Iran’s president hits out at ‘bully’ Trump in UN speech but signals willingness to talk

Masoud Pezeshkian says Tehran is ready for dialogue and diplomacy ‘but without the language of force’

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, turned the tables on Donald Trump, describing the US as the true bully and terrorist in the Middle East while insisting that Iran had always shown a commitment to the negotiating table.

In a defiant speech to the UN general assembly in New York, his first since the US and Israel launched an all-out war on Iran, Pezeshkian repeatedly vowed that Tehran would never bend the knee to the US.

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Delcy Rodríguez poses with Trump in New York as Maduro languishes in jail nearby

Venezuela’s interim president hails ‘historic meeting’ and does not say whether she will visit snatched predecessor

Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has celebrated a “historic” meeting with Donald Trump in New York, posing for a smiley photo with the US president, less than nine months after he ordered the abduction of her boss, Nicolás Maduro.

The former foes met at a five-star hotel a few blocks from Trump Tower in Manhattan late on Tuesday on the sidelines of the UN general assembly. The hotel is about 7 miles from the Brooklyn prison where Maduro has been held since he was snatched during a special forces raid on Caracas in January.

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Iran denies dropping preconditions amid ‘very productive’ three-hour UN talks in New York

Trump says further talks possible as barrel of Brent crude falls to below $100 for first time in two weeks

Iran has pushed back on claims that it dropped former preconditions for reopening the strait of Hormuz in surprise talks held in New York under the mediation of Qatar between Tehran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

Trump said the three-hour talks held in a room at the UN headquarters had gone very well and been very productive. He suggested further talks were possible imminently, which led to the price of a barrel of Brent crude to fall to below $100 (£75) for the first time in two weeks. Witkoff said the talks had been “encouraging, constructive and successful”.

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US supreme court declines to intervene in custody fight over baby born via surrogate

Surrogate who rejected abortion request had asked justices to halt court order recognizing LA couple as legal parents

The supreme court has refused to get involved with a custody dispute between an Alaska surrogate and a California couple whose child was born with a rare and serious heart defect.

On Tuesday, Justice Elena Kagan denied an emergency request from McKenna West, an Alaska nurse and surrogate who had asked the US’s highest court to halt a California court order recognizing the couple, Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar, as the boy’s legal parents.

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Spain allows US extradition case against pro-Palestine aid donor to proceed

Lawyers for James ‘Fergie’ Chambers, wanted over alleged support for Hamas, say client is being persecuted

The Spanish government has decided to allow the Trump administration’s controversial extradition request to extradite wealthy activist James “Fergie” Chambers to continue in the country’s courts.

Chambers, a US citizen and wealthy donor to leftwing and humanitarian projects, is currently imprisoned in Madrid. It is the first known case of the US seeking to extradite a citizen over alleged support for Hamas, an accusation tied to money Chambers has donated to support Palestinians, including the Sameer Project, in Gaza.

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California and New York sue over Trump push to halt wind energy projects

US officials have begun to buy back wind leases as president seek to block renewables in favor of fossil fuels

Democratic attorneys general from California and New York have sued the Trump administration over its plans to buy back offshore wind leases as Donald Trump seeks to discourage the expansion of wind energy in favor of fossil fuels.

California attorney general Rob Bonta said he was suing over removal of a project off his state’s coast planned by Chicago-based Invenergy. The Trump administration said in June it was buying back the company’s US offshore wind leases for four wind projects on the east and west coasts.

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Iran and US have held talks on sidelines of UN summit, says Donald Trump

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.

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Hats, pencils and baby pacifiers: Yellowstone staffers retrieve record amount of trash from hot springs

The park is the most highly visited and strong winds make trash problem worse, with gusts blowing away items

Hold on to your hats – Yellowstone national park staffers have removed a record-setting 20,100 pieces of trash from hydrothermal areas around the geyser-filled park so far this year

The most commonly found items include 280 hats, 54 camera lens caps, 47 hair ties, 42 pencils, 36 pairs of sunglasses, 20 hotel key cards and 17 baby pacifiers.

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Trump’s threat to annihilate Iran to UN general assembly is stunning, even for him

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.

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US fighter jet crashes at air base in western Germany

Officials say one pilot safely ejected as F-16 believed to have crashed on approach to Spangdahlem after training drill

⁠An F-16 fighter jet assigned to the US air ⁠base Spangdahlem ⁠in ​western Germany crashed on Tuesday, the US military said, ⁠adding that one pilot had ejected safely and was receiving ⁠medical treatment.

The cause of the incident ​is under ‌investigation, the military ‌said in a statement, with ‌emergency response personnel at the scene of the crash.

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‘The fault lines in our world are widening’, António Guterres warns as world leaders gather for UN General Assembly – live updates

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.

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Death of 27-year-old Presley Gerber being investigated as suspected overdose

Son of supermodel Cindy Crawford and entrepreneur Rande Gerber died at a rehabilitation facility

The death on Sunday of Presley Gerber, the 27-year-old son of supermodel Cindy Crawford and entrepreneur Rande Gerber, is being investigated as a suspected overdose, according to police.

Gerber died at a rehabilitation facility, Los Angeles county medical examiner records show. An autopsy was performed, but more testing was required before investigators could give a cause of death for Gerber, which the medical examiner did not immediately do.

