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May 27 (Reuters) - Russia has passed a law allowing its central bank and other financial institutions to operate their ‌own defence systems and arm staff to repel drone attacks, ‌a document published by the lower house of parliament showed.

Ukraine struck the central bank's ​office in Sevastopol in Crimea with a missile on Wednesday, local governor Mikhail Razvozhaev said, alleging that it was a British-made Storm Shadow missile. He added that the building was on fire.

Ukraine has been regularly ‌striking Russia with drones ⁠since Moscow launched the war in February 2022, with energy infrastructure frequently targeted as Kyiv aims to ⁠deprive Moscow of revenues in order to bring the conflict to an end.

Drone defence systems could be located next to the central bank, the ​country's biggest ​bank Sberbank, and the Russian ​Cash Collection Association. Staff at ‌those institutions would be permitted to be armed.

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The institutions would handle the cost of drone defence themselves, Anatoly Aksakov, the head of the financial committee in Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, was quoted as saying by the RBC news outlet.

The attack on ‌the central bank's office in Sevastopol ​was the first on a major central ​bank office since the start ​of the war. There were no reported attacks ‌on major Sberbank offices.

On Tuesday, Alexander ​Shokhin, head of ​Russia's most powerful business lobby, told President Vladimir Putin companies are ready to finance the purchase of heavier weapons and ​electronic systems to defend ‌their infrastructure from drone attacks.

(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Jekaterīna ​Golubkova in Tokyo and Gleb Bryanski in Moscow; Editing ​by Lincoln Feast and Gus Trompiz)

Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith discussed differences in American and British baking styles, including ingredient preferences and taste palates during a recent interview

NEED TO KNOW

• Leith noted Americans tend to bake larger, sweeter cakes compared to British bakers' more modest creations

• Season 4 of The Great American Baking Show premiered on The Roku Channel on May 11

Paul HollywoodandPrue Leithare revealing whether they prefer American or British baking styles.

Leith, 86, and Hollywood, 60, star onThe Great American Baking Show, having also been judges onThe Great British Baking Show, referred to asThe Great British Bake Offin the U.K. They were quizzed about their preferences in an interview withThe Hollywood Reporter (THR)published on May 22.

“[Americans] are not better, they're different,” said Hollywood in aclip from the interviewshared on Instagram.

“They use a lot of whisked sponge, they use a lot of banana, they use a lot of pecans,” he continued. “They use things that we use in the U.K., but not to the extremity [that] the Americans do. That's the big difference. Their taste palette is a bit different from ours, but their baking is very similar.”

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Leith agreed, adding that aside from the quantity of each ingredient, the overall size of cakes also differs between bakers in each country.

“I think that Americans, by and large, like things to be sweeter than the Brits, and bigger. Big and sweet,” she toldTHR.

As the interview took place during filming in the summer of 2025, Leith also shared an observation that she made that day.

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“It's been interesting today because we asked them to do a cake, which could have been a little cake, and they [all made] enormous cakes — you know, four-tier jobs,” she toldTHR.

The latest season ofThe Great American Baking Showpremiered on The Roku Channel on May 11.

Around the same time, Leith — who stepped down as a judge onThe Great British Baking Showearlier this year — spoke toPEOPLEabout blunders she's had in the kitchen.

She revealed that, despite being known as a chef and restaurateur, not everything went to plan when she had the opportunity to serve tea toQueen Elizabethat the opening of the Queen Elizabeth Centre (QEII Centre) in Westminster, London, in 1986.

"I actually think there's something about the royal family, they jinx things," Leith told PEOPLE. "Because I think what happens is people get quite overexcited at the thought of them and then everything seems to go wrong. You talk to any caterer and they'll tell you drama stories about the royals."

Leith recalls another instance of messing up when cooking for royalty in her memoirBeing Old and Learning to Love It!

She fumbled theQueen's order for strong black tea, instead presenting the monarch with a "weak lemony tea served by a half-wit.”

Reflecting on the incident, Leith said, "Personally, the thing that upset me most was not giving the Queen a decent cup of tea, because I much admired the Queen and I thought, 'Poor...woman. She's been walking around this extremely boring building for two hours… By the time she got to me, she must have been absolutely panting for a cup of tea, and I failed completely.' "

Read the original article onPeople

MADRID, May 26 (Reuters) - Jonathan ‌Andic, son ‌of the Mango ​fashion group's founder Isak Andic, said ‌on ⁠Thursday he was stepping ⁠down temporarily as ​vice ​chair, ​days after ‌being named a suspect in an investigation into ‌his ​father's ​death ​in 2024, ‌according to Efe.

