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The Northern Irish hip-hop group Kneecap responded on Friday to criticism over their pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel messaging during their Coachella set earlier this month, calling the backlash a “coordinated smear campaign.” 

The group, which has been vocal about its view of the conflict in Gaza, performed their set during the festival in front of a screen featuring the words “F— Israel, Free Palestine.” 

The group claimed in a post on X after the festival’s first weekend that organizers subsequently censored the livestream of their performance.  While it was not broadcast online, images of the onstage message circulated across social media, prompting outrage online.   

Tribe of Nova, the organizers behind Israel’s Nova Music Festival where Hamas launched a deadly attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that left 1,200 people dead, said Kneecap’s messaging “deeply hurt many in our community.” The organization invited band members to “visit the Nova Exhibition and experience firsthand the stories of those who were murdered, those who survived, and those who are still being held hostage.” 

Kneecap said in an X post Friday: “Those attacking us want to silence criticism of a mass slaughter. They weaponize false accusations of antisemitism to distract, confuse, and provide cover for genocide.” 

“We do not give a f*ck what religion anyone practices,” the group continued. “We know there are massive numbers of Jewish people outraged by this genocide just as we are. What we care about is that governments of the countries we perform in are enabling some of the most horrific crimes of our lifetimes — and we will not stay silent.” 

The group’s statement comes one week after Coachella wrapped, and amid calls from some critics for the band to be reprimanded by U.S. officials.   

Among the more vocal critics was Sharon Osbourne, a TV personality and the wife of heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne, who accused Kneecap of hate speech and said the U.S. should revoke the group’s work visas. 

“While festivals like Coachella showcase remarkable talent from around the globe, music’s primary purpose is to unite people,” Osbourne, who said she’s of Irish Catholic and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, wrote in a lengthy post on X on Tuesday. “It should not be a venue for promoting terrorist organizations or spreading hate.” 

She said while she respects artists’ “right to exercise their opinions,” Kneecap “took their performance to a different level by incorporating aggressive political statements.”  

According to the BBC, during the band’s second weekend performance, the band led a crowd in a “free Palestine” chant, and band member Mo Chara touched on the conflict.  

“The Irish not so long ago were persecuted at the hands of the Brits, but we were never bombed from the… skies with nowhere to go,” Chara said to the audience. “The Palestinians have nowhere to go.”  

More than 50,000 people have been killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza since the start of the war, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. 

Osbourne said Goldenvoice, the organizers behind the Indio, California,-based festival, should not have allowed them to perform again after seeing their first weekend performance. 

“This behavior raises concerns about the appropriateness of their participation in such a festival and further shows they are booked to play in the USA,” she added, calling on people to join her in “advocating for the revocation of Kneecap’s work visa.” 

Goldenvoice did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.  

Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse, has died by suicide, her family said Friday. 

Giuffre, 41, died in Neergabby, Australia, where she had been living for several years.

Giuffre was one of the earliest and loudest voices calling for criminal charges against Epstein and his enablers. Other Epstein abuse survivors later credited her with giving them the courage to speak out.

She also provided critical information to law enforcement that contributed to the investigation into and later the conviction of Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as other investigations by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

“It is with utterly broken hearts that we announce that Virginia passed away last night at her farm in Western Australia,” her family said in a statement to NBC News. “She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking.”

“Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors,” the statement said. “In the end, the toll of abuse is so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight.”

Raised primarily in Florida, Giuffre had a troubled childhood. She said she was abused by a family friend, triggering a downward spiral that led to her living on the streets for a time as a teenager.

She was attempting to rebuild her life when she met Maxwell, Epstein’s close confidant. Maxwell groomed her to be sexually abused by Epstein, and that abuse continued from 1999 to 2002, according to Giuffre. Giuffre also alleged that Epstein trafficked her to his powerful friends, including Prince Andrew and French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel.

Epstein, a wealthy financier, died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

Maxwell, a former British socialite, was found guilty on five counts of sex trafficking in 2021 for her role in recruiting young girls to be abused by Epstein.

Giuffre filed a federal lawsuit against Andrew in 2021, alleging that he sexually abused her when she was 17. Andrew, who stepped back from his duties as an active royal as controversy related to Epstein swirled around him, agreed to settle the case for an undisclosed amount in 2022. He has denied having sex with her. 

Brunel, who headed several modeling agencies, was charged with sexual harassment and the rape of at least one minor in December 2020. He denied wrongdoing and died by suicide in his jail cell in February 2022.

Several months prior, Giuffre testified against Brunel in a Paris courtroom in June 2021. In an interview after her daylong closed-door testimony, Giuffre said she appeared in court to be a voice for the victims and to make sure Brunel was brought to justice.

