Senior Iranian official indicates willingness to reopen strait of Hormuz if US takes steps to ease pressure on Tehran
Iranian officials held three hours of talks with US special envoy Steve Witkoff on the sidelines of the UN general assembly, Donald Trump disclosed on Tuesday.
He said there would a further meeting in the very near future.
Continue reading...US president may have upstaged the ghost of Soviet leader Khrushchev by musing destruction of fellow member state
Donald Trump has a habit of discomfiting delegates to the United Nations general assembly. But this year, he may have upstaged the ghost of Nikita Khrushchev by openly contemplating the annihilation of a fellow UN member state.
Eleven minutes into a 40-minute address, the US president announced he had “a big decision to make” over Iran, which has staged a much more determined resistance than Trump anticipated when he decided to go to war against the country in February.
Continue reading...Lib Dem leader tells party conference that ‘something big and dangerous is happening in our country’
If Andy Burnham wanted to inject some edge into his meeting with Donald Trump later (which he doesn’t), he could bring along a copy of today’s Financial Times. This front page headline speaks for itself.
Mortgages ‘on the front line’ as Iran war deals £840 blow to homeowners
British homeowners are paying an average of £840 a year more when they refinance their mortgages, as the rising borrowing costs triggered by the Iran war start to impact consumers’ spending power.
Approximately 1m households have rolled off fixed-rate mortgage deals since February, according to Bank of England data.
Continue reading...Thousands flee fighting as Iran-aligned group seeks to consolidate territorial gains against Saudi-backed government forces
As many as 169 people have been reportedly killed in Yemen in the last three days as Iran-aligned Houthis battle Saudi-backed government forces for control of strategic heights on the Red Sea coast, while thousands flee the violence.
Houthi military officials said at least 118 people had been killed in clashes, as well as Saudi air and artillery strikes on Taiz, al-Jawf, Marib and Saada provinces since Sunday, Agence France-Presse reported. Yemeni government sources have said at least 36 people have been killed on their side of the conflict.
Continue reading...The UN secretary-general said the world must work together to solve problems in final major assembly address as secretary general
Tehran appears to have relaxed its preconditions for reopening the strait of Hormuz, saying it is prepared to do so within seven days so long as the US takes reciprocal steps to ease the pressure on Iran.
Previously Iran had set seven onerous pre-conditions for lifting the blockade including “an end to war on all fronts” and a commitment by the US to cease all aggressive actions against Iran including sanctions.
Continue reading...Supreme court, which has twice blocked maps from being used in November, likely to have final say in legal fight
A long-running legal fight over Missouri’s congressional map took another turn Monday when a federal appeals panel ruled in favor of new districts backed by Donald Trump, even though the US supreme court has blocked those districts from being used in the November election.
A three-judge panel of the 8th US circuit court of appeals said Missouri should use the new Republican-drawn US House districts in the November election, just as the state did in its August primary. To revert to its prior districts for the general election would violate the US constitution, the appeals judges said.
Continue reading...Andy Burnham seeks stability in Middle East to bring down prices at home as first meeting with Trump looms
The UK has agreed to provide defensive air support to Saudi Arabia to help counter Houthi fighters and restore stability in the Middle East while driving down the cost of living at home, Andy Burnham has said, ahead of his first meeting with Donald Trump.
The prime minister said he had agreed to a request for air-to-air refuelling of Saudi jets to defend energy infrastructure against the Iran-backed rebels and help keep oil flowing from the Gulf to ease global economic turmoil.
Continue reading...Media workers are grappling with increasingly volatile press climate in US, with some detained and even deported
As hundreds of masked and armed US federal agents besieged the streets of Minneapolis, turning the midwestern city into the frontline of the Trump administration’s unprecedented crackdown on immigration, the independent photographer John Abernathy was documenting one of the protests that had become a daily occurrence when Immigration and Customs Enforcement tackled him.
A photograph of him on the ground, pepper spray running down his face, captured the violence with which ICE agents had for weeks treated immigrants and the thousands of US citizens who had come to their defence. It was also a stark reminder that journalists were not immune to the agency’s aggressive tactics.
Continue reading...President’s latest order expected to bring NIH funding under control of Trump administration to align with agenda
Donald Trump’s latest executive order is expected to establish a board responsible for approving National Institutes of Health grant funding, marking another attempt by the Trump administration to censor topics that do not align with the president’s agenda.
The executive order, reported by outlets including the Washington Post and Politico, was discussed in a meeting on Friday where senior administration officials accused the NIH of funding “woke” initiatives that went against Trump’s political priorities.
Continue reading...Florida’s María Elvira Salazar warns Trump that advisers are ‘compromising his legacy’ and not showing ‘whole picture’
María Elvira Salazar, the Republican congresswoman who has accused the president of going too far on immigration enforcement, doubled down on her criticism of the administration on Sunday, warning Donald Trump that some of his advisers were “compromising his legacy”.
