Category: World

Pakistan applied for BRICS membership in 2023 but remains outside the expanded grouping, with India’s opposition emerging as a key hurdle despite Islamabad seeking support from Russia and China.

Pakistan wants a seat at the BRICS table. It formally applied to join the grouping in 2023, has sought support from Russia and China, and even invested in the BRICS-backed New Development Bank. Yet Islamabad remains outside the bloc – with India’s opposition emerging as the biggest hurdle.

BRICS has expanded significantly since Pakistan submitted its application. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joined the grouping, turning it into BRICS+, while the bloc now represents around 49 per cent of the world’s population and about 40 per cent of global GDP on a purchasing power parity basis.

For Pakistan, joining BRICS is also seen as a way to gain access to new economic and financing opportunities as the country struggles with economic challenges. Its GDP growth was 3.70 per cent, according to the Pakistan Economic Survey.

Pakistan Wants BRICS Membership – But India Is The Roadblock

Pakistan confirmed its formal application to join BRICS in November 2023. Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch described BRICS as an “important group of developing countries” and said Islamabad wanted to contribute to the grouping.

“We believe that by joining BRICS, Pakistan can play an important role in furthering international cooperation and revitalising inclusive multilateralism”, she said.

“We also hope that BRICS will move forward on Pakistan’s request in line with its commitment to inclusive multilateralism,” she added.

Pakistan has also been lobbying existing members for support. Pakistan’s ambassador to Russia, Muhammad Khalid Jamali, told Russian news agency TASS that Islamabad was contacting BRICS members and had approached Russia in particular for backing.

However, Pakistan’s membership bid faces a major challenge from India. BRICS decisions on admitting new members are based on consensus among existing members, meaning Islamabad cannot enter the grouping without India’s approval.

Source : https://www.timesnownews.com/world/asia/pakistan-applied-to-join-brics-in-2023-still-waiting-whats-blocking-its-entry-article-156143024

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy ​said on Thursday ‌there would be no trilateral meeting ​on how ​to end the war ⁠before the ​elections in Russia.

Zelenskiy ​said Ukrainian and U.S. negotiators were in constant ​contact and ​he hoped for progress ‌in ⁠talks on energy and grain at the end ​of September ​after ⁠his meeting with U.S. ​President Donald ​Trump.

Russia ⁠will hold parliamentary elections on September ⁠20.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/zelenskiy-says-no-trilateral-peace-talks-before-elections-russia-2026-09-10

The United Arab Emirates is quietly revising plans for a 5-gigawatt AI data center project – one of the biggest outside the U.S. – after the Iran ​war prompted a rethink of how and where critical infrastructure should be built, six people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Originally envisaged as a 10-square-mile (26-square-kilometer) campus in Abu Dhabi, the project will ‌now likely comprise a network of data centers spread across the UAE, according to four of the sources, who all spoke on condition of anonymity.

Authorities are also considering ways to better protect the facilities from drone and missile attacks, including with air defenses and by building some underground, they said. The likely modifications to the project’s blueprint have not previously been reported.

DATA CENTER PROJECT IS CENTRAL TO UAE’S GLOBAL AI AMBITIONS

Plans for the UAE-US AI Campus, which is being built in partnership with American tech companies, were announced during President Donald ​Trump’s visit last year to the wealthy Gulf state.

The project is central to the UAE’s ambitions to become a global AI powerhouse as it shifts its economy away from oil. It is led by ​G42, an AI firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan, the UAE national security adviser and brother of its president.

In return for access to Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab AI chips ⁠and other advanced U.S. technology, the UAE agreed to cut AI ties with China and invest in the Stargate initiative’s American data centers. Stargate is a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle (ORCL.N), opens new tab and SoftBank (9984.T), opens new tab to build AI infrastructure.

The people ​who spoke to Reuters included a U.S. official, a Western diplomat and industry executives briefed on the deliberations. The news agency could not determine how close Emirati authorities are to finalizing a new masterplan or the extent to which ​the proposed changes might affect construction costs and timelines.

Construction on the first phase of the project, a $30-billion, 1-gigawatt compute cluster known as Stargate UAE, began last year with the first 200 megawatts of capacity due to come online this year. When completed, it will have enough capacity to connect every UAE government agency and commercial institution to the world’s most advanced AI models, according to Larry Ellison, chairman and chief technology officer at Oracle, which is partnering with G42 on the project.

Responding to Reuters questions about potential revisions to ​the project, G42 said work on the AI campus was progressing as planned.

“The project’s specifics are subject to continuous review in line with the security, resilience and operational standards expected of critical infrastructure at this scale,” the company said ​without elaborating.

OpenAI said it was working with the UAE to achieve its AI vision and making “good progress on the infrastructure and adoption priorities needed to deliver it.”

The Emirati advanced technology ministry and the project’s other American partners – Nvidia, Oracle and Cisco (CSCO.O), opens new tab – did ‌not respond to ⁠comment requests. Japan’s SoftBank declined to comment.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/uae-revises-ai-data-center-plan-after-iranian-attacks-sources-say-2026-09-11

Norway’s Princess Astrid, an ​older sister of the late ‌King Harald, died on Friday at ​the age of ​94, the royal palace ⁠said in a ​statement.

Astrid’s brother Harald ​died last month, aged 89, after more than ​35 years on ​the throne, and the princess ‌made ⁠her last public appearance at his funeral on Wednesday.

“Throughout her ​long ​life, ⁠Princess Astrid represented the Royal ​House in ​a ⁠warm and dutiful manner,” King Haakon VIII ⁠said ​in the ​statement.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/norways-princess-astrid-dies-aged-94-two-days-after-kings-funeral-2026-09-11

Americans marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on Friday with sorrow and ​somber reflection, honoring the nearly 3,000 people killed when hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field in a shocking attack that reverberates to this day.

In New ‌York, family members of the victims, many carrying pictures of their loved ones, joined Vice President JD Vance and four former U.S. presidents at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. The ceremony began, as always, at 8:46 a.m. ET (1246 GMT) with a moment of silence to mark the instant when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center’s North Tower in what would become the deadliest attack ever on U.S. soil.

Shortly after, victims’ family members began reading aloud the names of all 2,977 people who died on September 11, as well as the six people killed ​in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a somber recitation that lasted about four hours. In a reminder of the time that has passed, some readers were children who had never met the relatives they lost ​in 2001.

Other moments of silence followed to mark when the other three airplanes crashed and the two towers collapsed. For the first time, a seventh moment of silence honored the ⁠thousands who have died since 2001 from illnesses tied to the toxic dust that poisoned the air for months afterward.

Gregory Carafello attended the ceremony to honor the memory of his lifelong friend James Martello, who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, the ​financial firm that lost more than 650 employees in the attacks. Carafello was on the 18th floor of the South Tower but managed to evacuate.

“Everyone should realize that it was a very bad, catastrophic day for many families,” he said. “These were ​not warriors. These were people like you and me going to work.”

At the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, where American Airlines Flight 77 struck the building’s west flank, killing 184, President Donald Trump chronicled some of the stories of those aboard who perished in the crash: a woman pregnant with her first child, a family of four headed to Australia, three sixth-graders on a field trip.

The president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who also delivered remarks, both used their speeches to make the case for the Iran war, which they have defended as necessary to ​prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

“We salute our first responders and law enforcement, and we love them,” Trump said. “And we salute the service members working right now to ensure the world’s number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of ​Iran, will never ever have a nuclear weapon.”

Mourners also gathered in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at the crash site where passengers brought down one of the four hijacked jetliners, United Airlines Flight 93, that had been headed for Washington.

GENERATIONAL PAIN

The attacks shaped generations of Americans who lived ‌through the ⁠day or grew up in its aftermath, influencing U.S. foreign policy, domestic politics and public attitudes toward security.

But for many whom the attacks directly affected — the victims’ families and friends, first responders and rescue workers — the anniversary is a tribute to the lives lost on a clear blue day a quarter century ago and the heartbreak that followed.

Caroline Ogonowski’s father, John, was the captain of Flight 11, which took off from Boston 47 minutes before striking the North Tower.
Ogonowski, now 39, had her first baby this year and named him after her father. She brought him to her father’s grave last week and attended a memorial ceremony in Boston on Friday.

“This year, there’s this new sadness in knowing that they won’t ever get to know ​each other,” Ogonowski, who has worked in disaster relief and ​humanitarian assistance, said in a phone interview. “My father will ⁠never know his grandson. And my son will never know his grandfather.

“We owe it to my father and all the others that we lost on that day to make sure that we continue to teach future generations about what happened, about who these people were, who these heroes were, how our country came together and became stronger because of it,” she ​added.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/americans-mark-25-years-since-september-11-attacks-amid-enduring-grief-2026-09-11

India and Russia are looking to diversify bilateral trade beyond oil, with defence, investment, manufacturing and local-currency payments emerging as key areas of interest as per latest reports.

At the BRICS Summit, India and Russia are expected to look beyond an economic relationship increasingly driven by crude oil, with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s New Delhi visit likely to put trade diversification, defence co-production, investment and local-currency payments in focus. However, given India’s Russian crude imports worth nearly $48 billion in FY26, is a meaningful shift beyond oil truly possible?

Dr Pralok Gupta Professor and International Trade Expert, Centre for WTO Studies, IIFT told Times Now Digital, “beyond oil, there are significant complementarities and scope for enhanced investment from Russia to India, particularly in defence, mining, and infrastructure sector, and India’s exports of pharmaceuticals, chemicals and agri products to Russia.”

