USA

Elon Musk has been actively working to build a “legion” of children, going as far as using his platform X to recruit potential mothers and proposing the use of surrogates to expedite the process, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. The billionaire’s efforts have led to what one woman described as “harem drama,” with Musk allegedly managing the mothers of his children through financial incentives and strict confidentiality agreements.

Ashley St Clair, a 26-year-old conservative influencer who gave birth to Musk’s 13th child in September, said she received multiple messages from Musk discussing his desire for a large brood. In one message, he reportedly said, “I want to knock you up again,” while suggesting the use of surrogates to “reach legion-level before the apocalypse.”

The Tesla CEO is confirmed to have fathered at least 14 children with four known women – St Clair, singer Grimes, Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, and ex-wife Justine Musk. 

Sources close to Musk believe the actual number may be higher. The report claims Musk even provided sperm to a high-profile Japanese woman after being approached by officials from Japan.

Shivon Zilis, who has four children with Musk, is described as having “special status” among the mothers. Zilis has accompanied Musk to high-level events, including meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a pre-inauguration dinner attended by world leaders and tech elites.

St Clair said she was first offered $15 million and $100,000 a month in support if she agreed to keep Musk’s name off the birth certificate and not reveal he was the father. This offer came through Musk’s close aide Jared Birchall when she went into labour.

She didn’t agree to the secrecy, but still left Musk’s name off the official papers. After she went public about their relationship in February, the support was reduced to $40,000 a month – and then dropped to $20,000, as per the WSJ investigation.

The report also says Musk reached out to other women, like crypto influencer Tiffany Fong, with offers to have children. After Fong shared the messages publicly, Musk reportedly unfollowed her.

Several women, including St Clair, claim that Musk’s team uses money and strict confidentiality deals to stay in control. His aide Jared Birchall, who manages his matters, is said to have called the inner circle a “meritocracy,” where benefits flow “when people do good work.”

Musk’s desire to have many children comes from his belief in the idea that falling birthrates could put humanity at risk. He has often said that “civilisation is going to crumble” without population growth and believes smart people need to have more children to help secure the future of mankind.

The WSJ report says that much of Musk’s life is protected through legal and financial measures. Grimes, who shares three children with Musk, revealed that their custody battle left her financially drained. In February, she publicly reached out to Musk on X during a child’s medical emergency.

Elon Musk is the richest person with an estimated net worth of $367.9 billion, as per Forbes. He is the head of the Department of Government Efficiency under US President Donald Trump and an advisor in his cabinet.

The Israeli military has said it is expanding the “Morag Corridor,” a new dividing line in the southern Gaza Strip, and has turned roughly a third of the enclave into “security zones” under full Israeli military control.

An infographic video released by the military showed the “Morag Corridor” running through an area between Rafah and Khan Younis, cutting off Rafah from Khan Younis and central Gaza, Xinhua news agency reported.

In the video, Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s largest city, appeared almost completely razed, with only a few severely damaged buildings left.

“As part of the operation, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) has achieved full operational control over several key areas and routes throughout Gaza. Nearly 30 per cent of the strip’s territory is now designated as an Operational Security Perimeter,” the military said in a statement.

Apart from the “Morag Corridor,” Israel has also established the “Netzarim Corridor” during the war, a military buffer zone in central Gaza aimed at isolating Gaza City and northern Gaza from the rest of the enclave.

Israel has blocked the entry of all humanitarian aid into Gaza since March 2.

It then ended a two-month ceasefire with Hamas on March 18 and resumed deadly air and ground assaults on the enclave.

The military said since March 18, it has carried out airstrikes on about 1,200 targets in Gaza using nearly 350 fighter jets and other aircraft.

The renewed Israeli attacks have so far killed 1,652 Palestinians and injured 4,391 others, Gaza health authorities said on Wednesday, adding the death toll in the enclave since the war began in October 2023 has risen to 51,025, with 116,432 injured.