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(Reporting ​by ​Corina Pons. Writing ​by ‌Emma Pinedo; editing ​by Charlie ​Devereux)

VATICAN CITY, May 25 (Reuters) - Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah said on Monday ‌that the development ofartificial ‌intelligencecannot be left solely to technology companies, urging ​greater oversight from religious leaders, governments and civil society.

Speaking in the Vatican at the presentation of Pope Leo's first ‌encyclical on artificial ⁠intelligence, Olah said there was "a real possibility" that AI will ⁠displace human labor "at very large scale".

"If that happens, supporting those displaced will be ​a moral ​imperative of historic ​proportions," he said, ‌sitting alongside the pope.

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He added that companies like his operated under strong commercial, geopolitical and personal pressures that can be at odds with the broader interests ‌of society.

"Every frontier AI ​lab ... operates inside a ​set of ​incentives and constraints that can ‌sometimes conflict with doing ​the right ​thing," he said, adding that even well-intentioned researchers remain influenced by those ​forces.

Olah said ‌this made outside scrutiny essential.

(Reporting by ​Giselda Vagnoni and Joshua McElwee; Editing ​by Crispian Balmer)

By Steve Holland, Andy Sullivan, Richard Cowan and Nandita Bose

The site of ongoing construction of the planned White House ballroom in Washington

WASHINGTON, May 24 (Reuters) - Standing in front of the White House ballroom construction site, U.S. President Donald Trump appealed for patience from Americans struggling with soaring gas prices as he sought to justify the cost of a project critics call a vanity effort.

"This is peanuts," he said on Tuesday in an apparent reference to the economic damage inflicted on the U.S. by ‌the Iran war. "I appreciate everybody putting up with it for a little while. It won't be much longer."

The moment crystallized concerns among some in his Republican Party, who worry that the billionaire president's focus on the ballroom ‌appears insensitive as Americans struggle to fill their gas tanks ahead of November's midterm elections.

A Reuters review of Trump's public comments shows he has mentioned the ballroom - either via speeches, social media posts, or in comments to reporters - at least 40 times this year, including nine times this month alone. By comparison, he ​mentioned it 35 times in all of 2025.

He is prone to launching into sales pitches for the ballroom at any moment, whether talking to reporters on Air Force One, speaking to guests in the Oval Office or posting on his Truth Social platform.

A White House official rejected Democrats' contention that the ballroom is a vanity project.

"This is about legacy, not vanity," the official said. "The president is deeply passionate about this and wants to get it done."

It is hard to quantify how many times Trump has talked about the economy, but as gas prices have spiraled, he has repeatedly played down the economic impact of the war, counseling patience and offering little acknowledgement of Americans' financial strain.

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation," he said earlier this month in a viral off-the-cuff comment about the war's economic ‌impact that was seized on by Democrats. “The only thing that matters when I'm talking about ⁠Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon."

SOME REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS SAY BALLROOM IS A DISTRACTION

The Reuters review shows that the ballroom, reconstruction of the Washington Reflecting Pool and plans for a 250-foot Independence Arch in the capital are top of mind for a president whose second term has been dominated by legacy-building projects.

Even amid crises and diplomatic summits, Trump has kept the ballroom at the forefront. Within ⁠hours of an apparent assassination attempt at a Washington hotel, he used the incident to argue for building one. After his high-stakes meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump posted on Truth Social that the trip reinforced his case.

“China has a Ballroom, and so should the U.S.A.!” Trump wrote alongside a photo of him and Xi outside Beijing's cavernous Great Hall of the People.

In Republican-led focus groups, however, voters are expressing concerns over the ballroom and the arch, a senior Republican campaign operative told Reuters, requesting anonymity to discuss the matter.

"For voters, the message that is ​coming ​from the White House is Trump is focused on vanity projects and foreign policy, and those are things that voters don't care about," the ​operative said.

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Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming said in an interview that the attention being given ‌to the White House ballroom is "absolutely" sucking up more time than it should.

"It would sure be nice if the public understood that the ballroom itself was private money," Lummis said.

Trump says he has raised $400 million from wealthy donors and his own money for the ballroom. The Secret Service, however, has requested $1 billion in taxpayer money to fund security enhancements for the ballroom and the White House complex, a plan that lawmakers, including Republicans, have balked at.

Anxious Republican lawmakers and senior White House aides have for months urged Trump to focus more on the economy as voters look ahead to November, when Republicans are expected to face a difficult fight to retain control of Congress.

"Trump continues to talk about things that no one cares about," said a Republican strategist involved in efforts to help Republicans retain control of Congress. The strategist spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the matter freely.

