Category: 2. World

WASHINGTON: The US has ordered the deployment of 10 F-35 fighter jets to a Puerto Rico airfield to conduct operations against drug cartels, two sources briefed on the matter said, in a move likely to further inflame tensions in the region.

The advanced fighter jets will be added to an already bristling US military presence in the southern Caribbean as President Donald Trump carries out a campaign pledge to crack down on groups he blames for funneling drugs into the United States.

Friday’s development comes three days after U.S. forces attacked a boat that Trump said was carrying “massive amounts of drugs” from Venezuela, killing 11 people.

The strike appeared to set the stage for a sustained military campaign in Latin America.

The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the 10 fighter jets are being sent to conduct operations against designated narco-terrorist organizations operating in the southern Caribbean.

The planes should arrive in the area by late next week, they said.

The U.S. has deployed warships in the southern Caribbean in recent weeks, with the aim of carrying out Trump’s crackdown.

Seven US warships and one nuclear-powered fast attack submarine are either in the region or expected to be there soon, carrying more than 4,500 sailors and Marines.

US Marines and sailors from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit have been carrying out amphibious training and flight operations in southern Puerto Rico.

The buildup has put pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has called “effectively a kingpin of a drug narco state.”

Maduro, at a rare news conference in Caracas on Monday, said the United States is “seeking a regime change through military threat.”

US military carries out strike on vessel carrying drugs from Venezuela, officials say

U.S. officials have not said what legal justification was used for Tuesday’s air strike on the boat or what drugs were on board.

Trump said on Tuesday, without providing evidence, that the US military had identified the crew of the vessel as members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which Washington designated a terrorist group in February.

Authorities in India banned the X account of an Austrian economist after he shared a map showing Khalistan having been carved out of India and called for “dismantling India”, the local media reported on Friday.

The Khalistan movement is a Sikh separatist movement seeking an independent state for the religious minority carved out of Indian territory. It is considered a security threat by the Indian government.

The economist, Gunther Fehlinger-Jahn, appeared to be calling for the creation of Khalistan in his post on X, stating: “I call to dismanlte India into ExIndia. Narendra Modi is Russia’s man. We need friend of freedom for @KhalistanNet.”

The map also seemed to be implying the separation of various other regions of India.

According to NDTV, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology “flagged the viral post and directed X to withhold access to the account for Indian users. The account has since been disabled in India”.

The report added that the post resulted in “angry reactions” on social media.

The post came after Modi met with the Russian President Vladimir Putin
during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in China earlier this week.

Sharing a picture of their interaction in another post on Monday, Fehlinger-Jahn stated: “I call for ExIndia. India is now a hostile state to [the] Free World. We must boycott India now! … No Visa for Indians as long as Putin’s friend Narendra Modi stays in power.”

Hehlinger-Jahn, as per his X and Linkedin, poses as the chairman for an “Austrian committee” the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato).

However, a Google search did not bring up any results for such a committee.

In September 2023, Hehlinger-Jahn remarked about Armenia — whose relations with Russia have been strained in past few years — needing to join the Nato, according to Tass news agency.

In a post earlier today, Hehlinger-Jahn also called for the “fall of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and the break up of Russia”.

According to a Reuters report in May, Putin’s conditions for ending the war in Ukraine include a demand that Western leaders pledge in writing to stop enlarging Nato eastwards.

New Delhi purchases oil from Moscow and after meeting Modi earlier this week on the sidelines of the summit in China, the Russian president reiterated the need for the issue of Nato’s eastward enlargement to be addressed.

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump could meet again in the near future, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published on Friday.

“I have no doubt that if the presidents consider it necessary, their meeting can be organized very quickly. Just as the meeting in Alaska was quickly organized,” Peskov told the news outlet Argumenty i Fakty, referring to last month’s Trump-Putin summit.

Working contacts were taking place all the time, he said.

Trump said on Thursday that he will speak to Putin in the near future.

It all began with the jacket. Giorgio Armani twisted and bruised the angular piece of clothing — tearing out the padding, adjusting the proportions, moving the buttons — until he was left with something supple as a cardigan, light as a shirt. “Removing all rigidity from the garment and discovering an unexpected naturalness,” as he put it years later. “It was the starting point for everything that came after.”

His 1970s reimagining of the jacket — a study in nonchalance — was to be his statement of purpose as a fashion designer. Elegance, he argued, meant simplicity. That principle, applied to great acclaim over a five-decade-long career, would produce bestselling minimalist suits and turn his eponymous brand into a vast conglomerate producing haute couture, prêt-à-porter, perfumes and home interiors.