“I wanted Brunel to know that he no longer has the power over me,” Giuffre said, “that I am a grown woman now and I’ve decided to hold him accountable for what he did to me and so many others.”

Giuffre moved to Australia with her husband before Epstein’s 2019 arrest. The couple has three children.

Her brother, Danny Wilson, told NBC News she “pushed so hard to snuff the evil out” of the world.

“Her biggest push was, ‘If I don’t do this, nobody’s going to do it,’” he said, regarding her advocacy. “She was in real physical pain — suffered from renal failure. But I think that the mental pain was worse.”

The Epstein story received renewed attention during the most recent presidential election, and in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi released a collection of Epstein-related files to right-wing media figures and then to the public.

Though the release was widely panned for containing information that was almost entirely previously public, the lead-up to its release — including concerns about the disclosure of sensitive or personally identifying information about victims — had been a source of distress and anxiety for victims in recent months, multiple victims told NBC News.

Giuffre’s lawyer, Sigrid McCawley, described her as a “dear friend and an incredible champion for other victims.”

Those who were close to Giuffre said they remembered her as a fighter.

“Virginia was one of the most extraordinary human beings I have ever had the honor to know,” her representative, Dini von Mueffling, said.

And McCawley said, “Her courage pushed me to fight harder, and her strength was awe-inspiring.”

In an interview for a “Dateline” NBC special on Epstein that aired before authorities charged Maxwell and Brunel, Giuffre urged law enforcement to act.

“Take us serious,” she said. “We matter.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.

GOLDEN, Colo. — Three Denver-area teens cheered each other during a night of throwing rocks at cars — until one of the stones crashed through a windshield and killed a woman, leading to a murder conviction Friday after the trio turned on one another.

Jurors found Joseph Koenig guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Alexa Bartell, 20, on April 19, 2023, after the other young men riding with him reached deals with prosecutors and testified against him. Koenig, now 20, was also convicted of attempted murder and other less serious crimes for rocks and other objects thrown at vehicles the night Bartell was killed and in previous weeks.

Bartell’s family and friends hugged and cried in court after the verdict.

Her mother, Kelly Bartell, said later that justice had been done but she had mixed feelings, expressing some sympathy for Koenig and the other two young men, who were all 18 when her daughter was killed.

“It’s hard to be happy or feel satisfied that justice was served today, because I feel one amazing life was lost and three others are also lost and impacted,” she said.

Jurors had to consider shifting and competing versions of the truth offered by Koenig’s former co-defendants during the two-week trial.

No one disputed that a 9-pound landscaping rock taken from a Walmart parking lot crashed through Bartell’s windshield, killing her instantly. The issue was who threw it. The only DNA found on the rock was Bartell’s, making the testimony from the other two, Zachary Kwak and Nicholas Karol-Chik, key to the prosecution.

Lawyers for Koenig said Kwak threw the rock that killed Bartell. But Kwak and Karol-Chik, whose plea agreements on lesser charges could lead to shorter prison sentences, said Koenig threw it. Although Karol-Chik said they each threw about 10 rocks that night, Kwak testified that he did not throw any.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Katharine Decker told jurors the damage to Bartell’s car was consistent with Koenig — who is left-handed and was driving — throwing the rock, shotput-style, out the driver’s-side window, as Karol-Chik testified. Even if jurors were unconvinced that Koenig threw it, she told them, they should still find him guilty of first-degree murder as a conspirator.

Koenig’s attorneys said he did not know anyone had been hurt until Bartell’s car went off the road. They also argued that he had borderline personality disorder, affecting his impulse control and judgment.

Defense lawyer Martin Stuart asked jurors to instead find Koenig guilty of manslaughter, the least serious charge he faced, saying he did not knowingly try to kill her. Jurors also had the option of finding him guilty of manslaughter as a conspirator.

After seeing Bartell’s car leave the road, the three friends circled back a few times to look again, according to testimony. Kwak took a photo as a memento, but no one checked on the driver or called for help, according to their testimony.

Bartell’s body would not be discovered until her girlfriend, Jenna Griggs, who was on a call with her when it abruptly cut out, tracked her phone to the field, she testified.

The three agreed not to talk to anyone about what happened, but Kwak, the newest to the group of friends, later told investigators that Koenig threw the rock. Karol-Chik, who said Koenig was like a “brother” to him, initially pointed the finger at Kwak before changing his story and blaming Koenig.

Karol-Chik testified that Koenig seemed “excited” as they drove by Bartell’s car and at one point made a “whoop” sound.

“It sounded like him celebrating,” said Karol-Chik, who admitted placing the rock next to Koenig so he could grab it and throw it.

Koenig’s lawyers tried to cast doubt on the reliability of the other men’s accounts but also stressed that none of the three intended to hurt anyone. The defense declined to comment on the conviction.