Trump's answer to questions about economic concerns is to repeatedly declare victory over inflation, despite official data showing otherwise. He has deflected ‌questions about economic uncertainty by boasting about a rise in the stock market and billions of dollars in foreign investment.

A January prediction from the ​White House that Trump would make weekly trips to promote Republican candidates and address economic concerns has not panned out.

After a flurry of weekly travel ​early in the year aimed at promoting his economic record, Trump has largely stayed at the White House or ​at his Florida weekend retreat since he launched the Iran war on February 28. He has made only a handful of domestic trips since then.

CHINA TRIP, ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

As Trump faces a series of political ‌and policy challenges — including war with Iran, rising fuel costs, and dwindling popularity — he has increasingly ​turned to visiting construction sites tied to his initiatives, using them ​to underscore progress and reassert control over his agenda.

On Tuesday, he took reporters on a tour of the ballroom construction site and proudly described some of its planned security features. A week earlier, he rode in his armored limousine to inspect renovations at Washington's Reflecting Pool - which he has spoken about seven times this month alone.

Democrats who are trying to break Republicans' dominance in Congress in November say Trump's focus on legacy projects offers hope.

"I can't imagine that ​at a time when people are trying to figure out how to pay for their ‌groceries that are exorbitantly high thanks to Trump's tariffs that they're (Republicans) focused on a ballroom," Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia told Reuters.

"Tone deaf is an understatement."

With polls showing a solid majority of Americans opposed to ​the ballroom, the message appears to have gotten through to Republicans. The $1 billion proposal was dropped last week - at least for now - from a spending bill in the Senate in a major setback for Trump.

(Reporting By ​Steve Holland, Andy Sullivan, Richard Cowan and Nandita Bose; Additional reporting by Bo Erickson; Editing by Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON, May 23 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has been stepping up pressure on Communist-controlled Cuba, after using the military in January to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Here is why Cuba may not be Venezuela 2.0, even though Caracas had been a key supporter of the island's government.

WHO WOULD TAKE OVER?

In Venezuela, then-Vice President ‌Delcy Rodriguez took over as U.S. forces seized Maduro in a lightning raid on Jan. 3 and has served as acting president since.

Rodriguez was Maduro's deputy, but there is no similar ‌deputy to Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, or former President Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old former president the U.S. indicted this week in a bid to increase pressure on Havana.

"The security apparatus in Cuba has dismantled, systematically dismantled, every alternative or potentially alternative power ​source," said Orlando Pérez, an expert on U.S.-Latin America relations at the University of North Texas in Dallas.

Venezuela also has a popular opposition leader, Nobel laureate María Corina Machado, who won elections in 2024 but was not allowed to take power and hopes to return to her home country this year for free elections. Cuba has no similar figure.

Raúl Rodriguez Castro, grandson of the former president, met this month with CIA Director John Ratcliffe during a rare visit by a U.S. spy chief to Havana, fueling talk he might agree to work with Washington.

But the younger Castro has no formal position in the Cuban government and is not expected to betray ‌his family. He attended a rally in Havana on Friday to protest ⁠his grandfather's indictment.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS AND RISKS?

Cuba has been a U.S. antagonist for decades, since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. Trump is strongly supported by hardline Cuban-Americans in Florida, who have pushed for U.S.-instigated regime change for decades. The Republican U.S. president has made clear he wants to see change in their homeland.

In the ⁠past, Cuba was seen as a threatening Soviet satellite, an uncomfortably close 90 miles from Florida, and more recently as a potential site for Chinese influence in the Western Hemisphere. But Russia's attentions have shifted elsewhere since the fall of the Soviet bloc, and Cuba's economic problems have diminished its ability to confront the U.S.

Experts say instability in Cuba also threatens a migration crisis. Its people have been living largely without power due to the U.S. blockade ​and ​could opt to flee the island in case of war or chaos.

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Cuba's military is more ideologically entrenched and cohesive ​than Venezuela's and more likely to put up a fight. Dozens of Cuban agents were ‌killed in Venezuela in January when they were providing security for Maduro, but survivors would have learned from that raid how U.S. forces operate.

Cuba is also seen as more advanced in surveillance and intelligence, especially after years of cooperation with Russia and China.

WHAT WOULD CUBA BRING TO THE U.S.?

Venezuela has natural resources, and U.S. companies have been lining up to produce oil in the South American country, which has seen exports jump.

Cuba does not have any similar resource. Its state-run tourism industry was behind other Caribbean destinations in price and quality even before this year's steep downturn, which has been exacerbated by shortages tied to Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign, a U.S. blockade and threats of tariffs for countries that provide it with fuel.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, an outspoken Cuba hawk who is also national security adviser, is seen as the ‌force behind the Trump administration's Cuban policy.