Israel controls the entry of all aid and supplies to Gaza.

On April 28, the International Court of Justice is set to open hearings on Israel’s humanitarian obligations towards Palestinians.

The UN General Assembly approved a resolution in December requesting that The Hague-based top court give an advisory opinion on the matter.

It calls on the ICJ to clarify what Israel is required to do to “ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday denied in court that his company bought rival services Instagram and WhatsApp to neutralize them, as his testimony in a landmark antitrust case came to a close.

The case could see the Facebook owner forced to divest itself of the two apps, which have grown into global powerhouses since their buyouts.

During his third and final day on the stand in a federal courtroom in Washington, Zuckerberg took aim at the Federal Trade Commission’s main argument — that Facebook, since renamed Meta, devoured what it saw as competitive threats.

The co-founder of Facebook responded “No” when asked by Meta attorney Mark Hansen if his intent was to eliminate rivals with the purchases of photo sharing app Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp.

He explained that Instagram, purchased in 2012, was attractive for “its camera and photo sharing experience” but added that he “didn’t view it as a broad network really competitive with where we were.”

As for WhatsApp, bought two years later, Zuckerberg testified that he saw the app as technically impressive but its founders as “unambitious” in terms of “maximizing the impact that they could potentially have.”

“I basically ended up pushing to add things,” he told the court.

Zuckerberg testified that Facebook put its scale and resources to work building Instagram and WhatsApp into apps now used by billions of people.

Former Meta chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg testified after Zuckerberg, echoing much of what he told the court.

Meta has had to take on an array of rivals including internet colossus Google as internet competition has become increasingly competitive, according to Sandberg.

“Every time you go on your computer or phone, you have a choice of what you spend your time on,” Sandberg said.

“That’s what all these producers are competing for: your time and attention.”

– TikTok as new threat –

A key part of the courtroom battle is how the Federal Trade Commission convincingly defines Meta’s market for the judge.

The US government argues that Facebook and Instagram are dominant players in apps that provide a way to connect with family and friends, a category that does not include TikTok and YouTube.

Meta’s defense attorneys counter that substantial investments transformed these acquisitions into the blockbusters they are today. They also highlight that Meta’s apps are free for users and face fierce competition.

The case was originally filed in December 2020, in the last days of President Donald Trump’s first administration.

Zuckerberg, the world’s third-richest person, has made repeated visits to the White House as he has tried to persuade the president to choose settlement instead of fighting the trial.

As part of his lobbying efforts, Zuckerberg contributed to Trump’s inauguration fund and overhauled content moderation policies.

He also purchased a $23 million mansion in Washington in what was seen as a bid to spend more time close to the center of political power.

Zuckerberg wrapped some 12 hours of testimony on Wednesday with an assessment of TikTok, which he said has emerged as perhaps the biggest competitive threat for Instagram and Facebook.

Meta has seen the growth of its apps slow as the China-based video-snippet sharing sensation has boomed, so the US tech titan added a TikTok-like Reels feature to fire back in the marketplace, according to Zuckerberg.

“That said, TikTok is still bigger than either Facebook or Instagram, and I don’t like it when our competitors do better than us,” he told the court.

And as video has evolved into a favorite form of online media, particularly on smartphones, YouTube has become serious competition for Meta, the chief executive testified.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A total of 175,512 Syrians have voluntarily returned to their country from Turkey since December 9 last year, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said.

According to Yerlikaya on Wednesday, the number of Syrians who have returned from Turkey since 2017 has now reached 915,515.

These returns, comprising 33,730 families, have been carried out in what authorities describe as a “voluntary, safe, dignified, and orderly” manner, Xinhua news agency reported.

Yerlikaya stressed that the return process is managed transparently, with oversight from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

To facilitate the process, Turkey has introduced measures allowing authorized exit and re-entry and has deployed migration representatives in Syria to monitor and support returnees on the ground.

Millions of Syrians fled their country following the outbreak of civil war in 2011.