Known to industry admirers as ‘Re Giorgio’ (King Giorgio), Armani became synonymous with Italian style, helping to dress a generation of successful women, as well as men who wanted less stuffy attire. He combined the flair of the designer with the forensic attention to detail of the executive, running a business that generated billions of dollars in revenue each year and helping to make contemporary Italian fashion into a global phenomenon.

Despite being one of the world’s top designers, he carefully guarded his own privacy and kept a tight grip on the company he created, maintaining its independence and working with a small and trusted group of family members and long-term associates.

Armani, a handsome man with piercing blue eyes and silver hair, often said that the point of fashion was to make people feel good about themselves — he railed against the rigid, fussy lines that traditionally defined high tailoring. “That’s a weakness of mine that affects both my life and my work,” he told Made in Milan, Martin Scorsese’s documentary about him, in 1990. “I’m always thinking about adding something or taking something away. Mostly taking something away.”

“I can’t stand exhibitionism.”

Armani has died, aged 91, the Armani company said of its founder and CEO on Thursday, without giving a cause of death. “He worked until his final days, dedicating himself to the company, the collections, and the many ongoing and future projects,” the company said. The funeral would be held privately, it added.

To Milan

Giorgio Armani was born in 1934 in Piacenza, a town in the industrial heartland of northern Italy, close to Milan, one of three children of Ugo Armani and Maria Raimondi. His father worked at the headquarters of the local Fascist party before becoming an accountant for a transport company. His mother was a homemaker.

Despite their limited means, his parents possessed an inner elegance, Armani told Made in Milan, and Maria’s sense of style shone through in the clothes she made for her three children. “We were the envy of all our classmates,” he said. “We looked rich even though we were poor.”

As a boy, he experienced the hardships of World War Two. In his autobiography, Per Amore (For Love), he tells of how he dived into a ditch and covered his younger sister Rosanna with his jacket when a plane began firing overhead.

The family moved to Milan after the war. The city seemed very cold and big to him at first, though he soon came to appreciate its discreet beauty, he told Scorsese. It would be the start of a lifelong association. In Milan, he developed a love for cinema that later influenced his career. Eventually, he would lead his fashion group from there, helping to turn the unglamorous, industrial city into Italy’s fashion capital.

Armani studied to become a doctor, but dropped out after two years at university and did his military service. He took his first steps in fashion — which he never formally studied — when he was offered a job at renowned department store La Rinascente to help dress the windows.

His first big break came with an invitation to work for Italian designer Nino Cerruti in the mid-1960s. There, he began to experiment with deconstructing the jacket. “I started this trade almost by chance, and slowly it drew me in, completely stealing my life,” he told trade publication Business of Fashion in 2015.

Work is a kind of orgasm

As a designer, he quickly tapped into two important trends in Western society in the late 20th century — a more prominent role for women and a more fluid approach to masculinity. “I had the feeling of what actually happened – women getting to the forefront in the workplace, men accepting their soft side — early in my career, and that was the base of my success,” Armani said in an interview with Esquire magazine to mark his 90th birthday, in 2024.

Armani debuted his first menswear collection in 1975 and was soon popular in Europe. Five years later, he won the hearts of the US glittering class when he dressed Richard Gere for the 1980 film American Gigolo, beginning a long association with Hollywood.

That same year, luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman became the first US retailer to launch an in-store Armani women’s boutique, securing the designer’s transatlantic reach. In 1982, Time magazine featured him on its cover under the headline “Giorgio’s Gorgeous Style”.

A self-confessed perfectionist, the designer oversaw every detail, from advertising to models’ hair. He often said he couldn’t wait for weekends to end so that he could get back to work.

“I’ve never taken drugs, yet for me, the surge of adrenaline I get from my work is better than any hallucination or artificial high. It’s a kind of orgasm (if I may use this expression),” he wrote in Per Amore.

He told Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper in October 2024 that he planned to retire within the next two or three years, having just turned 90. Hospital treatment for an undisclosed condition forced him to miss fashion shows for the first time in his career in June and early July of this year.

He made me see the bigger world

Armani set up his business with his romantic partner Sergio Galeotti, whom he had met during a summer weekend at the Tuscan resort of Forte dei Marmi in 1966. “It was Sergio who believed in me,” Armani told GQ in 2025. “Sergio made me believe in myself. He made me see the bigger world.”

Galeotti, who had AIDS, died in 1985 at the age of 40, leaving a distraught Armani to run the business alone, with the help of his family and of long-term associate Leo Dell’Orco. “I did not hesitate, though it was daunting, and I knew I would have to learn new skills,” he told The Times in a 2019 interview. “It worked out all right,” he added, with understatement.

