Albanian police on Sunday broke open cages at a private zoo and removed 11 animals including three lions and a bear being kept in "hellish" conditions, animal welfare workers said. After the owner of the zoo at Fier, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of the capital Tirana, allegedly refused to cooperate, officers forcibly entered areas where the animals were kept to allow vets access, an AFP correspondent at the scene reported. The animals were then tranquillised to allow them to be safely transferred to Tirana zoo. "Living conditions for the animals in this zoo are absolutely horrible, it's a hellish way of keeping animals," said Ioana Gabriela Dungler of Four Paws. Owner Petrit Osmani, who has been running the zoo for around 15 years, strongly opposed the raid. "You don't have the right! These animals are my children, you are taking away my children!" he protested, adding that he would lodge a complaint for violation of private property. The zoo was visited in July by workers from Four Paws who then alerted authorities. "Lensi (one of the lions), had a serious eye infection and was at risk of going blind. He has happily been saved and is better, but they all need extra care in order to fully recover," said Carsten Hertwing, another Four Paws worker. In addition to the three lions, a bear and a zebra, some deer, antelopes and foxes were also removed. After a spell in Tirana, the three lions will be moved to the Netherlands where their new environment will be similar to their natural habitat while the bear will go to Germany. bme/har/boc

The United Arab Emirates apparently dropped a hint the dollar’s dominance isn’t assured in the global oil trade if fallout from the Iran war gets worse.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the UAE’s central bank chief raised the idea of a currency-swap line with Treasury Department and Federal Reserve officials during meetings in Washington, D.C., last week.

To be sure, the UAE has plenty of money, including $270 billion in foreign-exchange reserves and trillions of dollars across its sovereign wealth funds.

But while the UAE isn’t in a crisis, Iran has damaged its energy infrastructure and has blocked oil exports by closing off the Strait of Hormuz, weighing on dollar-denominated revenue.

If the Iran war triggers a deeper economic downturn, a swap line with the U.S. would provide the UAE’s central bank with a cheap supply of dollars that could back the dirham, which is pegged to the greenback, or beef up foreign-exchange reserves in the event liquidity runs low, the report said.

UAE officials also pointed out the U.S. started the Iran war and said they may be forced to use China’s yuan or other currencies for oil transactions if the availability of dollars gets tight, sources told the Journal.

The UAE’s central bank didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Any pivot away from the dollar by a top oil producer would represent a major threat to the currency’s supremacy. Saudi Arabia’s decision in 1974 to price its exports in dollars helped establish the dollar as the standard across the global oil trade.

And because oil is a core input to manufacturing and transport, supply chains elsewhere dollarized, reinforcing the greenback’s dominance in payments.

But the Iran war could worsen some cracks that had already been forming in the so-called petrodollar regime, analysts at Deutsche Bank warned last month.

“Damage to Gulf economies could encourage an unwind in their foreign asset savings,” they said. “In this context, reports that the passage for ships through the Strait of Hormuz may be granted in exchange for oil payments in yuan should be closely followed. The conflict could be remembered as a key catalyst for erosion in petrodollar dominance, and the beginnings of the petroyuan.”

Any loss of the dollar’s “exorbitant privilege” would also ripple through other areas of global finance, including the bond market. Thanks to the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, the federal government has long been able to issue debt at rates lower than investors would otherwise allow.

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But Dan Alamariu, chief geopolitical strategist at Alpine Macro, isn’t buying predictions of a U.S. decline. In a note earlier this month, he acknowledged if Iran’s regime is left standing while retaining some control over the strait, it would represent a “strategic setback” for the U.S. and humiliation for President Donald Trump.

But the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes the UAE and Saudi Arabia, has even more reason now to maintain close ties with the U.S., given China’s links with Iran, Alamariu added.

“The idea of a petroyuan or petroeuro replacement remains far-fetched,” he said.

Even if the petrodollar weakens, dollar dominance still rests on other factors that other currencies can’t match, according to Paul Blustein, a scholar with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Those include the depth, breadth, and liquidity of U.S. financial markets as well as the freedom to move money across U.S. borders virtually unimpeded, he wrote in a Fortune op-ed last month.

“It accounts for well over half of foreign currency reserves held by central banks, and a similar share of export invoices for cross-border trade, as well as international bank loans and bond issuance,” Blustein explained. “Network effects entrench its status; everybody has an incentive to use the dollar because so many others do.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

SINGAPORE – A 47-year-old man is expected to be charged on April 22 over his suspected involvement in voluntarily causing hurt and mischief against a 33-year-old woman.

The police said in a statement on April 21 that they received a report on Feb 11 regarding an alleged assault on the woman near 304 Orchard Road, which is the address of Lucky Plaza, on Feb 8.

Videos of the altercation have been making the rounds on social media since February. In one clip on the Complaint Singapore Facebook page, a man is seen chasing after a woman on what the post says is the sixth floor of the mall.

Some passers-by are heard shrieking as the man lunges at the woman with his right leg. She falls to the ground and he falls along with her. In another video, he is seen attempting to kick her again while she is still on the ground.

The police said on April 21 that the woman suffered injuries to various parts of her body and was in pain after she was allegedly hit and kicked by the man.

The man also allegedly damaged her belongings during the incident.

The police added that preliminary investigations found that both parties knew each other and the man had assaulted her before on March 30, 2025.

The police, in consultation with the Attorney-General’s Chambers, had issued a 12-month conditional warning to the man on May 8, 2025 for voluntarily causing hurt and for mischief in relation to the 2025 incident.