Turkey, sharing a long border with Syria, became a major refuge, hosting more than 3.6 million Syrians at the peak of the crisis, according to UN figures.

The Turkish government, which supports the Islamist-led rebels who toppled the government of former President Bashar al-Assad, is hoping to accelerate the return of refugees to ease the tensions their presence has generated in parts of the country.

Overall, around 400,000 Syrians have returned from neighbouring countries since Assad’s fall, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

The agency also said that more than one million Syrians displaced within their country by the conflict had also returned to their homes.

The dramatic shift in Syria’s political landscape began on December 8, 2024, when Bashar al-Assad, who ruled Syria for nearly 25 years, fled to Russia after anti-regime forces seized control of Damascus, effectively ending Baath Party rule that had lasted since 1963.

On January 29, a transitional Syrian administration was announced under the leadership of Ahmed al-Sharaa, the commander of the opposition forces that ousted Assad.

The new administration dissolved Syria’s constitution, security services, armed factions, the Baath Party, and Parliament — setting the stage for a new political structure.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy.

The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband Shunei Kimura won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris.

For Shunei, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was shortlived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022 aged 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star.

Kimura insisted that the new star is still down to her husband. “If Shunei had never received a star, I wouldn’t have been particularly attached to obtaining one myself,” she told AFP.

“But he was proud that his restaurant was recognised. So this star has become very important to me,” she said in her tiny traditional “sushiya”, which only seats nine.

The Michelin was glowing in its praise, saying a “sensorial journey is guaranteed thanks to the dexterity with which the nigiri are made, the use and working of superb fish and the subtle seasoning.”

But Chizuko Kimura never set out to be a top chef, only falling into the business when her husband, who had worked in France for decades, decided to open his own restaurant.

“He was already ill at that time, and that’s when I started helping him. I was working as a tour guide and lost my job due to Covid,” she said.

She learned at his side how to cut the fish, cook the rice and how to run the restaurant while caring for him as he grew iller.

“I got better day by day and I still train on my days off. I am always studying,” she said, travelling back to Japan when she can to continue her training there.

After her husband’s passing, Kimura took over the reins of the restaurant. She strengthened her team by hiring master sushi chef Takeshi Morooka, refined the dining experience by adding “tsunamis” (small appetisers typically served with sake) to the menu, modified the rice recipe, and updated the cooking equipment.

Three years later, Sushi Shunei regained its Michelin star. “My first goal is to maintain this star,” Kimura said, “and to keep it, we must strive to offer even better service and ensure impeccable quality.”

Traditionally, becoming a master sushi chef requires at least a 10-year apprenticeship. Kimura got her star in just five.

“If this recognition can inspire or encourage other women, I will be very happy,” she said.

And she’s not stopping there. Her goal now is to surpass her husband’s achievements as a tribute to his work and his memory.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg once considered separating Instagram from its parent company due to worries about antitrust litigation, according to an email shown Tuesday on the second day of an antitrust trial alleging Meta illegally monopolised the social media market.

In the 2018 email, Zuckerberg wrote that he was beginning to wonder if “spinning Instagram out” would be the only way to accomplish important goals, as big-tech companies grow. He also noted “there is a non-trivial chance” Meta could be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in five to 10 years anyway.

He wrote that while most companies resist breakups, “the corporate history is that most companies actually perform better after they’ve been split up.”

Asked Tuesday by attorney Daniel Matheson, who is leading the antitrust case for the Federal Trade Commission, which incidence in corporate history he had in mind, Zuckerberg responded: “I’m not sure what I had in mind then.”

Zuckerberg, who was the first witness, testified for more than seven hours over two days in the trial that could force Meta to break off Instagram and WhatsApp, startups the tech giant bought more than a decade ago that have since grown into social media powerhouses.

While questioning Zuckerberg on Tuesday morning, Matheson noted that he had referred to Instagram as being a “rapidly growing, threatening, network.” The attorney also pointed out Zuckerberg’s referring to trying to neutralize a competitor by buying the company.