Experts believe a long-term economic engagement will require a more diversified partnership. Dr Jaijit Bhattacharya, President, C-DEP Research said, “oil has provided the foundation for recent growth in India-Russia trade, but long-term economic engagement requires moving towards a more diversified partnership. The future of bilateral ties lies in co-development of technologies, defence manufacturing, critical minerals, pharmaceuticals, and energy cooperation. The priority should be converting strategic trust into commercial linkages that create value for both economies. In addition, we need to find a solution to the Rupee-Rouble issue, where Russian entities have ended up accumulating large amounts of Rupee.”

Economists also believe resolving structural bottlenecks is the need of the hour. Mitali Nikore, Founder & Chief Economist, Nikore Associates said, “while crude oil has dominated recent India-Russia trade expansion, moving toward a balanced $100 billion bilateral target requires diversifying into high-value manufacturing and consumer goods. Realistically, India’s immediate export growth can be driven by pharmaceuticals, agricultural products, electronics components, auto parts, and specialized engineering goods where Russia faces supply chain constraints. Addressing the severe trade asymmetry, however, hinges on resolving structural bottlenecks—specifically expanding local currency settlement mechanisms, establishing seamless national payment interoperability, and streamlining non-tariff and customs clearances. A sustainable roadmap lies in moving beyond simple commodities trading toward joint industrial ventures, services exports, and mobility of skilled Indian labor in tech and healthcare, transforming a resource-heavy relationship into a broad-based economic partnership.”

Source: https://www.timesnownews.com/world/pm-modi-putin-meet-can-india-russia-trade-move-beyond-oil-article-156132730

Algeria has closed its airspace to civilian and military aircraft registered in the United Arab Emirates, after severing diplomatic ties with Abu Dhabi following years of growing tensions between the two countries.

The Algerian Defence Ministry said the ban would take effect from midnight on September 11. UAE commercial flights to and from Algiers’ Houari Boumediene International Airport will remain allowed until the end of 2026, when an existing contract expires.

Algiers said it had taken the decision after exhausting efforts to preserve bilateral relations, accusing the UAE of engaging in “provocative and hostile acts”.

Algeria Gives UAE Ambassador 48 Hours
The Algerian Foreign Ministry said it had repeatedly warned Abu Dhabi about its conduct but claimed the UAE continued with actions that had become “unacceptable or intolerable”.

Algiers has given the UAE ambassador 48 hours to comply with the decision.

The UAE Foreign Ministry expressed hope that the diplomatic rupture would be temporary, saying it wanted to preserve what it called “fraternal ties” with Algeria.

The split follows months of increasingly sharp criticism from Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who has accused the UAE of seeking to destabilise countries across the region.

In July, Tebboune said that “wherever they set foot, blood flows” and urged the UAE to stay away from Algeria.

“We want them to stay away, so that blood does not flow in our country,” Tebboune had stated.

He had previously said a diplomatic break could have happened much earlier, but Algeria had sought to avoid further divisions in the Arab world.

Sahel Rivalry Fuels Tensions
Much of the dispute centres on competing approaches to North Africa and the Sahel.

Geoff Porter of North Africa Risk Consulting said Algeria had been trying to maintain stability in the region, while it viewed UAE actions as working “directly counter” to those efforts.

Porter pointed to Abu Dhabi’s support for eastern Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar, its alleged backing of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces and a reported drone base in neighbouring Mauritania as major sources of concern for Algiers.

Algeria sees such moves as interference in its regional sphere and a potential security threat.

Wider Regional Differences
The two countries have also clashed over political and diplomatic issues beyond the Sahel.

Last year, Algerian state television accused UAE-based Sky News Arabia of running a hostile media campaign after it broadcast an interview in which historian Mohamed Amine Belghit questioned aspects of Algeria’s indigenous Amazigh identity.

Source: https://www.news18.com/world/algeria-closes-airspace-to-uae-after-severing-diplomatic-ties-following-years-of-tension-ws-l-10322153.html

The documentary was shot secretly over a period of three years on rooftops in Tel Aviv and the identities of the subjects are hidden by digitally altering their voices and appearances.

24 Israeli military insiders including intelligence officers and soldiers have opened up about the secret systems used for mass killings of Palestinian civilians during the Gaza war in a new documentary film called NAZA.

The film’s title references an Israeli military acronym used as a shorthand for civilian casualties, including men, women and children.

It got a 25-minute standing ovation at Venice premiere was made by Oscar-winning Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.

The documentary was shot secretly over a period of three years on rooftops in Tel Aviv and the identities of the subjects are hidden by digitally altering their voices and appearances. The subjects in the film speak about the secret methods such as using AI to identify and bomb low-ranking Hamas targets in their homes at night, with the knowledge that it would also kill their families.

The documentary shows how the Israeli military hacked into phones to locate targets and listened to the conversations they had with their wives and children just before they were killed.

The subjects have given first person accounts on how entire neighbourhoods were destroyed, homes burnt and civilians killed at a food distribution site.

The military has acknowledged using artificial intelligence to help identify targets, but maintains no strike is carried out without human involvement. “When it comes to ‘pressing the red button,’ only a person can do it,” said an Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity pending a formal statement from the army.

At a press conference in Venice on Thursday, Abraham said that the officers were told to describe what they did, and how the systems work.

“Some of them did not express remorse and some did. Some spoke out of indifference, some out of pride”, he said.

Many subjects in the film worked in a secret intelligence unit and reported directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. One of them revealed that their mission was to “thwart peace”.

“We made this film out of a sense of obligation to use our position as Israeli film-makers and journalists to examine the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians for which our country is responsible,” Abraham and Szor said in a statement.

Source: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/we-were-told-to-thwart-peace-israeli-insiders-reveal-dark-gaza-war-secrets-12030399?pfrom=home-ndtvworld_world_top_scroll

Under the planned rule change, published in the Federal Register by the US Department of Homeland Security, those with H-1B and certain other temporary work visas would have to leave the country as soon as their employment ends.

The Trump administration has proposed eliminating a 60-day grace period that allows certain immigrants, including skilled workers on H-1B visas, to stay in the United States and find a new sponsor after losing their job, according to a government notice posted online Thursday.

Under the planned rule change, published in the Federal Register by the US Department of Homeland Security, those with H-1B and certain other temporary work visas would have to leave the country as soon as their employment ends – a potential blow to top American tech companies that rely heavily on foreign workers.

It is the latest step by US President Donald Trump to limit legal migration since returning to office in January 2025. His administration has also introduced higher visa fees for skilled workers and recently paused immigrant visa appointments at US missions around the world while it implements a new training program.

Companies impacted by the change could see some disruption, DHS wrote in its proposal, but it said the jobs could go to American workers instead. In some situations, immigrant workers who leave could potentially reapply if their employer petitions for them, it added.

“DHS presumes that they will either offer the same jobs to equally qualified US workers or go through the I-129 petition process depending on their workforce requirement,” the notice said.

The 60-day grace period, in place since 2017, allows foreign workers time to find another US job or get their affairs in order – whether selling a home or pulling children out of school – before leaving the country.

H-1B visas, established by Congress in 1990, are especially critical for tech companies seeking talent from India and China, allowing them to fill roles where there is sometimes a lack of qualified US workers.

Consultancy companies such as Deloitte, PwC and Ernst & Young as well as outsourcing giants like Tata Consultancy Services , Infosys , HCL Tech and LTIMindtree are top H-1B sponsors.

Lawyers for Berardi Immigration Law, which specializes in business-related immigration issues, said the move would “sharply compress the timeline HR teams have to manage layoffs and offboarding for foreign national employees.”

If implemented, the change would also apply to E-1 international trader visa holders; E-2 commercial vehicle operator visa holders; L-1 short-term work for executives or managers with international companies; O-1 visas for people “with an extraordinary ability” in science, sports or the arts; and TN professional workers.

Source: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-moves-to-end-60-day-grace-period-for-h-1b-other-work-visa-holders-12029917?pfrom=home-ndtvworld_world_top_scroll

Canada has agreed a C$350 million ​aid package for Kyiv to acquire air defense interceptors, Prime Minister Mark ‌Carney said on Thursday after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Kyiv is running critically low on U.S.-made Patriot interceptors capable of stopping Russia’s ballistic missiles at a time when Moscow is stepping ​up its attacks.

“As Russia escalates its barbaric aerial warfare indiscriminately targeting civilian ​populations, Ukraine’s air defences are critical,” Carney told reporters in ⁠Calgary.

“Earlier today Canada and Ukraine finalised an agreement to deliver critical air defence ​interceptors … this C$350 million equipment package will help protect Ukraine’s people, infrastructure, and skies,” ​he said.
He did not give details of which interceptors would be delivered or when the aid would start flowing.
The weapons will be provided through a U.S. program that allows third-party nations to ​quickly buy and supply weapons such as Patriot missiles to Ukraine.
“I thank you ​for this package. It’s of (the) utmost importance, especially now,” said Zelenskiy.
Canada, one of Ukraine’s most vocal ‌defenders, ⁠has committed more than C$25.5 billion in overall aid since Russia invaded in February 2022, including C$8.5 billion in military assistance.
Carney also said Canada aimed to ramp up drone production to be able to produce millions of units within the ​next two years. ​A third of ⁠those would go to Ukraine, he said.
Zelenskiy said Ukraine needed more technology and funding to produce enough drones to fend ​off mass Russian attacks.
Canada is home to an estimated 1.3 ​to 1.4 ⁠million people of Ukrainian descent, forming one of the largest Ukrainian diasporas in the world.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/zelenskiy-arriving-canada-says-air-defences-winter-preparation-focus-2026-09-10/

Anthropic on Thursday said it had disrupted several allegedly malicious uses of its Claude models over ‌the past eight months, including a suspected Russia-linked cyber espionage campaign and efforts by Chinese AI firms it accused of trying to extract and replicate Claude’s capabilities.
Cybercriminals and state-backed hackers were increasingly using AI not just to assist with tasks but to orchestrate and execute large portions of cyberattacks, Anthropic said in its latest Threat Intelligence report. It added that ​humans were often overseers rather than hands-on operators.