Kwak entered into a plea deal first, pleading guilty in May 2024 to first-degree assault. In doing so he acknowledged acting in a way that created a grave risk of death. He also pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and attempted second-degree assault for rocks that were thrown earlier in the night. He faces between 20 and 32 years in prison, according to prosecutors.

About a week later, Karol-Chik pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and committing a crime of violence. He also pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder for throwing rocks at a total of nine people that night and earlier in 2023. Under his agreement, Karol-Chik could be sent to prison for between 35 and 72 years when he is sentenced Thursday, a day before Kwak.

Koenig is to be sentenced June 3 and faces a mandatory life term for the murder conviction.

When a lifesaving drug — insulin — is used as a murder weapon, medical professionals are likely unprepared to consider that the difficult-to-detect medication was used to commit a crime, according to a forensic pathologist who worked on the recent case of a West Virginia pharmacist convicted of fatally dosing her husband.

Dr. Paul Uribe, a former military medical examiner who consults as a pathologist across the United States and helped solve a string of insulin murders at a West Virginia veterans hospital, told NBC News that there appear to be few protocols showing pathologists and emergency room doctors how to best handle the cases.

“You’re not going to stumble across an insulin homicide,” Uribe said. “You have to have a suspect and you have to look for it, because if you’re not looking for it, you’re not going to find it.”

For more on the West Virginia murder, tune in to “Devil’s in the Details” on “Dateline” on April 25 at 9 ET/8 CT tonight.

While such crimes are rare, Uribe said, some recent cases in the U.S. have had a staggering number of victims. In Pennsylvania, a nurse confessed to trying to kill 19 people with insulin at five facilities between 2020 and 2023. Seventeen of her patients died. At the West Virginia veterans hospital, a nurse admitted in 2021 to killing seven elderly patients with insulin.

Uribe said he knows of no protocols promoted by organizations for ER doctors or medical examiners and knows of only one state — West Virginia — where lawmakers have sought to reckon with this apparent lack of awareness. A bill introduced this year in the state Legislature seeks to require emergency rooms to test patients for insulin when they’re admitted with possible symptoms of insulin poisoning.

Jonathan Jones, the former president of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, said that while the organization is concerned about insulin overdoses, it does not believe in “legislating medical care.”

“The best medical care is provided by properly educated, trained and board-certified physicians and not by legislators,” he said in an email to NBC News. “We believe in continuing medical education around this issue and all others applicable to the physician’s specialty but oppose treatment mandates and repercussions.”

He did not respond to a request for comment about whether ERs need stronger guidelines.

Asked if forensic pathologists need better protocols, Reade Quinton, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, said: “I am not sure that is the right question. What medical examiners need is unobstructed access to scene information, witness statements and medical records so we can perform a complete and independent death investigation.”

The lead sponsor of the West Virginia bill did not respond to requests for comment. But the parents of Michael Cochran — who was killed by his pharmacist wife and for whom the bill is named — believe the legislation could serve as a model for the country. And it could help others avoid the gut-wrenching search for answers that they endured for years.

“They won’t have to wait for a result like we had to wait,” Cochran’s mother, Donna Bolt, told “Dateline.” “Six years.”

Seven dead patients at VA hospital

Uribe’s first insulin homicide case was at the veterans hospital in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Then a pathologist with the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, Uribe said he was asked in late 2018 to examine a series of mysterious deaths among elderly patients, all of whom were found to have had severe hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar.

The condition can be caused by excessively high doses of insulin, which acts as a lifesaving regulator of blood sugar for people with diabetes.

Some of the veterans were diabetic, Uribe recalled, but others were not. He said he was asked to find a “smoking gun” that could prove insulin was the murder weapon.

For emergency room physicians and pathologists, he said, this can be a difficult task because of how quickly the body metabolizes insulin. The test cited in the West Virginia legislation — known as a “c-peptide” test — can measure insulin, Uribe said, but timing is key: It has to be conducted before doctors provide treatment for low blood sugar, he said.

“Because once you give that person glucose, that triggers the body’s natural release of insulin, and it’ll throw off the insulin c-peptide measure,” he said.

Many smaller hospitals often do not have the tests available, he added.

Uribe cited two possible methods for pathologists to document insulin. One of the most common ways of administering the medication is through an injection, and it can briefly linger in the body’s tissue at an injection site, he said. Researchers have also documented insulin in postmortem vitreous fluid, a substance found in the eyeball, he said.

In West Virginia, the bodies of seven veterans were exhumed and Uribe tested injection site tissue samples, he said. The tests revealed trace amounts of insulin in some of the victims, including those who were not diabetic and had never been prescribed the medication, he said.

