NewsBytes

President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the UN culture and education agency UNESCO, repeating a move he had already ordered during his first term, which had been reversed under Joe Biden. The withdrawal from the Paris-based agency, which was founded after World War Two to promote peace through international cooperation in education, science and culture, will take effect on December 31, 2026. "President Trump has decided to withdraw the United States from UNESCO – which supports woke, divisive cultural and social causes that are totally out-of-step with the commonsense policies that Americans voted for in November," White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. The State Department said remaining in UNESCO was not in the national interest, accusing it of having "a globalist, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy".

The cabinet on Tuesday approved the free trade agreement between India and the UK, which will be signed in London on July 24, sources said. The pact, officially called as comprehensive economic and trade agreement, will be signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to London. Modi's four-day visit to the United Kingdom and the Maldives begins Wednesday. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal will accompany the PM. The two countries announced the conclusion of the negotiations for the trade agreement on May 6. The trade pact proposes to remove taxes on the export of labour-intensive products such as leather, footwear and clothing, while making imports of whisky and cars from Britain cheaper, in a bid to double trade between the two economies to $120 billion by 2030. The pact has chapters on issues including goods, services, innovation, government procurement and intellectual property rights. The text of the agreement is generally signed by the commerce ministers from both countries. Once the free trade agreement is signed, it will require approval from the British Parliament before it can take effect.

The Spanish government on Tuesday introduced a bill to automatically declassify all secret government files older than 45 years, including documents from Francisco Franco's dictatorship and the transition to democracy. If approved by parliament, the proposed law could shed light on some of Spain's darkest chapters, including Franco's ties to Adolf Hitler, the locations of mass graves where victims of his 1939-75 rule were buried, and details of the 1966 Palomares nuclear accident caused by the mid-air collision of two US Air Force planes over a fishing village in southern Spain. The bill seeks to replace the existing law governing official secrets, enacted during Franco's rule, which lacks provisions for automatic declassification based on the amount of time that has passed. The law would automatically declassify all documents older than 45 years unless they constituted a justified threat to national security.

When John Warmington first began diving the reefs outside his home in Vanuatu's Havannah Harbour a decade ago, the coral rose like a sunken forest — tall stands of staghorns branched into yellow antlers, plate corals layered like canopies, and clouds of darting fish wove through the labyrinth.  “We used to know every inch of that reef,” he said. “It was like a friend.” Now, it's unrecognisable. After Cyclone Pam battered the reef in 2015, sediment from inland rivers smothered the coral beds. Crown-of-thorns starfish swept in and devoured the recovering polyps. Back-to-back cyclones in 2023 crushed what was left. Then, in December 2024, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake shook the seabed. On Wednesday, Vanuatu will get its day in the world's highest court. The International Court of Justice will issue an advisory opinion on what legal obligations nations have to address climate change and what consequences they may face if they don't. The case, led by Vanuatu and backed by more than 130 countries, is seen as a potential turning point in international climate law.