“The use of AI went beyond simple questions and responses from a chatbot but rather ​involved the use of multi-agent frameworks executing” tasks, Anthropic said.
Anthropic said it had disrupted attacks from seven China-based labs ⁠during that period. Among the labs Anthropic named were tech giant Alibaba (9988.HK), opens new tab, , Moonshot, DeepSeek and Xiaomi.
Operators it linked to Alibaba ran what Anthropic called ​the largest “illicit distillation” attack, allegedly aimed at extracting capabilities of Claude models and using them to improve the Chinese tech firm’s Qwen models, the company said. Alibaba ​did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Anthropic said it observed more than 151 million exchanges it attributed to Alibaba between May and July 2026, peaking at nearly 3 million per day from more than 3,500 accounts it described as fraudulent.
Distillation refers to the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ​models in a bid to lower the costs of training a new AI tool.
Rather than running bulk queries, Kimi chatbot creator Moonshot and DeepSeek allegedly ​routed live customer conversations, which sometimes included sensitive information, through Claude and used its responses as training data, Anthropic alleged.
A hacking group whose tradecraft was consistent with Russia-based ‌threat actor ⁠Midnight Blizzard allegedly ran phishing, hotel Wi-Fi hijacking and WhatsApp-takeover operations against targets in the Ukrainian government, military and diplomatic sectors, using AI at nearly every stage, Anthropic said.

The U.S. government has previously, opens new tab linked Midnight Blizzard, a tracking term coined by Microsoft, to Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service. The Russian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The group allegedly used AI to build a system that automatically detected when its malware was flagged by ​security defenses and rewrote the code ​until it evaded detection again.
Anthropic also ⁠identified what it called “new categories of threat actors” misusing Claude, including those using the platform to “develop software for conventional weapons, including firearms, missiles, armed drones, bombs, and other munitions, as well as the targeting and control systems that ​operate them.” The report detailed incidents of operators using Claude to develop software for weapons design and development, ​or to support ⁠intelligence gathering and procurement related to weapons programs, in China, Russia, and Yemen.

source: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/anthropic-disrupts-russian-chinese-ai-campaigns-targeting-its-claude-models-2026-09-10/

Vice President JD Vance took center stage at the Republican convention in Dallas on Thursday in a speech seen as an early test of his 2028 White House prospects, offering a message of nationalistic pride that resonated ​with the pro-Trump crowd.
As party leaders grapple with slipping approval ratings and uncertainty over November’s midterm elections, they are also looking for signs of who might eventually carry President Donald Trump’s movement forward.

Trump ‌followed Vance with closing remarks and offered little commentary from the stage on his vice president’s high-profile appearance, instead imploring supporters to vote Republican on November 3, the stated purpose of the first-of-its-kind midterm convention.
But speaking to reporters later as he boarded Air Force One to return to Washington, Trump said Vance did “very well” and was a “very talented guy,” adding: “He’s been a great vice president, and I think he did a very good job.”
The president has yet to signal who he would back in 2028, though Republicans frequently speculate about whether ​Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio is best positioned to lead the party after he leaves office.

With Trump constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, Vance is widely regarded as a leading contender for ​the nomination. He spoke of an “American birthright” to safety and prosperity that he said Democrats opposed.
“Don’t give the country over to a bunch of crazy people because you ⁠happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here and there,” Vance said, reinforcing a convention theme that cast Republicans as the party of common sense and Democrats as the party of “crazy.”

Vance’s 40-minute speech stayed largely ​on script, unlike Trump’s freewheeling speaking style, and at times resembled a presidential nominating convention speech.
But in one apparently spontaneous moment, a protester waved a Mexican flag, prompting Vance to respond, “Well, my friend, if you love Mexico so much, ​get your ass over there,” triggering a loud round of applause and chants of “USA, USA, USA.”

Vance then offered to buy the man a plane ticket.
Supporters cited the 42-year-old’s youth and appeal to grassroots activists as reasons he is well positioned to advance the party’s populist, anti-establishment agenda once Trump leaves the political stage.
Some in the crowd chanted “48, 48,” suggesting Vance could become the country’s 48th president in 2028, but Vance said Republicans first needed to concentrate on winning the November midterm elections.
Barbara Johnson, 58, joined the “JD” chants during Vance’s ​speech. She said his love of America came through in his remarks and that she was impressed by the way he fed off the crowd, adding that he made a “pretty dang good argument” for becoming the Republican Party’s next ​standard-bearer.

“He does have a gift and I think he is proving himself more and more that he could be the leader of the country,” Johnson, who lives in Plano, Texas, told Reuters.
Before Vance took the stage, Republicans used the convention to portray ‌Democrats as dangerous ⁠extremists ahead of November’s midterm elections, with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas accusing them, without substantiation, of being part of a “new and dangerous red-green alliance” between communists and Islamists.
FUTURE BEYOND TRUMP
Throughout the two-day gathering, speakers sought to energize Republican voters by focusing on immigration, crime and cultural issues – frequently attacking Muslim politicians – as the party confronts questions about its future beyond Trump.
Listing what he considered the ills of life under Democratic President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2025, Vance said, “We were tired of being called racist for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier and poorer and less safe and less prosperous.”
There was less emphasis on issues that voters tell pollsters they are most concerned about such as the economy, ​especially inflation and the cost of living, and the ​U.S. war on Iran, which has driven up fuel costs ⁠and has dragged on for much longer than the four or five weeks that Trump predicted early on.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-touts-5000-payout-if-republicans-win-vance-waits-wings-2026-09-10/

Deep in Arctic waters near the remote Svalbard archipelago this spring, NATO allies caught Russian subs training to unleash a secret weapon designed to disable critical undersea cables without leaving any fingerprints.
The clandestine Russian operation, described to Reuters by two Western officials, was carried out by Moscow’s GUGI undersea warfare directorate, which used deep-sea submersibles to simulate the deployment of the sophisticated and destructive technology.

A joint operation involving Britain, Norway and the United States tracked and confronted the Russian vessels at sea, said the two officials, speaking ​on condition of anonymity. The vessels were prevented from completing their exercise and eventually left the area.
Britain and Norway disclosed in April that they had uncovered a covert Russian operation in Arctic waters. But the discovery of the new weapon, the ‌location of the operation and the U.S. involvement have not been reported.
The deep-sea face-off comes at a time when some Western intelligence officials fear the Kremlin is ramping up sabotage operations in Europe and preparing for a conflict with NATO.

Some U.S. intelligence analysts are increasingly concerned Russia may test NATO’s mutual defence pact, known as Article 5, three U.S. officials said. If it does, destroying subsea cables could be a critical part of that effort, the Western officials said.
Cables no thicker than a garden hose, lying on the seabed or buried just below, are critical to global internet connectivity and financial transactions. Their economic and strategic importance has made them targets in past conflicts, including ​in the First and Second World Wars, when they were critical to delivering orders by telegraph or telephone.
Two 1,400 km subsea fiber-optic cables linking Svalbard to mainland Norway lie as deep as 2,700 metres below the sea’s surface. They carry vast amounts of satellite ​data downloaded at the SvalSat satellite ground station, the world’s largest and part of NASA’s Near Space Network.

Russia’s Defence Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment on the incident. The Kremlin consistently denies conducting sabotage operations ⁠in NATO countries or plotting any confrontation.
Some Western officials argue that Moscow’s targeting of European states has increased in recent months as the front line in Ukraine has become largely static.
Countries including Poland, Lithuania, and Romania have confirmed various violations. Most recently, an attempted drone attack on the Leipzig/Halle Airport in August ​triggered a series of responses from Germany, including the closure of a Russian consulate in Bonn and a cultural centre in Berlin.
In August, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe visited intelligence counterparts in Moscow, in part to warn Russia against escalating sabotage operations in Europe, said two people familiar with the ​matter.

Reuters couldn’t determine if Ratcliffe raised Russia’s covert subsea operations. The Kremlin declined to say what had been discussed or to provide any further details.
ARCTIC EXERCISE
At the same time as the confrontations at sea, British and Norwegian officials took their findings to Moscow to show they were aware of the new technology – hoping it might make Russia hesitate to use it, the two Western officials said.
Russia didn’t damage any cables. The exercise focused on simulating the deployment of the technology in the event of a conflict with NATO, the officials said. They declined to detail how the technology works.
Asked for comment, NATO referred Reuters to Norwegian and UK authorities.
“Through our joint operation, we ​sent a clear message to Russia that they cannot operate covertly,” Norway’s Defence Minister Tore Sandvik said in a statement.
“We have made it unequivocally clear to Russian authorities that any attempt to target our critical infrastructure will be detected and met with consequences,” he said. “It is in no ​one’s interest to escalate tensions in the High North.”
Britain’s Defence Ministry pointed to April 9 statements acknowledging attempted covert activities in and near Norwegian and British waters by Russia’s Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, known by its Russian acronym GUGI. Washington and London have both imposed sanctions on the secretive directorate.
The White House didn’t ‌respond to a ⁠comment request. The CIA declined to comment.
Any escalation between Russia and NATO could quickly underscore the strategic importance of an icy expanse of water between the southern tip of the Svalbard archipelago and mainland Norway known as the Bear Gap, one of the Western officials said.
To reach the Atlantic, Russian nuclear submarines based in the Kola Peninsula would cross the 400-mile-wide stretch of water before passing Norway’s remote volcanic island Jan Mayen.
Britain said this week it deployed forces to Jan Mayen, opens new tab in August alongside Norwegian and U.S. allies for an exercise to demonstrate NATO’s ability to operate jointly in the High North.
Norway plans to have new fiber-optic cable linking Svalbard and Jan Mayen to the mainland by 2028.
‘BURGEONING RUSSIAN THREAT’
NATO allies have focused on subsea infrastructure security since the 2022 destruction of three of the four Nord Stream subsea pipelines supplying Germany with Russian gas. German prosecutors have indicted a Ukrainian man who ​was a special forces officer at the time of the attack. Ukraine denies ​any role in the sabotage.
And since 2023, more ships have ⁠sailed slowly over or near sensitive subsea infrastructure including pipelines, power cables and telecoms cables to map their location, an activity known as drifting.
Last year, drifting in the North Sea rose 52% to 13,079 vessels from the previous year, data from maritime risk analytics firm Windward showed, while activity in the South China Sea region jumped 88% to 18,401 vessels.
It’s not illegal to survey infrastructure in international waters but security experts see such extensive mapping ​as preparation for sabotage.
The activity and suspected interference with some cables prompted new initiatives launched in January last year, including NATO’s Baltic Sentry monitoring system and the UK-led Nordic Warden, bringing navies together for increased ​patrols of critical infrastructure.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/nato-allies-foil-russian-subsea-cable-sabotage-plot-2026-09-10/