“That was the definitive proof they had been injected with insulin,” he said.

Reta Mays, a nursing assistant at the hospital, was eventually identified as a suspect in the killings. She admitted to administering the lethal doses, pleading guilty to seven counts of second-degree murder and one count of assault with intent to commit murder in connection with the death of an eighth man. Mays was sentenced to seven life sentences.

A fatal dose from a pharmacist

In Uribe’s second case, pharmacist Natalie Cochran was convicted in January of giving her husband a fatal dose of the drug in a plot that prosecutors said was aimed at covering up a multimillion-dollar fraud that she perpetrated on friends and family.

But it took years for the case to be resolved.

In February 2019, Michael Cochran was hospitalized in an unresponsive state before he was removed from a ventilator and placed in hospice. He was 38. His death certificate listed his manner of death as “natural.”

Michael Cochran’s emergency room records showed that when he was admitted to the hospital, his blood sugar had plummeted, even though he had no history of diabetes, Uribe said. No insulin test was done at the time, he said.

But Tim Bledsoe, a detective with the West Virginia State Police, came to suspect that Natalie Cochran may have played a role in her husband’s death, and during a search of her home, he discovered a partially used vial of insulin in her fridge.

Knowing that no one in the home was diabetic, he asked Natalie Cochran about the vial, Bledsoe told “Dateline.” She told the detective she kept it there for a neighbor’s diabetic son, Bledsoe said. But the neighbor, Jennifer Davis, denied this and told “Dateline” that Natalie Cochran said she’d asked for the insulin for herself, claiming that she was using it to recover from a cancer diagnosis that prosecutors later said she faked.

She asked for the insulin the morning Michael Cochran first became sick, Davis said.

Two years after Michael Cochran’s death, his wife was indicted on a murder charge. An autopsy had been performed seven months after his death, but by then his body was in an advanced state of decomposition and the medical examiner ruled his cause of death undetermined, Bledsoe said.

It isn’t clear why an autopsy was not done immediately after his death, nor is it clear if any steps were taken in the examination to try and document postmortem insulin. The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, which oversees the state medical examiner, did not respond to a request for comment.

Uribe said it’s unlikely any postmortem evidence of insulin could have been found given how much time passed between when Michael Cochran would have been given the drug and when he died.

The undetermined finding, combined with a lack of physical evidence, led the Raleigh County district attorney to drop the case, according to the county’s current top prosecutor, Tom Truman.

“If you don’t have the medical examiner saying homicide, you’ve got a big problem,” he told “Dateline.”

Another exhumation — and then a conviction

But two years later, the charge was refiled after Uribe was asked to examine the case. During a second exhumation and autopsy, Uribe said that he searched for possible injection sites but that Michael Cochran’s remains were skeletal by that point and the examination yielded nothing.

Still, Uribe said no other reason that could explain Michael Cochran’s plummeting blood sugar — such as sepsis or a rampant infection — had been documented in his medical records. Combined with other circumstances surrounding Michael Cochran’s death, Uribe ruled the death an insulin homicide.

At trial, an endocrinologist who testified for the prosecution agreed that no other explanation could account for Michael Cochran’s hypoglycemia.

Natalie Cochran’s lawyers acknowledged that she defrauded friends and relatives — she’d pleaded guilty in a separate federal fraud and money laundering case — but they said she had nothing to do with her husband’s death, which they attributed to a lethal mix of workout supplements, steroids and possibly his own use of insulin.

On Jan. 29, after two hours of deliberation, a jury convicted Natalie Cochran of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

To Uribe, this case and the killings at the veteran’s hospital underscore the need for better insulin overdose guidelines.

For physicians, he said, those protocols could include watching out for red flags like severely low, unexplained blood sugar in a nondiabetic person, or unexplained low potassium, known as hypokalemia, which can also be fatal and caused by excessive insulin.

And they need to ensure that they administer a c-peptide test before treatment, he said.

Pathologists should search for possible injection sites, he said, and they should try testing vitreous fluid, he said.

“If you’re able to detect that in the vitreous fluid of someone who’s not a diabetic, who’s never been prescribed this medication and has no history of them being injected, that could legitimately tell you something,” he said.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and his allies have raked in nearly $900,000 in trading fees over the past two days from the president’s $TRUMP cryptocurrency token, according to Chainalysis, a blockchain data company. 

The surge came after a Wednesday announcement in which the top 220 holders of the token were promised dinner with the president.

“Have Dinner in Washington, D.C. With President Trump,” reads a message on the front page of the Trump coin’s website. The event, which is black tie optional and hosted at the president’s private club in the Washington area, is scheduled for May 22, with a reception for the top 25 holders. A “VIP White House Tour” will take place the following day, the site says. The website also hosts an active leaderboard displaying the usernames of top buyers.

