Top Stories — Saturday, April 25, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- Rubio’s Absence From Iran Talks Highlights Stay-at-Home Role — nyt News
- Steve Ballmer blasts founder he backed who pleaded guilty to fraud: ‘I was duped and feel silly’ — TechCrunch
- Kenyan Court Strikes Down Ruling Protecting Right to Abortion — nyt News
Rubio’s Absence From Iran Talks Highlights Stay-at-Home Role
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/25/2026, 5:31:49 AM
When President Barack Obama negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran more than a decade ago, his point man was Secretary of State John Kerry. Over 20 months of talks, Mr. Kerry met with his Iranian counterpart on at least 18 different days, often several times per day.
High-level nuclear diplomacy was a natural role for the top U.S. diplomat. Secretaries of state traditionally take the lead on the country’s biggest diplomatic tasks, from arms control treaties to Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
But as President Trump prepares to send a delegation to the latest round of U.S.-Iran talks in Pakistan this weekend, his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, will remain where he often does: at home.
Mr. Rubio did not attend the last U.S. meeting with Iran earlier this month. Nor did he join several meetings held over the past year in Geneva and Doha. Mr. Rubio has also been absent from U.S. delegations abroad working to settle the war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza. Despite a long period of crisis and war in the region, he has not visited the Middle East since a brief stop in Israel last October.
In recent months, Mr. Rubio — consumed with his second role, as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser — has not traveled much at all.
During the Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken made 11 foreign trips from January 2024 to late April 2024, stopping in roughly three dozen cities, according to the State Department. So far this year, Mr. Rubio has visited six foreign cities, including a stop in Milan for the 2026 Winter Olympics.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Read the full story at nyt News.
Steve Ballmer blasts founder he backed who pleaded guilty to fraud: ‘I was duped and feel silly’
Source: TechCrunch • Published: 4/25/2026, 5:02:11 AM
Steve Ballmer blasts founder he backed who pleaded guilty to fraud: ‘I was duped and feel silly’
Silicon Valley tends to tolerate a certain amount of founder exaggeration when pitching investors, often dismissing it as part of selling a vision. But some choices cross the line and can lead to jail time for founders and scandal for their investors.
A case in point is Joseph Sanberg, whose once high-flying fintech startup Aspiration Partners was backed by a roster of tech celebrities, including former Microsoft CEO and current Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. In August 2025, Sanberg pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and defrauding multiple investors and lenders, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a press release. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Ahead of sentencing, which is scheduled for Monday, victims were invited to describe their experience with Sanberg to the judge. Ballmer did so, and publicly. Ballmer’s lawyers said in the letter that he has lost money, been vilified, and that the NBA is investigating allegations stemming from the association.
Sanberg co-founded green fintech startup Aspiration Partners, which offered what it called sustainable banking services like credit cards and investment products that avoided fossil fuels. The startup promised to “automatically plant trees with every card purchase.” In 2021, it announced plans to go public via a SPAC merger at a value of $2.3 billion, though that transaction never took place.
The DOJ alleged that Aspiration booked and recognized revenue from entities held by Sanberg, who made the company appear as if it had a steady stream of customers and revenue that it didn’t actually have. The agency further alleged he defrauded investors by showing them a fabricated letter from Aspiration’s audit committee that said the company had $250 million in available cash and equivalents when it had less than $1 million. The DOJ alleged that Sanberg, along with a board member who also pleaded guilty, falsified financial records to obtain $145 million in loans.
When Ballmer shared his letter on X, asking the judge to consider the harm done to him in sentencing, he wrote, “I was duped and feel silly about that. Everyone who believed in Aspiration, including employees, customers and investors, was also duped. Everyone is still tallying the losses.”
Five years ago, I invested in Aspiration, a company focused on environmental sustainability, a cause deeply important to me and my family. I also bought carbon credits and trees through the company to reduce the carbon footprint of the Clippers, Intuit Dome, the Kia Forum and all…
The letter says that Ballmer invested a total of $60 million in the company, and lost all of it. Ballmer was not only an investor, but had contracted with Aspiration to provide carbon-offsetting programs for the Clippers and its stadium. Aspiration also became a major Clippers sponsor.
Ballmer’s letter also said that as a result of the association with this company, the podcast and other public attention of it, he’s been named in lawsuits. Meanwhile, the NBA said in its own letter regarding Sanberg’s sentencing that it’s investigating the salary cap allegations and Sanberg has been providing evidence, ESPN reported.
While the basketball world is embroiled in all of these downstream developments, the message founders can take from it is clear: If one fabricates financial documents to raise capital, the outcome will very likely be prison.
The Ballmer Group did not respond to our request for comment.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Read the full story at TechCrunch.
Kenyan Court Strikes Down Ruling Protecting Right to Abortion
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/25/2026, 4:42:17 AM
A court of appeal in Kenya on Friday struck down a ruling that had affirmed the right to an abortion, dealing a blow to reproductive rights in a country where thousands of women die each year from unsafe abortions.
The decision, which is likely to be appealed to Kenya’s supreme court, holds that abortions deprive unborn children of the “right to life,” which it said begins at conception. “Abortion is not a fundamental right guaranteed under the Constitution,” the judges wrote in their ruling.
The decision overturned a 2022 ruling, which focused on a teenager who had received emergency medical care after an abortion in 2019. The court ruled then that the arrests of the teenager and her doctor were unconstitutional.
Those criminal proceedings were reinstated by the appeal court’s Friday decision, which said that lower courts had to investigate whether the treatment carried out was indeed a medical emergency.
The Center for Reproductive Rights, a New York-based rights group, called the ruling “deeply disappointing” and a “setback” for reproductive rights in the country, and said it would challenge it in the supreme court.
As part of the overturned 2022 decision, judges instructed Kenya’s Parliament to pass a law protecting access to abortion and clarifying how the country’s 2010 Constitution allows the treatment. The Constitution holds that abortion is prohibited in Kenya, unless a doctor deems it medically necessary or if another statute expands access (for example, allowing abortion in cases like rape).
Judges cited that article of the Constitution in their ruling on Friday in arguing for a narrower interpretation. They wrote that abortion is not an “absolute right,” and that the Constitution is designed to prohibit it except for “limited circumstances when it may be permissible.”
In practice, Kenya’s penal code had not been updated to reflect the 2022 ruling, which sought to make abortions easier to get. A 1963 law continues to criminalize abortion in Kenya, a measure that rights groups say is often used to intimidate women from seeking reproductive care and medical professionals from providing abortions.
“This case forms part of a broader pattern in which individuals seeking or providing reproductive health care face criminal sanction, despite constitutional guarantees of dignity, health, and freedom from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” the Center for Reproductive Rights said in a statement.
Every year, at least 2,600 women die from unsafe abortions in Kenya, and 21,000 more are hospitalized because of abortion complications, according to the group. A 2023 study by the African Population and Health Research Center found that over 300,000 women in Kenya had to seek care for post-abortion complications.
Pranav Baskar is an international reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
Read the full story at nyt News.
For complete details, visit the original sources linked above.
Comments
Post a Comment