Iran has used a barter-like arrangement to bypass sanctions on its oil sales and buy billions of dollars’ worth of goods from China, including military gear, two senior Iranian sources and three other people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The secretive trade mechanism, in which Iranian oil is exchanged ​for credits for Chinese imports, has provided a financial lifeline for Tehran in recent years as the United States stepped up economic and military pressure over its nuclear program, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

It has also helped ‌China, the world’s biggest crude importer, retain access to discounted Iranian oil while shielding banks and companies that export to the Islamic Republic from international scrutiny or penalties, they said.
The U.S. has imposed sanctions on some smaller Chinese entities that buy or facilitate shipments of Iranian oil but has stopped short of the most punishing measures that could have repercussions on the global economy.
Washington has intensified the pressure as it tries to resolve its war with Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. In August, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned countries to cut business ties with Iran or risk being forced out of the dollar-based financial system.

Reuters could not determine the impact on the barter-like arrangement of the U.S. naval blockade imposed on Iran ​as part of the six-month war. No Iranian crude cargoes have successfully transited the Strait of Hormuz to China since the blockade was reinstated on July 14, the news agency reported last week.
China and Iran have repeatedly denounced what they regard as illegal unilateral Western sanctions and have ​vowed to protect their interests. The countries are longstanding economic and political partners but have said little publicly about how they keep trade flowing despite international restrictions.
Iran has used the arrangement to buy medicines, vehicles and communication equipment ⁠from China, all the sources said. The manufacturers were not dealing directly with Iran, and there is no indication they were in breach of sanctions.

The mechanism was also used at least once in the past year in connection with contracts to supply Iran with air defense equipment worth millions of dollars, the ​sources said.
They did not provide details about any of the alleged transactions with Chinese manufacturers, and Reuters could not independently verify that they took place.
A U.N. embargo on the export of most major conventional weapons to Iran was reinstated with other sanctions in September 2025 after the U.S. withdrew from a 2015 nuclear accord ​between Iran and world powers during President Donald Trump’s first term, and Tehran stopped complying with some of its provisions.
Iran and China said the move by European countries to automatically restore the sanctions through a “snapback” mechanism was “legally and procedurally flawed.”

Responding to Reuters questions about the barter-like trade, China’s foreign ministry said it was “not familiar with the situation you describe.”
“China has consistently opposed unilateral sanctions that have no basis in international law and have not been authorized by the United Nations Security Council,” it said.
Iran’s U.N. missions in New York and Geneva did not respond to requests for comment.
In response to questions to the White House, a U.S. official said the Trump administration works with economic partners including the European Union to “deprive ​Iran of the material means of furthering its nuclear ambitions.” The official did not comment on the arrangement described to Reuters.
AVOIDING INTERNATIONAL BANKING CHANNELS
Decades of U.S. sanctions have left Iran with few oil customers. China is the main buyer, accounting for more than 80% of Iran’s shipped oil in 2025, or an average ​1.4 million barrels per day, according to commodities data and analytics firm Kpler.
In 2021, the two countries signed a 25-year strategic partnership accord covering sectors such as energy and infrastructure, but public details remain scarce.
The arrangement described to Reuters is one of a number of mechanisms through which Iran purchases goods and services from China without paying Chinese ‌companies directly through ⁠international banking channels, three of the sources said.
A Western official and two other people familiar with the matter said a buyer acting on behalf of Chinese state-owned oil trader Zhuhai Zhenrong was at least until this year depositing hundreds of millions of dollars a month with an obscure, China-based financial entity known as ChuXin.
The deposits covered purchases agreed with a Hong Kong-registered company linked to Iran’s national oil company, the people said, citing material gathered by intelligence agencies. ChuXin would then send funds to Chinese exporters and companies that build infrastructure in Iran, likely via other Chinese financial institutions.
Roughly 70% of the Iranian oil proceeds handled by ChuXin are allocated to infrastructure projects, the three sources said, an arrangement first reported by the Wall Street Journal last October. The rest go into accounts belonging to a special purpose vehicle (SPV) used to pay companies that supply goods to Iran.
The Iranian sources, who are close to the country’s decision-making circle, confirmed the existence ​of the SPV, which has not previously been reported.

All five sources said funds ​in the SPV are managed by two entities: a firm acting ⁠on behalf of China’s Ministry of Commerce and one linked to Iran’s central bank. The Iran-linked firm notifies the Chinese one when Iran’s central bank authorizes importers to access funds in the SPV so payments can be sent to the suppliers, three said.
Reuters could find no record of a financial institution called ChuXin in Chinese company registries or of the firms said to be acting on behalf of China’s commerce ministry and Iran’s central bank. One source said ChuXin might ​only exist on a spreadsheet.
Companies with the same names as those said to be acting on behalf of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and Zhuhai Zhenrong are listed in the Hong Kong companies registry, but Reuters ​could find no public records of their ownership ⁠structure or business dealings. Neither responded to questions delivered to their registered addresses, which are in offices belonging to secretarial services companies.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/how-billion-dollar-sanctions-dodge-kept-chinese-goods-flowing-iran-2026-09-10/

Iran-aligned Houthis seized control of Yemen’s port city of Mocha on Thursday and advanced down the Red Sea coast to strategic islands, military sources said, hours after President ​Donald Trump said he expected the Iran war to end after the U.S. midterm elections.
Yemeni government military sources said the Houthis had gained further leverage over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the southern ‌outlet of the Red Sea and one of the world’s most important shipping routes, and had reached the islands of Hanish.

If the Houthis were to gain control of the waterway on the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula from the Strait of Hormuz, it could give their backer Iran a critical advantage in the war with the United States, reducing supplies through a second major transit corridor and sending oil prices surging.
It could also make it harder for Trump to find an exit from a war that has ​hurt his Republican Party’s electoral prospects ahead of the November midterms.
Yemen’s Houthi-run humanitarian operations coordination centre said in a statement that Red Sea navigation is safe for all shipping companies except for Saudi ​vessels.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, has relied on the Red Sea route since the Iran conflict effectively closed Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil used ⁠to flow.
Yemeni government forces and their allies are relocating south along the Red Sea coast to Dhubab on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, across from Perim Island, government military sources said. Control of Dhubab and the island is ​key to gaining hold of the strait, they said.
U.N. Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg told a U.N. Security Council meeting about Yemen on Thursday that the international community must act to address “a new and more dangerous phase” ​in the Yemen war.
The Houthis’ gaining control of Mocha gave them “a direct presence on the approaches to one of the world’s most vital straits,” raising serious concerns about freedom of navigation, he said.

Jenifer Neidhart de Ortiz, the U.S. representative at the meeting, accused the Houthis of acting as “agents and tools of Iran.”
“This escalation is unacceptable, and those who enable it bear responsibility for its consequences,” she said.
Iran’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the Yemen conflict could not be solved by blockade or military action ​against the Houthis and called for dialogue, without addressing Iran’s own role.
Yemeni government, Iranian and regional sources told Reuters the Houthi advance down the coast this week came with direct guidance from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Houthi spokesperson Mohammed ​Abdulsalam said, without elaborating, that the group’s operations were defensive and would stop once attacks on Yemen stopped.

OIL PRICES JUMP
Brent crude prices jumped as much as 4% on Thursday above $105 a barrel on concern over disruption to supply routes, and the ‌U.S. national ⁠average price of diesel surpassed $6 a gallon for the first time ever, according to price tracker GasBuddy.
After joining the war with an attack on Israel in March, the Houthis declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia in July and escalated attacks this month.
Tensions in the region remained high, with Saudi civil defence authorities issuing emergency alerts in the southwestern city of Khamis Mushait for the fourth time in 24 hours, as the Houthis attacked.
Pakistan has delivered a Saudi warning to Iran to rein in the Houthis to try to prevent the crisis from spiralling, Saudi, Pakistani and Iranian sources said. A senior Iranian official said Tehran’s response was: “Iran does not control the Houthis”.
The fighting comes during ​the biggest declared wave of U.S.-Iran tit-for-tat attacks on ​Gulf shipping since the war began in late ⁠February.
The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday announced new sanctions against firms and individuals aiding Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies as part of “Operation Economic Outcast,” which aims to cut off Tehran’s war funding.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-says-iran-war-end-after-us-midterm-elections-threatens-attack-pickaxe-2026-09-10/

A major shareholder in Novartis (NOVN.S), opens new tab has called for a shake-up of the Swiss drugmaker’s board to improve corporate governance after ​its shares suffered a record fall this week following back-to-back trial setbacks.
David Samra, managing director at top 20 ‌investor Artisan Partners and founding partner of International Value Group, said the board needed to strengthen its oversight of acquisitions, calling for action from board chairman Giovanni Caforio.