The $TRUMP memecoin jumped more than 50% on the dinner news, boosting its total market value to $2.7 billion. It was met with fierce criticism from some of Trump’s political opponents who said the move was further evidence that the president was using crypto to enrich himself. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a prominent Trump critic, wrote on X that the sale was “the most brazenly corrupt thing a President has ever done. Not close.”

Roughly 80% of the $TRUMP token supply is controlled by the Trump Organization and affiliates, according to the project’s website. Since its launch in January, trading activity has generated about $324.5 million in trading fees for insiders, Chainalysis found. These fees are generated through the token’s built-in mechanism that routes a percentage of each trade to wallets controlled by the project — wallets that, according to the website, are linked to the coin’s creators.

Memecoins, often referred to as meme tokens, are a subset of digital assets that use blockchain technology and derive their value largely from internet culture, memes and social media hype rather than from an underlying utility or asset. The originators of memecoins can make fees when their coins are bought and sold.

They have grown in popularity in recent years as speculative assets, with some coins including dogecoin and fartcoin amassing total market values in excess of $1 billion.

Most of the $TRUMP supply remains locked under a three-year vesting plan, with coins gradually becoming available over time. Lockups like these are meant to protect investors by preventing insiders from cashing out all at once — a scheme commonly known in the crypto world as a “rug pull.” Vesting schedules aim to give retail buyers confidence that early holders won’t overwhelm the market and tank the token’s value.

Still, the dinner contest is being viewed by critics as an unusually explicit attempt to monetize presidential access. 

As CNBC reported Friday, Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts are urging the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to investigate whether the promotion constitutes “pay to play” corruption.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The company behind the memecoin also did not respond to a request for comment.

Delaney Marsco, the director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit focused on campaign finance and government accountability, told NBC News the coin and dinner contest amounted to an unprecedented ethics breach — though it is unlikely to be illegal.

“Criminal conflicts of interest statutes don’t apply to the President,” she said. “That has allowed him to go against decades of of norms that every modern president since Carter has adhered to, which is to divest your financial interests, rid yourself of your businesses, and kind of go in to the presidency with a clean financial slate so that no one could accuse you of manipulating policy decisions or using your position in order to enrich yourself.” 

“The fact that he is not barred by the law from having these financial interests like this meme coin allows him to engage in a lot of seemingly corrupt activity. It has the appearance of a pay to play, so the President is apparently selling access to himself,” Marsco added.

Molly White, an independent crypto researcher, told NBC News that the leaderboard only shows top $TRUMP holders — and then only by their chosen screen name, making it difficult to identify who is paying to potentially join the dinner.

Schiff and Warren have cited public reports showing that some $TRUMP investors have ties to foreign exchanges or received funds from crypto platforms banned in the U.S., including Binance.

White also noted that at least one top $TRUMP owner has an account on Binance, a cryptocurrency company that doesn’t allow American users.

Trump was elected with significant help from the cryptocurrency industry, which poured tens of millions of dollars into the 2024 election, outpacing corporate donations from traditional sectors like banking and oil. After opposing digital assets during his first term, Trump pivoted in 2024 to campaign as a champion of cryptocurrency, casting Democrats as hostile to innovation and as advocating for tighter regulation. 

The $TRUMP token itself offers no product or service, according to the project’s website. It is part of a broader push by the Trump family into digital assets, despite the market’s volatility and regulatory risks.

In addition to the $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins, the family is backing World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance venture that has raised $550 million across two token sales since last October. Buyers are barred from reselling their tokens and receive no share of profits — but a Trump-affiliated entity is entitled to 75% of net revenue, including token sale proceeds.

Together, these projects have created new streams of revenue for Trump and his inner circle at a time when regulatory oversight of cryptocurrency has weakened sharply under his administration.

The S&P 500 rose on Friday, adding to its strong gains for the week, as investors continue to navigate an evolving global trade landscape, while major tech names got a boost.

The broad market benchmark ended 0.74% higher at 5,525.21, while the Nasdaq Composite added 1.26% to end at 17,282.94. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lagged, but managed to close 0.05%, or 20 points higher, at 40,113.50.

Alphabet rose 1.5% after the Google-parent and “Magnificent Seven” name reported a beat on the top and the bottom line for the first quarter. Tesla, meanwhile, popped 9.8%, while fellow megacap names Nvidia and Meta Platforms advanced 4.3% and 2.7%, respectively.

The major averages rose on the week, notching their second positive week out of three. The S&P 500 gained 4.6%, while the Nasdaq climbed 6.7%. The Dow has underperformed but still cinched a one-week advance of 2.5%. With these latest gains, Nasdaq is now slightly positive for the month, but the S&P 500 is down 1.5% month to date. The Dow has fallen 4.5% so far in April.