But Zuckerberg said while Matheson was able to show documents in court that indicated his concern about Instagram’s growth, he also had many conversations about how excited his company was to acquire Instagram to make a better product.

Zuckerberg also said Facebook was in the process of building a camera app for sharing on mobile phones, and he thought Instagram was better at that, “so I wanted to buy them.”

Zuckerberg also pushed back against Matheson’s contention that the reason for buying the company was to neutralize a threat.

“I think that that mischaracterizes what the email was,” Zuckerberg said.

In his questioning of Zuckerberg, Matheson repeatedly brought up emails – many of them more than a decade old – written by Zuckerberg and his associates before and after the acquisition of Instagram.

While acknowledging the documents, Zuckerberg has often sought to downplay the contents, saying he wrote them in the early stages of considering the acquisition and that what he wrote at the time didn’t capture the full scope of his interest in the company.

Matheson also brought up a February 2012 message in which Zuckerberg wrote to the former chief financial officer of Facebook that Instagram and Path, a social networking app, already had created meaningful networks that could be “very disruptive to us.”

Zuckerberg testified that the message was written in the context of a broad discussion about whether they should buy companies to accelerate their own development.

Zuckerberg also testified that buying the company, taking it off the market and building their own version of it was “a reasonable thing to do.”

Later Tuesday, Mark Hansen, an attorney for Meta, began his questioning of Zuckerberg. Hansen, in his opening statements Monday, emphasised that Meta’s services are free and that the company, far from holding a monopoly, actually has a lot of competition. He made a point of bringing up those issues in just over an hour of questioning Zuckerberg, with more expected to come Wednesday.

“It’s very competitive,” Zuckerberg said, noting that charging for using services like Facebook would likely drive users away, since similar services are widely available elsewhere.

The trial is one of the first big tests of President Donald Trump’s FTC’s ability to challenge Big Tech. The lawsuit was filed against Meta – then called Facebook – in 2020, during Trump’s first term. It claims the company bought Instagram and WhatsApp to squash competition and establish an illegal monopoly in the social media market.

Facebook bought Instagram – which was a photo-sharing app with no ads – for $1 billion in 2012.

Instagram was the first company Facebook bought and kept running as a separate app. Until then, Facebook was known for smaller “acqui-hires” – a popular Silicon Valley deal in which a company purchases a startup as a way to hire its talented workers, then shuts the acquired company down. Two years later, it did it again with the messaging app WhatsApp, which it purchased for $22 billion.

WhatsApp and Instagram helped Facebook move its business from desktop computers to mobile devices, and to remain popular with younger generations as rivals like Snapchat (which it also tried, but failed, to buy) and TikTok emerged.

However, the FTC has a narrow definition of Meta’s competitive market, excluding companies like TikTok, YouTube and Apple’s messaging service from being considered rivals to Instagram and WhatsApp.

US District Judge James Boasberg is presiding over the case. Late last year, he denied Meta’s request for a summary judgment and ruled that the case must go to trial.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

California is set to sue the federal government on Wednesday over Donald Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs, claiming the US president does not have the right to enact such damaging policies.

As the richest state in the union, and one of the country’s largest importers and exporters, California looks set to bear the brunt of the economic damage forecasters expect from recent gyrations.

Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom — a long-time foe of Trump’s and widely expected to be considering a 2028 presidential bid — will announce a lawsuit against the Republican administration, a statement said.

The legal action will argue that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which Trump has used to impose tariffs as high as 145 percent, does not grant him the authority to impose tariffs on goods coming into the United States.

“President Trump’s unlawful tariffs are wreaking chaos on California families, businesses, and our economy – driving up prices and threatening jobs,” Newsom said in a statement.

“We’re standing up for American families who can’t afford to let the chaos continue.”

The case is the latest of more than a dozen lawsuits that California has filed against the Trump administration.