“I think he needs to make changes at the board level. One of them should be on improving the team that’s doing ​these deals because clearly they have been uninspiring at best,” Samra told Reuters in an interview.
“I think that the ​board needs to improve their oversight of acquisitions… they need to bring in better talent on ⁠the board to do that and have an acquisition committee.”
Samra, however, said he did not blame CEO Vas Narasimhan, who ​has overseen a 60% share price rally since he took over in 2018 despite a tough global environment with U.S. tariffs under ​President Donald Trump, and conflict from Ukraine to Iran.

RECORD SHARE PRICE SLIDE
On Tuesday, a muscle-wasting disorder drug acquired through Novartis’ $12 billion takeover of U.S. firm Avidity failed a late-stage study, sending the company’s shares tumbling more than 10% and wiping nearly $30 billion off its market value.
Novartis’ stock, which had ​been up some 20% year-to-date before this week’s slide, had already fallen a day earlier after results from heart drug pelacarsen ​disappointed investors.
Artisan is the first investor to publicly call for board changes, though others have voiced concerns about Novartis’ M&A strategy to Reuters. Public ‌pressure ⁠from activist shareholders can often encourage other investors to push for change.
“If you do a $12 billion deal and it goes to zero, the management needs to be penalised for that,” Samra said, while noting that other promising drugs could still emerge from the Avidity acquisition.

Novartis said in a statement that its financial guidance was unchanged by recent setbacks and that it had a “broad” pipeline of ​medicines.
“We continue a disciplined and ​shareholder friendly approach to capital ⁠allocation by investing in the organic business, pursuing value-creating bolt-ons, and returning capital to shareholders through a growing annual dividend and share buybacks,” it said.
‘THE ACQUISITION TRACK RECORD IS NOT VERY GOOD’
Samra ​also cited Novartis’ 2024 acquisition of German biotech MorphoSys as a disappointing deal. Investor enthusiasm ​faded after Novartis ⁠wrote down the value of the acquisition only months later.
Many analysts have viewed the latest setbacks as a test of CEO Narasimhan. But Samra said Narasimhan had done a “very good job” running the business, and instead questioned whether the board had exercised sufficient scrutiny ⁠over deals.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/major-novartis-shareholder-calls-board-shake-up-after-drug-trial-setbacks-2026-09-10/

It is so dangerous now in Slovyansk and Kramatorsk that police say it is time for civilians to get out. These neighbouring cities are the biggest still under full Ukrainian control in the eastern Donbas region.

In the worst affected areas, forced evacuations of families with children have already begun, says Pavlo Dyachenko of Donetsk police.

“This is the only way to save your life,” he says, because security has deteriorated so much.

“If you take Slovyansk, it used to be hit by glide bombs roughly once a week, but now it’s almost every day.”

Slovyansk, Kramatorsk and Kostyantynivka, to the south, form part of what is known as Ukraine’s “fortress belt” – a system of heavily reinforced defence lines in the east.

However, Kostyantynivka only has a limited presence of Ukrainian troops left, reports say, while Russia claims to be in full control of it.

The full capture of Donbas, made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, is a key objective for Russia. Moscow has often cited the “liberation” and “protection” of the predominantly Russian-speaking Donbas as justification for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian army already controls almost all of Luhansk region, and is now in control of almost 80% of Donetsk region too, where all three fortress cities lie.

For the past few months, the territory near Kramatorsk and Slovyansk has been the main focus of Russian ground assaults. Capturing them would potentially make it much easier for Russia to advance to the west.

The two cities are now facing intense strikes from drones and bombs.

Many civilians have already left, and key streets there are now covered with anti-drone nets, says Viktor Makurin, a volunteer from London.

“There are often [remote-controlled] FPV drones in the air, you can hear them through the window. Driving around the city is lethally dangerous. There are drones lying in ambush on the roads, too,” he told the BBC.

“You can always hear explosions in the background, plus there are mobile groups firing at drones.”

Over the summer, the number of civilians wounded by Russian attacks on the two cities increased from 70 in June to 212 in August, say Ukrainian police.

Sixteen people died in June, 20 in July and 15 in August.

Residential housing comes under attack as well as infrastructure, says Dyachenko, causing “very significant destruction”.

The number of glide bombs launched by Russia jumped from 40 in June to 109 in July and 92 in August, according to data published by Ukrainian police and studied by the BBC.

One morning two weeks ago, on 25 August, nine glide bombs targeted Kramatorsk. Seven hit civilian apartment blocks, wounding 24 people including a two-month-old baby, Ukrainian police say.

Two days later, it was hit again, this time with seven glide bombs, and five bombs targeted Slovyansk.

Fitted with winglets so they can glide to their target rather than fall, glide bombs are considered one of the most effective and lethal weapons in Russia’s arsenal.

Usually, they weigh 250 or 500 kg, but there have been cases of Russia deploying bombs that weigh 1,500 kg.

“The devastation they cause is simply incredible,” says Dyachenko.

“Glide bombs are the big fear,” another British volunteer, John Auckland Abbey, posted on social media.

“They are silent killers, and when you’ve been abruptly woken by one exploding, you know at least another one will follow. The question you ask yourself as you lie very still in the dark is: will the next one be closer?”

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyz89w59l3o

Ukrainian officials say five people were killed and 67 others were wounded when a Russian drone hit a shopping mall in Pavlohrad, a city in Dnipropetrovsk region.

Shops and vehicles were hit in the daylight attack which took place “when the streets were full of people”, Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said.

Two other shopping malls – in the cities of Zaporizhzhia and Sumy – were targeted by Russian air strikes earlier this week, according to Ukrainian media.

Russia reported a Ukrainian seaborne drone attack on the resort city of Sochi overnight on Wednesday, in which 28 people were wounded, as well as three more deaths blamed on Ukrainian attacks.

A full-scale war has been raging between Russia and Ukraine since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion more than four and a half years ago.

A new peacemaking effort by envoys sent by US President Donald Trump at the weekend appears to have yielded few concrete results, after talks in Moscow with Putin and in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Images released by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine show firefighters directing water hoses at burning vehicles amid clouds of smoke on a street in Pavlohrad.

In a Telegram post, regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha said of the 67 people injured, eight are children.

Zelensky offered his condolences to the families and loved ones of those killed in Thursday’s attack.

“The Russians used drones to kill people who were simply standing near shopping centres,” Ukraine’s president said in his statement.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called the drone attack a “tactic of coercion”. “Russia believes that relentless attacks on civilians can exhaust Ukrainians and force Ukraine into concession,” he said.

Pavlohrad, a logistics hub near the central city of Dnipro, has come under heavy attack previously, with two people killed in an attack on warehouses there last month.

Ukrainian officials say a Russian drone attack on a mall in Sumy on Wednesday killed two people and wounded 20. On Thursday, Russian aerial bombing reportedly injured eight people in Sumy, including three children.

In Zaporizhzhia, capital of the region of the same name which was partially annexed by Russia soon after the invasion, a shopping mall was almost completely destroyed on Monday, its owners reported.

However, it was closed at the time and there were no immediate reports of casualties.

One of the bloodiest attacks on a shopping centre came last month, when Ukrainian officials say Russian drones killed at least 16 people and injured 130 in the city of Kryvyi Rih.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpvelrmp1vmo

It’s no wonder the newly revamped Emirates hospitality suite at Arthur Ashe Stadium is the hottest ticket at the US Open.

Celebs joining the very special Page Six experience with Emirates on Tuesday were treated to the airline’s signature in-flight luxury in a space that is four times larger than standard suites at The Open.

The suite features cream leather seating, woodgrain finishes and quilted booths styled after Emirates’ premium aircraft cabins.

And for the first time on the ground, there is an exact replica of the iconic Airbus A380 sky bar that serves tournament-classic Honey Deuces, champagne and more curated drinks.

Page Six special guests — including model Grace Ann Nader, rappers Latto, Fabolous and Dave East, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” stars Tom Felton and Emmet Smith and more — were treated to the best hospitality in the sky, brought to the US Open, when they joined the suite on Tuesday.

They enjoyed a lavish caviar bar, complete with blinis and all the fixings — all with a perfect view of the thrilling quarterfinal between Aryna Sabalenka and Linda Nosková.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/09/09/entertainment/go-inside-emirates-starry-suite-at-the-2026-us-open/

I was working for New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner when the unthinkable happened on Sept. 11, 2001.

As a death investigator, I would usually go to an apartment or the streets to investigate a homicide, a suicide or an accidental death.

Now it was my job to “work the pile” — that is, to recover and catalog the shattered human remains found in the burning, smoking rubble of the World Trade Center.

I had been at the OCME for nine years and had seen all manner of death.

Nothing could have prepared me for the enormity of this tragedy.

After some months my boss, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Hirsch, called a meeting — even in the maw of death, there must be meetings.

He wanted to brief the city Department of Buildings and the newly formed 9/11 memorial committee about which artifacts would be held for future exhibition: Nothing that might contain the dust of human remains could be released.

It was a moment of tension in the ME’s conference room, as all of us did our best not to dwell on what these artifacts represented in the everyday lives of the dead.

It wasn’t just what was in front of us; it was the loop of news videos that had been imprinted on all our minds over those terrible months.

The worst of them, arguably, were those documenting the people falling out of the buildings’ highest windows, some 100 stories up.

It was impossible to emotionally detach from those lonely tragedies — to stop the thoughts of what those victims may have felt in their last moments.

As Dr. Hirsch spoke about those who died in the impact zone where the planes hit, someone in the group made a reference to “the jumpers, the suicides.”

My boss was always calm and dignified, but at that moment I saw the strain on his face as he tried to maintain his composure.