The Associated Press contributed

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Kansas judge reportedly convicts driver in death of teacher whose husband was killed months prior

Ashleigh Boyd died in a car crash months after Adan Manzano, a TV reporter, was killed in Louisiana while preparing to cover the Super Bowl

A Kansas school teacher’s fatal car wreck on Monday reportedly led to a vehicular homicide conviction for the motorist who crashed into her – a verdict delivered just four days after a Louisiana jury found a woman guilty of the drugging death of the educator’s widower while he prepared to cover the 2025 Super Bowl for Telemundo.

Todd W Armstrong’s one-day bench trial in an 11 April 2024 traffic collision that killed Ashleigh Boyd in Topeka, Kansas, resulted in the judge, Andrew Holmes, finding him guilty of vehicular homicide, driving on the wrong side of the road and speeding, according to the victim’s father, Brian Hinck.

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First Thing: News outlets suspend coverage of Trump in escalating media access row

President’s decision to ban three news organisations from White House prompts backlash. Plus, a new resource to help trace the history of enslaved people in the 19th century

Good morning. The row over media access to the presidency has deepened, with major US television news outlets agreeing to suspend their video coverage of Donald Trump after the administration banned journalists from several outlets from entering the White House grounds.

The president had abruptly announced his ban against CNN, MS Now and Politico, saying he had had enough of “purposely negative stories” about him. On Monday the ban against CNN meant no broadcaster was covering Trump’s midday ribbon-cutting for a new White House helipad. The White House provided its own livestream but the president’s remarks were inaudible over the sound of a helicopter’s engine.

How have CNN, MS Now and Politico responded to the ban? A lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order that would immediately lift the ban. In a statement, the organizations said: “We are filing a lawsuit today to protect our first amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes.”

What other significant media developments have there been? Paramount has reached a settlement with California and several other states that sued over its proposed $81bn merger with Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), the California attorney general announced, clearing the way to consolidate some of Hollywood’s most recognizable TV networks and studios under one owner.

What else is Trump expected to say at the UN? The US ambassador to the UN said Trump would speak about how he had “confronted complex problems head-on around the world”. Our writer Robert Tait notes in this analysis, however, that thanks to Trump’s recent social media blitz and self-proclaimed “25 top achievements”, the chances of an uplifting speech appear slim.

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Why the CDC is excluding measles deaths in Pennsylvania even as outbreak appears to be ‘accelerating’

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention refuses to count four measles deaths in the state though doctors are ‘seeing new forms’ of disease

The US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its measles dashboard on Friday – but it’s still not counting four measles deaths in Pennsylvania, where the outbreak appears to be accelerating and cases are appearing in ways providers have never seen before.

Members of Congress on Monday requested an “immediate briefing” on the decision to change how measles deaths are reported as cases continue to rise throughout the United States, reaching levels not seen in decades. A possible measles exposure was reported in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia last week.

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British Columbia sues OpenAI and Sam Altman over Tumbler Ridge mass school shooting

Canadian province alleges deadly attack could have been prevented if company had warned police of shooter’s ChatGPT use

British Columbia has sued OpenAI in California, saying a mass shooting at a school in the province could have been prevented if the company had warned local ⁠law enforcement that the shooter ⁠had used ChatGPT to ​plan the massacre.

The lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court on Monday names OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, as defendants. It is seeking damages to fund recovery efforts in the province after the February attack, as well as an order directing changes to the way the company handles ChatGPT conversations that could lead to violence.

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Appeals court rules in favor of Trump-backed Missouri congressional maps

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.

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Healthcare in Africa ‘under growing strain’ after US withdrawal from aid programs, report warns

Accra Reset’s report states countries in the region and global south should take greater control of their health development after USAID debacle

The United States’ withdrawal from key aid programs has put has put healthcare in Africa and the Global South “under growing strain” a new report warns.

The report says the Trump administration’s cuts to programs such as US Agency for International Development (USAID), as well as the Covid-19 pandemic and rising costs of living globally have brought “new urgency” for the need to reform healthcare in the region.

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Lindsay Clancy’s defense lawyer asks judge to investigate lone juror

Holdout juror in Clancy’s case, Michael Desronvil, sided with the prosecutors, arguing that Clancy knew what she was doing when she killed her three young children

Lawyers for Lindsay Clancy have asked a judge to investigate the conduct of the lone juror who wanted to convict the mother from Massachusetts of murder in the deaths of her three children.

In a motion filed Friday but made public Monday, Clancy’s lawyers asked the court to question the juror about his alleged use of a cellphone during deliberations, his truthfulness on a questionnaire that prospective jurors filled out before the trial began and his truthfulness when jurors were questioned by the judge a day before the trial ended.

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Charges dropped against Stanford students over pro-Palestine protest

Students faced prison terms and thousands of dollars in restitution over campus protest against Israel’s war on Gaza

Five Stanford University students who faced prison sentences and thousands of dollars in restitution in connection to a campus protest against Israel’s war on Gaza had all charges dropped on Monday.

The students also had their restitution severely reduced, ending a two-year legal saga that also saw the lead prosecutor in the case removed by the court.

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