But it is the first one in which Newsom is taking such a prominent role.

The governor has spent much of the last three months trying to avoid open conflict with Trump.

After the fires that swept through Los Angeles in January, he went out of his way to welcome Trump and to impress upon him how much the state needed him.

But Trump’s moves to stymie international trade could have a devastating effect on an economy that is hyper-exposed to the outside world, with huge volumes of trade passing through its ports, and millions of foreigners visiting every year.

Newsom’s office says California — which would be the world’s fifth largest economy if it were independent — could lose billions of dollars in revenue if Trump’s tariff policies shrink international trade, especially with key trading partners China, Mexico and Canada.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A US federal judge said Wednesday he had found “probable cause” to hold President Donald Trump’s administration in contempt in a deportation case, raising the stakes in the White House’s confrontation with the US justice system.

The ruling refers to District Judge James Boasberg’s temporary restraining order of March 15 to halt deportations carried out under an obscure wartime law, the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.

That order was issued as the government was flying more than 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador, where those expelled were incarcerated in a maximum security prison.

In a written opinion, District Judge Boasberg cited evidence that the government had engaged in “deliberate or reckless disregard” of his order.

“Defendants provide no convincing reason to avoid the conclusion that appears obvious… that they deliberately flouted this Court’s written Order and, separately, its oral command that explicitly delineated what compliance entailed,” he wrote.

The administration’s actions were “sufficient for the court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the government in criminal contempt,” Boasberg wrote.

The judge said the government would be offered a final chance to “purge such contempt” or face further court action.

Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has flirted with open defiance of the judiciary following setbacks to his right-wing agenda, with deportation cases taking center stage.

In invoking the Alien Enemies Act — which had only been used previously during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II — Trump said he was targeting transnational gangs he had declared foreign terrorist organizations.

That included the Venezuelan group Tren de Aragua, but lawyers for several of the deported Venezuelans have said that their clients were not gang members, had committed no crimes and were targeted largely on the basis of their tattoos.

The administration is also under fire over its admission that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was living in the eastern state of Maryland and married to a US citizen, was deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador due to an “administrative error.”

A judge has ordered Trump to “facilitate” his return, an order upheld by the Supreme Court, but his government has said the court did not have the authority to order it to have him returned.

Trump has alleged that Abrego Garcia is “an MS-13 Gang Member and Foreign Terrorist from El Salvador,” while Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that he was “engaged in human trafficking.”

The Republican president has criticized rulings that curb his policies and power, and attacked the judges who issued them, including Boasberg.

Trump has also moved to settle scores with law firms that represented his political foes in the past or helped bring him to court on civil or criminal charges.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Iran is dangerously close to developing an atomic weapon, warned the International Atomic Energy Agency, hours before the UN watchdog’s chief is expected to leave for Tehran. During his visit, the top nuclear body chief will hold talks with Iranian government officials over recent developments in its top secret nuclear programme.

Rafael Grossi, who heads the IAEA, likened the development of a nuclear weapon to that of solving a jigsaw puzzle. “Iran has all the pieces now, and could well put them together eventually,” he said.

Speaking about Tehran’s nuclear weapons ambition, Mr Grossi told French newspaper Le Monde that “Iran is not too far from having an atomic bomb”.

IAEA, which is an autonomous UN body, is currently tasked with overseeing Iran’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal that fell apart after Donald Trump withdrew from it during his first term as US President. At the time President Trump had called it a “bad deal”.

‘RADICALS CANNOT HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS’

He now wants to completely rid Iran of its military nuclear programme. Just this week, President Trump had asserted that “Iran has to get rid of the concept of a nuclear weapon. These are radicalised people, and they cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

His remark came shortly after the first round of talks between Washington and Tehran which were held in Oman last weekend.

After the first round of negotiations, US’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff, who represented America, said that the talks were “positive, constructive, and compelling”. Surprisingly, even Iran’s Supreme Leader said the talks are “going well” so far. Iran however, swiftly sent a top delegation headed by the foreign minister to Moscow to consult the Kremlin.