His anger was palpable.

He put his hands flat on the table in front of him and said, “Never use those words. Never.”

They were pushed out, he explained, by flames and smoke.

Men and women were standing on the sills of the World Trade Center hoping for a miracle rescue, struggling for air to survive.

They were clinging to the window frames, straining toward the sky to draw breath.

Some lost their grip; some were forced to let go.

The terminology matters deeply, because the medical examiner determines the manner of death by strict protocols.

Suicide refers to “death at the hands of oneself with intent to die.”

Homicide is defined as “death at the hands of another.”

It is a fact that terrorists pushed these people to their deaths, murdering them.

Source : https://nypost.com/2026/09/10/opinion/im-an-nyc-death-investigator-fighting-the-lie-of-9-11-jumpers/

The families of 9/11 victims opposed to Zohran Mamdani’s attendance at the 25th anniversary memorial have received celebrity support.

Banging his gavel in the name of respect for the 2,977 lives lost on September 11, 2001, Adam Levy, son of world-renowned Judge Judith “Judy” Sheindlin, and star jurist of forthcoming CBS series “Adam’s Law,” is unabashedly backing the throng of protestors who’ve called for Mamdani’s exclusion from this year’s annual remembrance ceremony at Ground Zero, Friday, at 8:46 a.m.

“Don’t show up at this memorial when you’ve supported radical Islam in the past,” Levy raged to The Post about Hizzoner. “Stand up for what you believe in. Stop talking out of both sides of your mouth.”

The Bronx native, who was a private-practice attorney at the time of the attack, was referring to Mamdani’s controversial support of radicals with anti-American agendas, such as views shared by Aber Kawas.

Kawas — a DSA member and self-described “Muslim civil rights advocate” who once described 9/11 as a terror attack that a “couple people did” — clinched the Democratic nomination for a Queens state Senate seat in June after Mamdani’s enthusiastic support and endorsement.

The NY District Attorney-turned-television host also blasted Mamdani’s anti-Israel agenda as “disgusting.”

“His policies are disgusting. He doesn’t have any business being mayor; he should go back to being a rapper,” Levy, 57, scoffed, referring to Mamdani’s past profession as emcee “Mr. Cardamom.”

The 34-year-old democratic socialist wasted no time revoking city policies supporting the Jewish state and combating hatred against Jews once he was sworn in on New Year’s Day.

The newly minted mayor spent his first day in office retracting an executive order issued by his predecessor, Eric Adams, that barred city officials from boycotting or divesting from Israel.

He also repealed an order that adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which Adams’ administration said included “demonizing Israel and holding it to double standards as forms of contemporary antisemitism.”

A petition for Mamdani’s ban from the 9/11 tribute, launched by Giovanni Galante — whose wife, Grace, 29, was killed during the terrorist attack — cites the mayor’s reluctance to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” and his associations with other controversial individuals like his chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem.

Kassem previously represented an al-Qaeda tanker-bombing pilot.

Protesters marched on City Hall Tuesday, presenting the petition to Kassem’s chief of staff.

“For 9/11 families, this is not simply a public ceremony — it is a deeply personal day of mourning,” reads the Change.org call to action, with nearly 110,000 signatures (and counting).

“The presence of individuals whose words or associations are perceived as conflicting with the solemn purpose of the event risks detracting from that focus and causing additional pain.”

Grieving loved ones, including Galante, plan to completely “ignore” Mamdani, who, despite the demands for his absence, has previously vowed to “proudly honor the families, the survivors, the first responders forever impacted by that horrific terror attack by standing alongside them at this year’s 9/11 commemoration.”

But Levy, who was a private-practice attorney at the time of the attack, said the mayor’s participation in the ceremony will be solely self-serving, rather than respectful.

“I have such little faith in those governing New York City and New York State,” Levy said, also taking aim at Gov. Kathy Hochul.

“Mamdani’s going to do what benefits him, and Hochul is going to do what benefits her. They’re both hypocrites.”

Levy went on to blast Hochul, who is seeking a second full term as governor, as a “coward.”

“She’s got no business running the State of New York. Zero,” he seethed. “Do people feel safer walking down the street or taking the subway?

“They should open up mental health, psychiatric facilities in locations where these government officials live,” he insisted, “rather than letting criminals loose into communities the politicians couldn’t give a damn about.”

Levy’s heart for do-the-right-thing justice, a quality he inherited from his matter-of-fact mama, Sheindlin, 83, is expressed with equal passion on his upcoming courtroom series, debuting Sept. 14.

From the bench, the legal luminary presides over wild cases brought by feuding plaintiffs and defendants, including everything from remorseless romance scammers fleecing their targets out of more than $14,000 to animal lovers defending their pet kangaroos against claims the marsupial bit a neighbor.

Source : https://nypost.com/2026/09/10/lifestyle/9-11-mourners-backed-by-tv-star-in-fight-against-mamdani/

The advertisement sparked massive backlash from Indian-American and Sikh advocacy groups.

The US Department of Homeland Security on Thursday took down an advertisement on self-deportation after it received massive backlash for allegedly targeting the Sikh community. The ad, which asked “Mr Singh” to self-deport, faced criticism from Indian-American groups, as well as, Democratic leaders for its “racist propaganda”.

The AI-generated image on X, which was part of the DHS’ campaign against unlicensed commercial drivers in the US, featured a brown-bearded man. The tagline read: “Get off our roads, you don’t know how to drive Mr Singh.”

Indian diaspora welcomes removal

Indian diaspora advocacy groups welcomed the removal of the advertisement. “The DHS has now removed the post we called out yesterday. We welcome its removal. But when a federal agency uses a racialised caricature of an Indian/Sikh man to make a political point, taking the post down is only the first step,” Hindu American Foundation said, as quoted by news agency PTI.

This is disgusting.

Trump’s government is trafficking in racist propaganda targeting the Sikh community. https://t.co/LUX5fOLfMA

— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) September 10, 2026

Sharing a screenshot of the Transformers-style advertisement, which has now been pulled down, California governor Gavin Newsom slammed the DHS, saying, “This is disgusting. Trump’s government is trafficking in racist propaganda targeting the Sikh community.”

The DHS responded to the pushback with another post on truck driver Harjinder Singh, who was arrested last year after three people were killed in an accident caused due to an illegal U-turn.

Hey Gavin, YOU gave him his CDL and then he killed three people with his tractor-trailer. https://t.co/zqWfOZG1Hk

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) September 10, 2026

Hitting back at the California governor, the DHS caption said, “Hey Gavin, YOU gave him (Harjinder Singh) his CDL and then he killed three people with his tractor-trailer.”

California senator Adam Schiff called out the Trump administration and termed the DHS advertising campaign “hateful, disgraceful and un-American”.

“The administration and DHS make no effort to hide their obvious bigotry, casting suspicion on millions of Americans based on their background and appearance, in this case, the Sikh community,” he wrote on X.

Sikh, Hindu advocacy groups hit out

Several advocacy groups, including Hindu American Foundation, Sikh Coalition, Hindu Action and Coalition of Hindus of North America, hit out at the “un-American and racist” advertisement.

“Singhs are Hindu, they are Sikhs, they are American and they drive. Racist, un-American, anti-Indian profiling/trolling by @DHSgov should shock our nation’s collective conscience,” Hindu American Foundation (HAF) said in a post on X.

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/trump-admin-takes-down-mr-singh-self-deportation-ad-after-backlash-over-racism-us-dhs-immigration-crackdown-101789090959373.html

A week after his robot outran humanity’s fastest man, Jack Guo is already chasing a harder goal.
TianGong Ultra stunned spectators at the ​World Humanoid Robot Games when it covered 100 metres in 8.64 seconds, almost a full second faster than Usain Bolt’s world record. Behind the feat were days of round-the-clock testing and repairing ‌battered robots between races.

“When it started smoothly and got past 50 metres, that was when I finally relaxed,” said Guo, who leads development of Ultra and Omni, a smaller model used in 400m races, at the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Centre, known as X-Humanoid.

Just a week later, the bespectacled 34-year-old engineer is already focused on a bigger challenge.
“We want to turn high performance into high reliability and high usability,” he told Reuters in his first interview with foreign media.
The record-breaking run offers a rare window into China’s growing lead in humanoid ​robotics, where state-backed research, deep supply chains and intense competition are accelerating advances in machine mobility. Yet Guo’s next goal underscores a harder task facing the industry as it struggles to turn dazzling demonstrations into useful ​workers.
INSIDE THE WORKSHOP
X-Humanoid sits in Yizhuang, a high-tech development zone in Beijing’s southeast and one of China’s main robotics clusters. Long home to automakers, the district now boasts ⁠a robot sales centre and even a robot-themed restaurant, part of the capital’s push to showcase the industry.

The first-floor showroom traces generations of TianGong robots, including one that still wears the vest from a winning half-marathon run last ​year.
On the ninth floor, white Ultra and Omni humanoids stand suspended in metal frames. One wears a red “Champion TianGong” headband.
During a Reuters visit, engineers repaired and tested robots, with one removing a head cover, another tightening a leg, and others ​running walking trials.
In the adjoining office, Guo’s team develops software before testing it on physical machines.
Established in November 2023, X-Humanoid is backed by state-owned and private investors including robotics firm UBTech <9880.HK >, along with domestic tech giants Xiaomi (1810.HK), opens new tab and Baidu (9888.HK), opens new tab. It develops hardware, motion-control software and AI for the wider industry while commercialising its own robots.