Stocks have been taken for a wild ride in recent weeks, as traders try to make sense of the severity of President Donald Trump’s tariffs first unveiled on April 2. Mixed messaging around trade has added to the volatility.

China said Thursday that there were no talks with the U.S. on a potential trade deal. This came after the U.S. appeared to soften its stance on trade relations with China.

On Friday, Time magazine published comments from Trump that said he would consider it a “total victory” if the U.S. has high tariffs of 20% to 50% on foreign countries a year from now. But his Tuesday comments published Friday also said the president expects announcements on many deals to be coming “over the next three to four weeks.”

Adding to the confusion, Trump told reporters from Air Force One that he wouldn’t drop tariffs on China unless “they give us something.”

Still, going forward Jay Hatfield, founder and CIO of InfraCap, is optimistic that the worst of the tariff-induced uncertainty is over.

“The confusion about whether there’s really talks going on with China or not took some steam out of the market,” he told CNBC in an interview. “Our view is that we’ve reached peak tariff tantrum and so it’s likely to be more positive than negative.”

Hatfield believes that the key driver for markets next week will be earnings from big hyperscaler firms such as Microsoft and Amazon.

Pete Hegseth wants Donald Trump to see him as a fighter amid the negative stories swirling around the defense secretary, two U.S. officials told NBC News, and has been focusing more on public and television appearances — including on his old network, Fox News — in which he can speak directly to the president.

Trump had told Hegseth during a recent phone call that he did not approve of his texting information about airstrikes in Yemen to a Signal group that included Hegseth’s wife, his brother and his personal attorney, describing what the defense secretary had done as childish, one U.S. official and another person familiar with the conversation said. The call ended with Trump telling Hegseth to keep fighting, however.

As he battles to keep his job amid a flood of reports about his behavior and infighting in his Pentagon, Hegseth’s behavior has become “erratic,” and he seems increasingly “insecure” about his job and standing in the administration, leading him to frequently reinforce to staff that he can’t allow himself to be fired, according to two officials familiar with the situation.

Officials who operate in Hegseth’s vicinity describe him as difficult and prickly, and said that he berates and yells at the staff. The officials described a tense environment with fighting, even yelling, among Hegseth’s senior staff. 

Last month, Hegseth was furious about leaks of his having approved a military briefing for Elon Musk on China, according to multiple defense officials. When officials found out The New York Times was preparing to report the meeting, Hegseth screamed at Adm. Chris Grady, the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying he would “f—ing polygraph” him to find out if he leaked the information about the meeting, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the meeting. Hegseth staffers also threatened to polygraph Adm. Sam Paparo, the commander of U.S. IndoPacific Command, and Lt. Gen D.A. Sims, the director of the Joint Staff, the officials said, and told the Joint Chiefs who had access to information about the Musk briefing and the agenda that they would be subject to polygraphs, the officials said. 

The Wall Street Journal was first to report that Hegseth yelled at Grady and threatened him with a polygraph.  

As he deals with questions about his job performance, his handling of sensitive information and how long he’ll be able to hold on, Hegseth has had a significantly diminished staff around him.

Last week, three officials — Dan Caldwell, a senior adviser to Hegseth; Darin Selnick, Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff; and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg — were all told they were implicated in a leak investigation, placed on administrative leave and escorted from the Pentagon. They were not given specifics about the allegations against them but all were terminated last Friday.  

They released a joint statement the next day in which they said, “We are incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended. Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.” They went on to call the experience “unconscionable,” but said they continue to support the Trump-Vance administration, without referencing any support for Hegseth. 

Days after being fired, Selnick and Caldwell were both exonerated. It’s not clear if Carroll was, as well. 

In another sudden staff shake-up, Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, also left his role last week. On Monday, a senior defense official provided this statement to NBC News: “Joe Kasper will continue to serve President Trump as a Special Government Employee (SGE) handling special projects at the Department of Defense. Secretary Hegseth is thankful for his continued leadership and work to advance the America First agenda.”

During a Fox News interview Tuesday, Hegseth was asked whether Kasper has a new role. “He’s staying with us, going to be in a slightly different role, but he’s not going anywhere, certainly not fired. You make changes over time, and we’re grateful for everything Joe’s done.”

On Friday, the Pentagon announced that Hegseth had tapped four officials who’d already been working in the building to support him in what’s known as the front office. That includes Justin Fulcher, Patrick Weaver and Ricky Buria as senior advisers. Sean Parnell, who has been serving as the assistant to the defense secretary for public affairs and chief Pentagon spokesman, is now also a senior adviser. No individual had been identified as Hegseth’s chief of staff. 