Armani, the company, was one of the first Italian fashion brands to expand into new markets, building a strong presence in Asia, and branching out with new fashion lines, such as the less expensive Emporio, to capitalise on an already famous name. Other fashion houses such as Prada and Dolce&Gabbana would eventually follow a similar strategy.

Armani also diversified, moving away from thousand-dollar gowns to new products, spanning hotels to chocolates, as well as interior design pieces. As the business grew, so did the scrutiny it attracted. In 1999, the New York Times questioned the Guggenheim’s decision to host a retrospective of the designer’s work just months after he had become a major benefactor to the New York-based museum. The museum denied any quid pro quo.

In 2014, the fashion house paid 270 million euros to settle an Italian tax dispute, newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore reported. Ten years later, an Italian court placed under judicial administration an Armani-owned business accused of indirectly subcontracting production to Chinese companies that exploited workers.

Armani’s unvarnished statements also sometimes generated controversy. Speaking at Milan fashion week in 2020, Armani said: “I think it’s time for me to say what I think. Women keep getting raped by designers.” He clarified what he meant — that he opposed fashion trends that sexualised women and limited their style options. The use of the word rape nevertheless shocked many.

An Armani after Armani

His work having made him fabulously wealthy, he indulged in luxury real estate. He had homes in Milan, as well as in nearby Broni in northern Italy, the southern island of Pantelleria, where he liked to spend August, and Forte dei Marmi. He also had properties in New York, Paris, on the island of Antigua, as well as in St. Moritz and Saint-Tropez. A sports fan, he owned the Olimpia Milano basketball team.

He wrote that he trusted only a few people and fiercely guarded the independence of his business. Over the years, the group received several approaches from potential investors, including one in 2021 from John Elkann, scion of Italy’s Agnelli family, and another from Gucci when Maurizio Gucci was still at the helm, but Armani always ruled out any potential deal that would have diluted his control of the company. He also refused to follow peers such as Prada into listing his company on the stock market.

“Success for me has never been about accumulating wealth, but rather the desire to say, through my work, the way I think,” he wrote in GQ Italia in December 2017. That independent stance leaves a question about what will become of his business in a luxury industry dominated by heavyweight groups. Armani’s heirs are expected to include his sister Rosanna, two nieces and a nephew working in the business, long-term collaborator Dell’Orco and a foundation.

Silvana and Roberta, the daughters of his late brother Sergio Armani, as well as his nephew, Andrea Camerana, who is Rosanna’s son, worked with him in the Armani group. Dell’Orco is also considered part of the family. In Per Amore, he vowed that his company would endure, curated by the people who had surrounded him. “There will be an Armani after Armani,” he wrote.

President Donald Trump recently said ‘defence is too defensive’ as the US wants ‘to be offensive too’.

United States President Donald Trump is due to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War in a bid to rebrand the government agency with a more forceful image.

The name change is expected to be implemented in an executive order on Friday, according to The Associated Press news agency, quoting White House officials familiar with the rebranding effort.

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The “Department of War” will become the secondary name for the Department of Defense until legislative action can make the name change permanent, according to an unreleased fact sheet.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote “DEPARTMENT OF WAR” in a post on social media above a news story on the reported change.

Hegseth made no other comment.

DEPARTMENT OF WAR https://t.co/uyAZGiklRi

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) September 4, 2025

President Trump had said a name change would remind people of past US military victories in World War I and World War II, when the US was an emerging superpower.

“Everybody likes that we had an unbelievable history of victory when it was Department of War,” he told reporters late last month.

“Then we changed it to Department of Defense,” he said.

“Defense is too defensive. And we want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive too, if we have to be,” he said.

The Department of Defence was previously known as the “Department of War” from 1789 until a reorganisation of the US military at the end of World War II, which concluded in 1945.

It was then renamed the National Military Establishment following a merger with other departments in 1947, and the name was later amended to the Department of Defense.

Those name changes were made through an act of Congress.

The defence department is frequently referred to as just the “Pentagon”, after the unique shape of its headquarters near Washington, DC, or it is referred to by its initials, “DOD”.

US media reported that it is still unclear how Trump will make the name change permanent, but Defense Secretary Hegseth will be instructed to pursue legal and legislative means, according to reports.

Hegseth made remarks similar to Trump’s regarding the department’s name in an interview on the US channel Fox News, stating that his agency wants a “warrior ethos”.

“We want warriors, folks that understand how to exact lethality on the enemy,” he said.

“We don’t want endless contingencies and just playing defence. We think words and names and titles matter. So, we’re working with the White House and the president on it. Stand by,” he said.