X-Humanoid has not disclosed how many of its own robots it has sold or deployed commercially.
Its customers include universities, research institutes and companies exploring industrial applications. At Foton Cummins’ engine factory in Beijing, the company’s ​robots have been trialled moving boxes, with its Tianyi 2.0 robot lifting 8-12 kg boxes onto shelves in what the factory described as an early-stage exploration.
USEFUL WORK BEGINS
Ultra was not originally designed to win a race. It started ​as an experiment to push the boundaries of humanoid movement.
Guo likens today’s humanoids to the earliest cars: first make them controllable, then pair reliable bodies with smarter AI “brains” capable of handling complex tasks on their own.
He said the immediate challenge was making the ‌robot body ⁠and movement-control system stable and reliable for everyday use. Developing the AI needed for more complex autonomous tasks would take longer.

Making a robot run develops generalized mobility, improving its ability to cope with different terrain.
The smaller Omni has already shown what that can mean in practice. In an internal test this year, it climbed from the first floor to the 17th floor of X-Humanoid’s headquarters.
Guo expects smaller humanoids to find early roles in commercial services and light industry, while Ultra could eventually perform outdoor inspection or emergency rescue.
One major challenge is braking. Ultra weighs 75kg and at top speed can exceed 17 metres per second. At the Games, a crash mat sat beyond a short run-off area, leaving sprinting ​robots in the 100m races to slam into the barrier.
Future ​versions could be lighter, brake harder and adopt ⁠a safer posture, Guo said.
CONQUERING SPEED
Ultra arrived at the Games armed with three running strategies trained in simulation. One was battle-tested, two faster on paper but less proven.
Each strategy is a trained motion-control system that continuously adjusts joints and balance, allowing the robot to sprint upright without an operator directing every step.
Ultra used a different program in each race, running ​9.39 seconds in the preliminary, 8.86 in the semifinal, and 8.64 in the final.
Between races, engineers returned to their test site to push faster programs harder and ​adjust navigation and running controls. Engineers ⁠pulled several all-nighters, sometimes testing into the following day before returning to the venue.
Pushed to their limits, robots stumbled, lost balance and crashed, forcing teams to roll out backup machines while repair crews scrambled to fix the damaged ones.
Earlier in development, the breakdowns were even more dramatic. “Legs broke, waists broke,” Guo said.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/after-outrunning-bolt-chinas-robot-champion-races-towards-real-world-work-2026-09-10/

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a visit to Ecuador on ​Wednesday that he would seek $45 million in additional security funding for the Latin American country, as well as additional equipment, to help tackle drug ‌trafficking.
Rubio met with Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa during a swing through three Latin American countries with leaders closely aligned with U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration’s effort to reassert U.S. dominance in the region.

Speaking after their meeting, Rubio said Washington was increasingly working with Noboa’s government to crack down on drug trafficking organizations, including with joint strikes on boats believed to be used by drug smugglers.
“These are not ordinary groups. Clearly, ​they engage in common crime, but they have terrorist capabilities across the region, and that must be confronted. They must be dismantled, they must be defeated, ​and we are committed to doing that,” Rubio said.
Rubio on Wednesday designated the Ecuador-based gang Los Tiguerones as a foreign terrorist organization, ⁠after similar designations were made against two other Ecuador-based gangs last year. The State Department said the group was linked to narcotrafficking and other illicit activity, including the live ​takeover of an Ecuadorean TV station in 2024.

Rubio said the U.S. would also be imposing sanctions on seven former Ecuadorean officials accused of bribery.
The Trump administration would ask Congress for $45 million to fund ​new commitments for Ecuador, as well as a $10 million initiative targeting illegal gold mining, gang recruitment and illicit finance, Rubio said.
He said the U.S. would deliver a 110-foot Coast Guard cutter and five interceptor vessels for the country’s navy, in addition to seven already delivered to Ecuador this year for the fight against maritime drug trafficking.
Trump has in the past praised Noboa, who took office in 2023 vowing ​a crackdown on violence stemming from Ecuador’s increasing role as a drug transit hub. Rights advocates have raised concerns the heavy-handed approach has only created more chaos.
Rubio on Tuesday made a ​similar promise of more security engagement in neighboring Colombia, where he met newly inaugurated right-wing President Abelardo De La Aspriella, who had received Trump’s endorsement.

The U.S. pledges come as part of renewed ‌engagement in ⁠Latin America that the Trump administration has described as a revamp of the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which asserted U.S. primacy across the Americas but which critics associate with decades of U.S. intervention.
Rubio’s trip to Latin America coincided with Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas, where the Republican president hopes to energize core supporters and help the party hold onto its congressional majorities despite polls showing he is broadly unpopular, largely due to the Iran war and the deepening cost of living crisis.
BOAT STRIKES
Rubio, speaking to reporters in Quito, acknowledged that ​the U.S. campaign to strike suspected drug ​trafficking boats had shifted to joint strikes ⁠with Ecuador, and said decisions on targeting were made on a “strike-by-strike” basis and with the cooperation of Ecuador.

“Our goal is not to go after fishermen. Our goal is to go after drug traffickers,” he said in response to questions about criticism over the campaign.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/rubio-says-he-will-seek-45-million-security-funding-ecuador-2026-09-09/

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s plane was almost hit by a drone while taking off from Moldova, Norwegian PM Jonas Gahr Støre told NRK.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s plane was almost hit by a drone while taking off from Moldova, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre told NRK. Zelenskyy travelled to Oslo from Moldova on Tuesday evening to attend the funeral of King Harald on Wednesday. Støre said the incident highlighted the dramatic situation the Ukrainian president continues to face amid the war.

“His plane was almost hit by a drone as it was taking off from Moldova. That is the reality he is facing,” Støre told NRK.

Prime Minister’s Office did not provide more information about the incident.

Makkah Pact To Kick In? Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Discuss Joint Response Amid Houthi Attacks

Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are discussing a joint response to escalating Houthi attacks, with Islamabad signalling that the Makkah defence pact could be activated if the attacks on Saudi Arabia continue, a top security source in Rawalpindi told CNN-News18 on Wednesday.

The source said Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir’s office has established contacts with Riyadh and Ankara as the three countries work on a strategic response.

“How and when to respond” was discussed by senior military officials from Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the source said, adding that Pakistan is “prepared to stand by Saudi Arabia under the joint defence agreement and Makkah pact”.

Makkah Pact In Focus

The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, signed on August 7, is a collective security pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan. It provides that an armed attack on any one of the three countries is treated as an attack on all three.

According to the security source, the pact could be activated if Houthi strikes continue, with Pakistan’s Air Force and infantry already on standby in Saudi Arabia.

Pakistan’s naval assets and forces have also been moved to the Red Sea, the source claimed.

The source added that “broader military strategy” discussions are underway, with further meetings between senior Saudi, Turkish and Pakistani military officials scheduled.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/makkah-pact-to-kick-in-pakistan-turkey-saudi-discuss-joint-response-amid-houthi-attacks-exclusive-ws-l-10319469.html

Saima Wazed’s resignation came after she was placed on unpaid administrative leave last year amid fraud and forgery investigations by the UN agency.

Saima Wazed, daughter of ousted Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has resigned as the World Health Organization’s Southeast Asia regional director amid fraud and forgery investigations by the UN agency and Bangladeshi authorities.

Wazed’s resignation came after she was placed on unpaid administrative leave by the WHO last year. She had taken charge as regional director in early 2024 for a five-year term.

In her resignation letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, sent on Wednesday, Wazed said she had “lost all trust and confidence” in his leadership after being prevented from carrying out her duties.

“I was elected to the position of Regional Director in order to serve the countries in my region, which I had sincerely done,” Wazed said in her resignation letter to Tedros. “Since you continue to prevent me from effectively carrying out my duties, I have lost all trust and confidence in your leadership of WHO.”

“Moreover, after nearly one year without any remuneration following your decision to place me on unpaid leave, my financial situation has become untenable. In these circumstances, I am choosing to step aside,” she added.

Allegations And Wazed’s Defence

Wazed was first placed on leave in July 2025 after Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission filed charges against her in March that year alleging fraud and forgery.

According to a letter from her lawyers to the WHO, the agency accused Wazed of financial fraud linked to travel to China and of misrepresenting her academic credentials. Wazed has denied the allegations.

She said the travel issue involved an administrative error by an assistant handling routine reimbursement requests and concerned $901.

On the academic credentials allegation, Wazed said she holds an honorary doctorate for her work on autism in Bangladesh and had been transparent with Tedros about the qualification.

The WHO also alleged that she had illegally acquired a plot of land in Bangladesh. Wazed said she obtained the property before joining the WHO and was entitled to it under Bangladeshi law covering the families of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, her grandfather and Bangladesh’s founding leader.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/sheikh-hasinas-daughter-saima-wazed-resigns-as-who-regional-chief-amid-fraud-charges-ws-l-10319565.html

President Donald Trump said Wednesday he believes the Iran war will end “immediately” after the United States votes in midterm elections in November.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday he believes the Iran war will end “immediately” after the United States votes in midterm elections in November.

“I think the war will end immediately after the election” because Iran “can’t hold out any longer,” Trump told journalists, accusing Tehran of being “desperate to try and affect” the vote.

However, the Wall Street Journal quoted US officials saying that Trump’s top advisers are privately warning that the war could drag on through the remaining two years of his term.

Nuclear referral

As Washington tries to choke off Iran economically, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors on Wednesday voted to refer Iran to the UN Security Council over its nuclear “non-compliance”, in a diplomatic move that piles pressure on Tehran.

The resolution seen by AFP was adopted by a 23-3 vote with eight abstentions, they said. Russia, China and Niger voted against it.

Iran’s representative to the UN nuclear watchdog said the resolution was passed under US pressure, saying it “has no basis and will not bring any results”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his claim Iran was about to collapse.

“The main task is to bring down the terror regime in Iran. We are very close to that,” he said Wednesday on a troop visit in southern Syria, where Israel has occupied what it calls a “security zone”.