“Regular workforce adjustments are a feature of any highly efficient organization,” the Pentagon’s acting press secretary, Kingsley Wilson, said in a statement. “Secretary Hegseth will continue to be proactive with personnel decisions and will work hard to ensure the Department of Defense has the right people in the right positions to execute President Trump’s agenda.” 

In the meantime, revelations about Hegseth’s use of Signal and potential security risks he’s creating with it have not stopped coming. The latest is that Hegseth had a special internet line installed in his Pentagon office in defiance of the Defense Department’s normal security protocols so that he could use the Signal app on a personal computer there, according to two officials familiar with the matter.  

The so-called “dirty” line, referred to that way because it’s not secured, increases the likelihood of the office being hacked or surveilled by a foreign adversary or another entity because it doesn’t have the same security filters as other, highly secure lines in and out of the office. Hegseth’s office is considered a SCIF, or sensitive, compartmentalized information facility, which is specially designed to protect communications.  The existence of the line was first reported by The Associated Press on Thursday. 

Many student loan borrowers recently got some unwelcome news: The U.S. Department of Education will restart the process of involuntary collections, including wage garnishments, as early as May 5.

“American taxpayers will no longer be forced to serve as collateral for irresponsible student loan policies,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a statement.

For five years, collection activity on federal student loans has mostly been paused. The Biden administration took a less aggressive approach than the Trump administration, focusing on extending relief measures to struggling borrowers in the wake of the Covid pandemic and helping them to get current.

“People who default on loans typically truly cannot afford to pay them,” said James Kvaal, who served as U.S. undersecretary of education for former President Joe Biden.

Outstanding federal education debt exceeds $1.6 trillion, with more than 42 million Americans holding the loans. There could be roughly 10 million borrowers in default within a few months, according to the Trump administration.

Here are answers to questions borrowers may have about the upcoming collection activity.

What payments can be garnished?

The U.S. government has extraordinary collection powers on federal debts and it can seize borrowers’ federal tax refunds, wages, and Social Security retirement and disability benefits, according to higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.

The federal government can intercept other funds such as state income tax refunds and lottery winnings, Kantrowitz said.

In some cases, federal student loan borrowers can also be sued by the U.S. Department of Justice, and face a levy on the funds in their bank accounts, he said.

How much money can be taken?

Social Security recipients can typically see up to 15% of their monthly benefit reduced to pay back their defaulted student debt, but beneficiaries need to be left with at least $750 a month, experts said.

Carolina Rodriguez, director of the Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program in New York, said she was especially concerned about the consequences of resumed collections on retirees.

“Losing a portion of their Social Security benefits to repay student loans could mean not having enough for food, transportation to medical appointments, or other basic necessities,” Rodriguez said.

Meanwhile, your entire federal tax refund can be seized, including any refundable credits, Kantrowitz said. Fortunately, if you’ve already received your 2024 federal income tax refund, “the government cannot claw it back,” Kantrowitz said.

As for your wages, the federal government can garnish up to 15% of your disposable pay without a court order, Kantrowitz said. Wages of federal workers may be easier to seize, he added.

How can I avoid collection activity?

Take steps to get out of default and to try to avoid the start of any garnishments, experts said.

Borrowers in default will receive an email over the next two weeks making them aware of the new policy, the Education Department said. You can contact the government’s Default Resolution Group and pursue a number of different avenues to get current on your loans, including enrolling in an income-driven repayment plan or signing up for loan rehabilitation. 

Some borrowers may also be eligible for deferments or a forbearance, which are different ways to pause your payments, Rodriguez said.

“We’re advising clients to request a retroactive forbearance to cover missed payments, and a temporary forbearance until they can get enrolled in an income-driven repayment plan,” she said.

If you do end up facing the garnishment of your Social Security benefits or wages, the government is required to provide you with notice before it starts its collection activity, Kantrowitz said. For your wages, a 30-day warning is required, while 65 days’ notice must be given before the seizure of Social Security benefits, he said.

You may have the option to have a hearing before an administrative law judge within 30 days of receiving a wage garnishment order, Kantrowitz said. Your wages may be protected if your employment has been spotty, or if you’ve filed for bankruptcy, he said.

“Borrowers can also challenge the wage garnishment if it will result in financial hardship,” Kantrowitz said.

You can dispute the offsets to your Social Security benefits, too, he said, by contacting the Education Department. The notice you receive should provide information on whom to contact.

The importance of a dependable, young and inexpensive — because of cost-controlled rookie contracts — quarterback is so perpetual in the NFL that teams tend to “overdraft” the position, selecting them far higher than a player might rank on a team’s list of prospects, said NBC Sports analyst Chris Simms, a former NFL quarterback.