The second round of talks are expected in Rome, though Tehran is pushing for talks to continue in Oman.

Explaining Washington’s outlook and objectives from these talks, Mr Witkoff told Fox News that “This is going to be much about verification on the enrichment program, and then ultimately verification on weaponization. That includes missiles, the type of missiles that they have stockpiled there. And it includes the trigger for a bomb.”

TECHNICAL DETAILS

Further explaining his point, Mr Witkoff said that for the first time Iran had been offered a specific level of enrichment by the United States. Today, Tehran enriches uranium to up to 60 per cent – a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90 per cent.

For their limited, peaceful and civilian purpose, “They (Iran) do not need to enrich past 3.67 per cent,” Mr Witkoff told Fox News, adding that “In some circumstances, they’re at 60 per cent, in other circumstances, 20 per cent. That cannot be.”

“You do not need to run, as they claim, a civil nuclear program where you’re enriching past 3.67 per cent. So this is going to be much about verification on the enrichment program, and then ultimately verification on weaponisation.”

OBAMA DEAL vs TRUMP DEAL

Under then US President Barack Obama, for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Tehran had agreed to drastically reduce its stockpile of uranium and only enrich up to 3.67 per cent – enough for its nuclear power plant at Bushehr. In exchange, Iran received access to frozen funds around the world, and sanctions were lifted on its crucial oil industry and other sectors.

In 2018, when Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, he had highlighted that Iran’s ballistic missile stockpile was one of the main reasons to exit the deal. Adding to that, Mr Witkoff said that “Any deal with Iran would have to include missiles – the type of missiles that they have stockpiled there and it also includes the trigger for a bomb.”

In a post on social media platform X after the first round of US-Iran talks, Mr Witkoff wrote, “A deal with Iran will only be completed if it is a Trump deal.”
 

Italy’s PM Giorgia Meloni will fly to Washington to speak with US President Donald Trump regarding tariffs on Europe. The tariffs will potentially be a lethal blow to Italian exporters. 

However, her counterparts from Europe feel she may be the only European leader Trump might be willing to listen to, since Trump had said that she is “a fantastic leader and person”, when he invited her to this inauguration ceremony in January. Other European leaders have tried to change the US President’s mind through various means – flattery, threats or promises to buy more American gas, but the talks reached nowhere.

Currently the European Union has three months to convince Trump not to slap 20 per cent duties on all its exports to the United States, apart from the baseline 10 per cent tariff with another 25 per cent on steel, aluminium and autos.

As Meloni speaks to Trump on Thursday, it is Europe’s opportunity to show that they can still do business with the US. Moreover she herself thinks that Trump can be reasoned with and that his trade threats are just a negotiating tactic, per two Italian officials familiar with the government’s political stance.

“Having Trump’s ear is an asset for the entire European Union,” an Italian official told Politico, underlining Meloni’s “ideological affinities with the world of American conservative right-wing politics.”

It’s worthwhile to note that Italy has the third-largest trade surplus with the US as compared to other EU countries, standing at 40 billion euros. Its top exports are machinery, pharmaceuticals, vehicles, fashion, and food and beverages.

Nevertheless, there is a separate fear brewing in Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron warned that Trump’s ultimate goal is to divide EU countries and force them to make bilateral deals with the US. French Industry Minister Marc Ferracci reacted to Meloni travelling to Washington saying Europe needed to stay united.

German politicians are also hopeful. “Meloni’s trip to Washington right now is an important signal,” said Johann Wadephul, from the likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats. “The Italian prime minister has a good connection to U.S. President Trump, which she can now put to the service of Europe.”

“Politics, like life, is built on personal relationships,” said Marco Scurria, an Italian senator from Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party. “It’s better when such a complex negotiation is handled by two people who respect each other and can more easily reach a positive outcome – unlike with von der Leyen (the head of the European Commission).”