Rubio, a Florida native and the son of Cuban immigrants, has run for ​president before and is expected to seek the office again. A major change in Cuba could burnish his political ambitions, but ​a failure poses major risks at a time when the U.S. faces huge budget deficits ​and is already waging a campaign in Iran that has been estimated to cost billions of dollars per day.

WHAT ARE THE LEGAL ISSUES?

Washington's ability to change relations with ‌Cuba is limited by the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which ties the lifting of ​a decades-long U.S. embargo to specific political change such ​as the creation of a democratically elected government.

Trump changed U.S. business relations with Venezuela by removing Maduro, leaving its government in place without even announcing plans for free elections.

In Cuba, he could not legally do so without a dramatic shift by Cuban officials, who have refused so far to cooperate.

Cuba's situation is more complicated because the country's economy lacks a private sector. It ​is dominated by Gaesa, a military conglomerate subject to U.S. sanctions that ‌controls most of the island's top hotels, largest port, top commercial bank and a vast array of supermarkets, gas stations and remittance businesses.

Washington also justified the Venezuela raid by saying ​Maduro's government was involved in "narcoterrorism." Cuban officials have not faced such charges, and in fact its government says it has been cooperating with the U.S. against drug trafficking.

(Reporting by ​Patricia Zengerle; additional reporting by Sarah Kinosian and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Sergio Non and Sanjeev Miglani)

Missionary leader shares update on American doctor who contracted Ebola in Congo 03:24

An American doctor who wasinfected with Ebolawhile working with a medical missionary organization in Africasaid in a statementthat he is feeling "cautiously optimistic" as he fights the deadly virus.

Dr. Peter Stafford was working with the missionary group Serge in the Democratic Republic of Congo when he was infected with the virus, the group said. He was evacuated to a hospital in Berlin, Germany, to receive care, the group said Tuesday.

"Before I was evacuated I was feeling really concerned I wasn't going to make it. And now I'm cautiously optimistic," Stafford said in a statement shared by Serge.

Stafford's wife, Dr. Rebekah Stafford, who also works with Serge, and their four children were also evacuated to Germany, Serge said. They are asymptomatic and are being isolated and monitored, the group said Thursday.

TheBundibugyo ebolavirusoutbreak in Congo, which has spread to neighboring Uganda, is likely larger than what has officially been reported, health officials have warned. There are so far nearly 600 suspected cases, including 139 suspected deaths, the World Health Organization said.

Stafford was exposed to the virus while doing a surgery at Nyankunde Hospital in Bunia, a city in eastern Congo, Serge said in an earlier statement. He has worked at the hospital since 2023, according to the group. Ebolaviruses are transmitted from person to person through bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen, andmedical personnelcan be at high risk if exposed to sick patients.

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This is only the third known outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain. There is no known vaccine or treatment for it, health officials have said. The first symptoms are typically fever, fatigue, muscle pain, headache and a sore throat. Symptoms then can progress to vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, rash, organ dysfunction and less frequently, internal or external bleeding. The fatality rate of the Bundibugyo strain is about 30 to 50%, according tothe WHO.

Dr. Scott Myhre, the Serge director for East and Central Africa, described Stafford as "critically ill but not acutely deteriorating." Myhre said Stafford reported feeling better Thursday than the day before, and said that the infected doctor had been able to eat small amounts of food as he experiences Ebola symptoms including vomiting, rash and diarrhea.

While there is no treatment for this type of ebolavirus, patients can receive supportive care including rehydration and specific symptom treatment. Stafford's medical labs are "trending slightly in the right direction," and he has received intravenous treatments "designed to improve Ebola outcomes," Myhre said.

Hospital staff briefly allowed Stafford to see his wife and children through a hospital window, Serge said.

Matt Allison, Serge's executive director,told CBS News on Tuesdaythat Stafford is "doing well, all things considered."

"He's sick. He's sad to be away from his family, but he's getting the best care available to him," Allison said.

A third Serge doctor, Dr. Patrick LaRochelle, was also potentially exposed while working in a DRC hospital. He is in quarantine at Bulovka Hospital in Prague, according to Serge. He remains asymptomatic so far, the organization said.

TheState Department announced Thursdaythat any U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents returning from the Congo, Uganda and South Sudan who had been in those countries within three weeks of entering the U.S. had to fly into Washington-Dulles International Airport in Virginia. The same restrictionsapply to any non-citizens, according to the Department of Homeland Security.