It explains why since 2018, an average of 3.8 quarterbacks have been selected annually in the NFL draft’s first round, including six in 2024. Yet that wasn’t the case in the first round of the 2025 draft Thursday in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Quarterbacks mostly remained on the sideline, waiting their turn.

After Miami’s Cam Ward went No. 1, as expected, to Tennessee — the seventh time a quarterback went first overall in the past eight drafts — another quarterback wasn’t selected until Mississippi’s Jaxson Dart at No. 25, by the New York Giants, who traded up for the pick. 

It was only the second time since 2016 that two or fewer quarterbacks were taken in the opening round and reinforced what had been said about this draft class for months — that the quarterbacks available were talented but not without flaws that could give teams pause. 

Though NFL teams remain desperate for quality quarterbacks, they have resisted making a run on the position so far.

“It’s so important in the league that at times, teams can overdraft the position,” Simms told NBC News last week. “It’s like, wait, this guy’s really, like, the 45th player in the draft, but because of the importance of the position and all that, all of a sudden we’re talking about him at pick number 10 or 11, right? And therefore that can happen a little bit. And so now you’ve got a guy where you’re going, ‘Wait, he’s a top-10 pick or a No. 12 pick in the draft, he should be awesome.’ And it’s like, no, he’s just good.”

The quarterback with the widest draft variance was Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders, who was not selected Thursday after entering the night as a consensus No. 9 pick to New Orleans, per a database that tracks and combines dozens of mock drafts. Oddsmakers installed Sanders as a favorite to land with the Saints, as well. Yet New Orleans passed despite an uncertain future at the position with Derek Carr nursing a shoulder injury.

And Pittsburgh, the next logical landing spot for Sanders as the Steelers await word from future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers about his decision to play in 2025, also passed at No. 21. 

Also still available during the second and third rounds, which take place Friday beginning at 7 p.m., is Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe. 

Pope Francis has been called the “people’s” pope, a “maverick” pope and the “outsider” pope.

He could also be called the fútbol pope.

The soccer world has been paying tribute to the late pontiff from Argentina, who used his love of fútbol — the term for soccer in Spanish — as a way to connect with people around the world, especially with young people. Francis was also known to use football in analogies to convey messages of teamwork, inclusion, hard work and unity. He promoted the “Match for Peace,” where the sport’s top players take part in a friendly match to promote peace and unity.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino said this week on Instagram that on the occasions where he spent time with the pope, “he always shared his enthusiasm for football and highlighted the important role our sport plays in society, particularly in the education and protection of children around the world.”

His hometown team devotion — and its ultimate tribute

Francis has said he’s loved the game since he was a child, even though he’s admitted he was “not among the best” and quipped that he had “two left feet.”

The pontiff was a card-carrying member of his hometown soccer club, San Lorenzo de Almagro, which was founded by a priest and is named after a saint. As fan No. 88235, the first Latin American pope kept paying dues to the club even after he was at the Vatican.

Francis was such a fan that in 2014, when San Lorenzo won the coveted Copa Libertadores title, the team’s leadership went to the Vatican to share in the celebration and gave the pope a replica of their trophy. Later, they announced they wanted a future new stadium to be named after the pontiff.

This week, San Lorenzo President Marcelo Moretti confirmed on a radio show that plans for a new stadium with the pope’s name are coming along, and he revealed that Francis got emotional when the team formally asked him years ago whether it could name its future new home after him.

“He said yes with emotion,” Moretti told Blu Radio. “The truth is he was very happy about it. In fact, we took him a piece of the old San Lorenzo stadium and where the new one will be built … he got very emotional. It was very exciting for us and for him, too; he told me in subsequent letters.”

At a Mass held this week in his hometown, many were wearing the navy-and-red San Lorenzo jerseys.

During his papacy, Francis welcomed some of the best soccer players in the world: goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon from Italy, striker Zlatan Ibrahimović from Sweden and midfielder Ronaldinho from Brazil, among many others.

Ronaldhino posted on Instagram a photo of him and the pontiff, with the caption in his native Brazilian saying, “Rest in peace, Pope Francis.”

Lionel Messi, arguably the most famous soccer player today, shared a photo of his meeting with the pope in an Instagram story on Monday. The caption read: “a different, approachable, Argentine pope, thank you for making the world a better place, we will miss you.” 

In his 2024 autobiography, Francis dedicated an entire chapter to Diego Maradona, the Argentine football legend known for his “Hand of God” goal in the 1986 World Cup. The two met in 2014. Maradona, who died in 2020, had said that Francis had restored his Catholic faith.

Francis’ love of the game even inspired a fictional, but well-liked scene in Netflix’s hit film “The Two Popes.” In the movie, Pope Benedict and then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio watch the 2014 World Cup final between their two countries, Germany and Argentina.