World

The death toll in a roof collapse at a nightclub in the Dominican Republic has nearly doubled since initial reports.

Dust started falling from the ceiling early Tuesday legendary Jet Set club in Santo Domingo, which was packed with musicians, professional athletes and government officials, before the roof suddenly collapsed, killing at least 124 people, reported the Associated Press.

The New York Times on Wednesday interviewed several experts on international trade who were utterly baffled by President Donald Trump's obsession with bilateral trade deficits, which Trump has long cited as evidence that other nations are "taking advantage" of the United States.

In reality, a trade deficit simply means that the United States imports more net goods from foreign countries than foreign countries import from the United States, and experts say that there are many reasons such trade deficits exist that have nothing to do with other nations "cheating" in international trade.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) questioned U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer during a Tuesday hearing about the tariffs, which will go into effect on Wednesday.

Greer explained that despite requests for negotiations, all tariffs will be implemented this week — and there is no way of knowing when they will be paused.

Jakob Hanke Vela, the bureau chief at the German economics paper Handelsblatt, has been chatting with European trade officials in recent days who are holding off on launching a counterattack to President Donald Trump's trade war — largely because they believe he's sufficiently hurting himself.

Writing on X, Vela relayed some of the whispers he's been hearing from European officials who are amazed as Trump takes a wrecking ball to his own economy.

CNN's Stephen Collinson believes that there is no easy way out for President Donald Trump when it comes to his trade war — and that means the American economy is headed for what he describes as an "ugly endgame."

In his latest analysis, Collinson makes the case that Trump has backed himself into a corner by refusing to budge from his trade wars with nearly every nation on the planet, including a remote island that is primarily populated by penguins.