However, as the man had breached this conditional warning by allegedly committing additional offences against the same victim in February, he will be charged in court on April 22 with two counts of voluntarily causing hurt and two counts of mischief over the two incidents.

If found guilty of voluntarily causing hurt, he could be jailed for up to three years, fined $5,000, or both.

If found guilty of mischief, he could be jailed for up to two years, fined, or both.

Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction

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Vice President JD Vance was forced to delay a trip to Pakistan for a second round of peace talks with Iran as war negotiations once again descended into farce.

The Marine Corps veteran was expected to depart for Islamabad on Tuesday morning, but was left waiting after it became unclear whether an Iranian delegation would show up.

With each hour the vice president was delayed, the ceasefire drew closer to its end as Tehran played brinkmanship with Trump, with Vance as the pawn.

As of late morning, Iran had not yet committed to sending officials to Pakistan, hours after Donald Trump insisted, yet again, that “we’ve totally won the war.”

But the White House was left scrambling after Tehran, which had initially told mediators it would send a delegation to Pakistan on Tuesday, later said it would do so only if the U.S. lifted its blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz.

The speaker of the nation’s parliament had also warned that the regime would not negotiate while being threatened by Trump—an apparent reference to the president’s rhetoric about “lots of bombs” going off if no deal was reached.

“Trump, by imposing a siege and violating the ceasefire, seeks to turn this negotiating table—in his own imagination—into a table of surrender or to justify renewed warmongering,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on X.

“We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and in the past two weeks, we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield,” he concluded.

The latest whiplash over the war came as the fragile ceasefire was set to expire on Wednesday night.

Vance reportedly had his bags packed on Tuesday, but his motorcade was spotted arriving at the White House around lunchtime, where he was set to huddle with officials to work out the next steps.

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He is still expected to head to Islamabad at some point, but it is not clear when he will depart.

Confusion also gripped Washington the day before, when Trump made conflicting claims about the whereabouts of his Vice President.

On Sunday, the president said Vance wasn’t going to Pakistan to lead the peace talks with Iran due to security issues, only for his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, to tell other reporters on the record that Vance was going.

And on Monday, the befuddled president said Vance was in the air, only for his vice president to turn up at the White House.

Trump was nonetheless expressing confidence about the war when he phoned in to CNBC on Tuesday morning.

In a rambling interview, he boasted that he would secure a “great deal” with Iran but added that he had “all the time in the world” to end the war with Iran.

To assert his point, the president pulled out a list of wars and compared their time frames.

“I just looked at a little chart. World War One: four years and three months. World War Two, six years. Korean War, three years. Vietnam, 19 years. Iraq, eight years. I’m five months,” Trump said, despite the fact that the Iran conflict is now in its seventh week.

“I mean, people can play games. The Democrats, they said, ‘Well, we should have done better.’ No matter what—if I did it in one week, people would have said I should have done better.”

Pakistan has urged the U.S. and Iran to extend the two-week cease-fire and continue to work toward a diplomatic solution.

But Trump told CNBC that he wants to make sure the threat from Iran ends, even if things don’t wrap up quickly. Asked if he would allow the ceasefire to continue, he said: “I don’t want to do that.”

One of the most buzzing topics within the royal family sphere this past week was Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s visit to Australia, which King Charles allegedly has a lot of feelings about.

The trip, which was controversial from the start, has reportedly angered the king, an insider has revealed. Though it was considered private, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made various charity-related stops during their trip ‘down under,’ similar to what they would do during official royal visits. This ended up triggering Charles, who has reportedly needed to issue a “warning” to the couple, related to them needing to stay in their ‘lane.’ Read more about the situation below.

Meghan Markle & Prince Harry Complete Their Trip To Australia

It's no secret that one of the biggest bombshells the royal family experienced over the last decade was the departure of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who stepped down from their royal duties and moved from the UK to California in 2020. Though they explained they left for some more privacy, security, and for a more normal life for their two children, the pair have returned to making public appearances as well as pursuing their own business ventures.

Recently, they controversially planned a trip to Australia, which was immediately met with backlash from residents. Before they left, a petition was made asking that they avoid spending any taxpayer money to fund their security, transportation, etc., which gained so much traction that a spokesperson had to clarify it would be a "private trip."

However, during that private trip, they still made numerous official appearances, one being a visit to the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, another being Meghan's "Girls Weekend" stop, as well as Prince Harry being a keynote speaker at the InterEdge Summit.

Though they're no longer working royals, people around the world couldn't help but notice how much their trip resembled an official royal visit, which allegedly sparked anger from working members of the monarchy.

King Charles Is Reportedly Feeling 'Uneasy' Following The Sussex's Trip To Australia & Needs To Issue A Warning

Now that the Netflix stars have returned from their visit, the king is currently grappling with news of their ventures there while preparing for his and Queen Camilla's official visit to the United States later this month.

Insiders are telling media outlets that the trip did not sit well with Charles, who is allegedly feeling "very uneasy" about the situation, as they conducted themselves like working royals, despite making brutal allegations against the institution in the past. It is considered especially unsettling, given official royal visits are often meticulously planned and executed in a specific, traditional manner, whilst Harry and Meghan don't have to follow the same protocol.

"They are not accountable, it seems, to anyone," a source told Woman and Home. "They just simply do what they want, when they want to do it. Royal visits are about the people and the public. In contrast, Harry and Meghan's engagements are all about them and their profile, and creating their own brand."

Now, the king is allegedly having to issue a warning to his son and the As Ever founder, adding more tension to their already strained relationship, encouraging them to stay in their "lane." The above publication even noted that the "late Queen would be horrified by how this has all panned out."