In an interview with CBS News’s Face the Nation, the Florida representative who is locked in a tight race for re-election pleaded with the US president not to “squander” his relationship with Hispanic voters. Though she couched her remarks as criticism of top administration advisers, it was clear that her focus was on Trump’s much-vaunted ambition to carry out the largest mass deportation of undocumented immigrants in US history.
Continue reading...Bridget Phillipson says Burnham’s past criticisms of US president not an issue as PM prepares to meet Trump at UN
Next month’s budget will be made more difficult by Donald Trump’s war with Iran, one of Andy Burnham’s cabinet ministers has said, while adding she did not expect the prime minister’s previous disparaging comments about the US president to be an issue.
Burnham is expected to meet Trump early next week at the UN general assembly summit in New York, the pair having previously spoken twice by phone since Burnham entered No 10.
Continue reading...President said he was banning journalists from those organizations, saying of their coverage: ‘You get sick of it.’
Journalists from three US outlets were denied access to the White House grounds on Saturday morning a day after Donald Trump said he would ban them from the executive branch complex in a move that has prompted outrage and shock from free speech advocates.
The outlets were television broadcasters MS now and CNN as well as the political news website Politico.
Continue reading...The president has threatened to block renovations and suggested the landmark could be demolished after courts ruled against his bid to rename it
It was born with the world premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass. “Young people will come here and they will see this cultural centre,” Rose Kennedy, the mother of slain US president John F Kennedy, said at that opening night gala. “They will carry some of these ideas back to their different communities.”
More than half a century later, the potential death knell came just after 4.30pm on Tuesday with a perfunctory announcement on the public address system: “The centre is now closed to the public. Please exit the centre by way of the Hall of States.” Soon barricades had been erected and security guards were blocking access.
Continue reading...María Elvira Salazar says some enforcement has ‘gone too far’ as GOP seeks distance from Trump before midterms
A Republican congresswoman has released a campaign ad criticizing Donald Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement, in the latest sign that a key plank of the president’s 2024 re-election campaign has become a liability for his congressional allies ahead of November’s midterm elections.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Florida’s María Elvira Salazar says in a 30-second ad. “In July, 50% of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy.”
Continue reading...US president responds as Mark Carney seeks to move closer to Europe and diversify defence ties
Donald Trump has threatened the EU with “serious tariffs” and a halt to trade after the bloc proposed making Canada its first ever associate member – an idea he derided as “laughable”.
The US president said that if the EU moved forward with the plan, Washington could impose “very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe”. He added: “If it’s a good intention, that’s fine. If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe.”
Continue reading...Announcement of visa restrictions follows Trump’s false claims of ‘white genocide’ taking place in South Africa
The US has announced visa restrictions on some South Africans as Donald Trump’s administration continues to claim that South Africa’s government racially discriminates against white minority Afrikaners.
The announcement did not specify individuals who were barred from the US. Trump has spent his second term falsely claiming there is a “white genocide” in South Africa and railing against its affirmative action policies.
Continue reading...Central bank chief says continent’s AI dependency could give trade partners unprecedented leverage in negotiations
Europe must develop its own AI technology and build more datacentres in order to nullify the threat of being cut off by the US or China, according to the president of the European Central Bank.
Christine Lagarde said the continent needed AI models – the technology that powers AI tools such as chatbots – that were “good enough” to carry out most tasks and run from domestic datacentres. If Europe invests in its own AI tech, said Lagarde, “the threat of being cut off loses its force”.
Continue reading...Families have asked Trump to declassify records that could shed light on Saudi Arabia’s alleged role in the 2001 attacks
Donald Trump said on Sunday that he will look into requests from families of 9/11 victims to release records that could shed light on Saudi Arabia’s alleged role in the attacks 25 years ago.
Several families have long alleged that a group of extremist religious leaders in Saudi Arabia gained influence in the kingdom’s government and aided the hijackers. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, but the Saudi government has long denied any involvement in the attacks.
Continue reading...Critics say segment about airman’s rescue was made to boost public perception of Trump’s unpopular war
A US airman has spoken of climbing a 7,000ft ridge with a broken back, arm and shoulder after he was shot down in Iran – and of being rescued by a team of American special forces as hostile locals closed in on him.
The air force colonel, identified only by his codename Bravo, appeared on camera Sunday night on CBS’s 60 Minutes in a segment some critics have labelled Pentagon propaganda to boost public perception of Donald Trump’s unpopular war.
Continue reading...But their habitat is threatened by bottom trawling in the region and Trump’s plan to expand seafloor mining
Scientists have discovered nine new deep-sea sponge species off Alaska, offering new insights into the region’s largely unexplored marine biodiversity.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) announced the discovery on Thursday, saying the species were found in the Gulf of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. The findings bring the total number of known sponge species in Alaska to 232.
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