Tanker strikes

The latest round of US-Iran fighting was triggered after American forces destroyed five Iranian oil tankers Tuesday, with the US military saying it “directed the crews to abandon ship” before hitting the vessels.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/donald-trump-says-iran-war-will-end-immediately-after-us-midterm-votes-12025426?pfrom=home-ndtvworld_world_top_scroll

US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin wants to make a deal to end Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he had a “great” conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier in the week and that the Russian leader wanted to make a deal to end the war in Ukraine.

“He is wanting to make a deal, and if (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskiy is wanting to make a deal, that’d be very nice,” Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One en route to Dallas for the Republican National Convention.

Trump spoke over the phone with Putin on Tuesday, shortly after US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, returned from a diplomatic swing through Moscow and Kyiv. The duo, who are in charge of most major peace negotiations for the US, discussed potential proposals to bring the war to a close.

Last month, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe met with intelligence officials in Moscow, in part to encourage Russian officials to end their invasion.

Despite those efforts and Trump’s statements, intelligence officials in the US, Ukraine and throughout Europe continue to doubt Putin is seriously interested in ending his ongoing war, now in its fourth year.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/trump-says-russias-putin-wants-to-make-ukraine-war-deal-12025406?pfrom=home-ndtvworld_world_top_scroll

The fire aboard the M/V June Aster broke out Wednesday evening about 2.2 kilometres (1.3 miles) offshore, the coast guard said, adding that five casualties had been brought ashore.

At least five people were killed and 87 remain unaccounted for after a fire erupted aboard a ferry near a tourist hotspot in the Philippine province of Palawan, the coast guard said Thursday.

The fire aboard the M/V June Aster broke out Wednesday evening about 2.2 kilometres (1.3 miles) offshore, the coast guard said, adding that five casualties had been brought ashore.

Video shared by the coast guard on Facebook showed the vessel completely engulfed in flames.

“Based on the data we have right now on rescued (42) and the casualties, we still have 87 people who are unaccounted for,” coast guard Captain Noemi Cayabyab told a local radio station on Thursday, adding the ship’s manifest had listed 134 passengers and crew.

“Just to make it clear, this is live data and may change as our search and rescue operations are ongoing,” she said.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/5-dead-over-80-missing-as-ferry-catches-fire-in-philippines-12025838?pfrom=home-ndtvworld_world_top_scroll

The mother of a black woman whose body was found hanging from a tree in Jackson, Mississippi, has told the BBC she is still waiting for answers from officials more than a month later.

Her demands have been echoed by a community in the southern US state that has been left shocked and angry.

After weeks of silence, police on Tuesday confirmed for the first time that they were investigating the death of Tasia Fortune, 29, as a potential homicide – while clarifying that her official cause of death has yet to be confirmed.

Authorities discovered Fortune’s body on 3 August, hanging from a tree in the lot of an abandoned home.

Local concern over her death has been heightened by the fact that the state has a dark history of racial violence and lynchings.

The majority-black city has been left on edge. As the question lingers as to how Fortune died, petitions online signed by tens of thousands of people have called for more transparency, and members of US Congress have asked for federal intervention.

“It’s making me angry,” Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, said. “What is the hold up?”

Spivey described desperate attempts to understand the status of the investigation and how multiple enquiries to police had gone unanswered.

The first update she had received from authorities in weeks came in a public city meeting on Tuesday evening as Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney discussed the case and said the department “has been investigating this case from day one as a homicide”.

Brackney, in a statement to the BBC, elaborated and said the department always treats any pending death case as a “potential homicide” so that crucial evidence is not lost as police wait on autopsy results.

The department, though, had only previously described the case as a death investigation.

Tuesday’s statement from Brackney said “we are conducting the investigation at the highest appropriate level while we await the medical examiner’s findings”, which would include an official cause and manner of death.

The medical examiner’s office said it would not comment on the pending case.

Spivey last saw her daughter alive on 26 July, when Fortune had travelled from Mississippi, where she had lived for roughly the last decade, to Kentucky, where Spivey lives, for a family reunion.

The next time she saw her daughter – in a funeral home, days before her burial – she could barely look at her body.

“I didn’t look straight at her. Her daddy did,” she said. “I kind of looked from the side.”

Spivey remembered their last conversation. “She was talking about, you know, maybe even coming home,” she explained.

Fortune’s death has left the community concerned that racial violence in Mississippi could be on the rise again. And in the absence of concrete details about the case, their suspicions are left to fester.

Fortune’s death was the third incident in Mississippi in less than a year where police found someone dead and hanged from a tree.

The other two bodies – one black male, one white – were discovered in September 2025, on the exact same day.

Both were ruled a suicide, though the mother of one of the deceased – Trey Reed – contests those findings.

Fed-up residents have launched an online petition, which has gathered more than 50,000 signatures, for an independent investigation into the state’s chief medical examiner, Dr Staci Turner, over the handling of a recent spate of cases involving people of colour. Another petition asks for the FBI to launch an investigation into Fortune’s death

The BBC has asked Turner for comment.

Jackson City Councilman Kenneth Stokes has also expressed concerns about the police investigation, saying he’d been outside the home where Fortune was thought to have lived multiple times and has never seen officers.

“All cases are important, but this one – a hanging in Mississippi – should rise to the top of the food chain,” Stokes said.

He told the BBC he sent letters to both federal prosecutors at the Mississippi US attorney’s office and the FBI weeks ago, urging that the investigation was “in dire need of assistance”. He has yet to hear back from either.

“Nothing from nobody,” Stokes said. “It’s like nobody cares.”

The BBC has reached out to the Mississippi US attorney’s office and the local FBI office for comment.

US Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett has similarly requested federal intervention. In a letter to the US Department of Justice, she asked for an investigation into recent deaths in Mississippi – including that of Tasia Fortune – calling them “possible cases of modern-day lynchings”. She cited the state’s “appalling historical reputation of violent terrorism against black Americans”.

In addition to Mississippi, there have been multiple other cases nationally of black Americans found hanged from trees, including four in North Carolina this year alone. Three were ruled a suicide. An autopsy is pending for the fourth death.

The BBC has reached out to the justice department for comment.

Stokes is clear that he does not know whether Fortune’s death was a lynching, or whether race played a part at all. Nor does he care. He just wants answers.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgwydke178o

A private hospital’s failure to provide preventative medication contributed to the death of Lady Joan Branson, an inquest has concluded.

The 80-year-old, who was married to Sir Richard Branson, died on 24 November last year after suffering a cardiac arrest at the private Lister Hospital in Chelsea, west London.

Senior coroner Professor Fiona Wilcox told Westminster Coroner’s Court on Wednesday that Lady Joan did not receive prophylactic anticoagulants at the hospital despite a “very high risk of developing deep vein thrombosis”.

“I do find her death would have likely been prevented and the lack of anticoagulation did cause or contribute to her death probably,” she said.

The coroner’s court heard that Lady Joan was admitted to the hospital on 17 November after a fall weeks earlier on Necker Island, a British Virgin Island owned by her billionaire husband.

She died after suffering a pulmonary embolism, a sudden, dangerous blockage in a lung artery, resulting from deep vein thrombosis.

Haematologist Dr George Adams told the inquest that Lady Joan was “extremely high risk” for blood clots and the “biggest risk factor by far was her immobility and her fracture”.

From her hospital admission to her death, Glasgow-born Lady Joan did not receive any prophylactic anticoagulation, which is used to stop blood clots from forming.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y7k9n7exyo

Dianna Russini will return to work this NFL season, but not without addressing the elephant in the room first.

A source familiar with the situation told Page Six this week that the former Athletic journalist, who resigned from her position in April amid an investigation into her relationship with New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel, will share her side of the scandal upon taking her next job.

Russini, 43, hopes to speak on the matter and move past it once and for all, the source added.

The exact timeline for her comeback remains unclear, but a debut by the start of Week 1 — which kicks off Wednesday night with a Super Bowl LX rematch between the Seattle Seahawks and Vrabel’s Patriots — is unlikely.

The source noted that Russini continues to mull offers from several outlets, and it’s possible she accepts more than one gig.

Russini, the source continued, was inundated with interview requests from major networks, podcasts and even reality television shows as the scandal unfolded, but she rejected them all in favor of speaking on her own terms at the right time.

As for how Russini will be received within the league, the source was adamant that most NFL owners, coaches, staffers and players have been supportive and pulling for her return.

The scandal came to light after Page Six published photos on April 7 of Russini and Vrabel, 51, holding hands, hugging and lounging by a pool at a lavish resort in Sedona, Arizona, in late March.

Since then, more instances of the two hanging out surfaced — including one night at a New York City bar, where an eyewitness snapped pictures of them kissing six years before the Arizona trip.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/09/08/celebrity-news/details-of-dianna-russinis-sports-media-comeback-revealed/

AWAY from the cameras and courthouse frenzy surrounding Lindsay Clancy’s sensational murder trial, I saw firsthand how the deaths of three young children had shattered a tight-knight community.

The killer mom’s case was inescapable almost as soon as I arrived in Massachusetts.

Shopkeepers, waitresses and even staff at the Hertz rental desk wanted to discuss the evidence and extraordinary attention surrounding the case, while several were frustrated by the wild internet conspiracy theories engulfing Clancy’s ex-husband Patrick.

I spent nearly two weeks covering the final stages of the trial, moving between Plymouth Superior Court and Duxbury, where the tragedy unfolded.

Once in the state, I headed straight to the courthouse and got there just minutes before Clancy’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, emerged to face a mob of reporters.

The scene was far more controlled than the frenzy it would become.

I’d already watched Reddington’s distinctive Boston “side-bahs” go viral, turning the veteran lawyer into an unlikely internet celebrity with memes.

Later, as the crowd thinned, I muscled in for some one-on-one questions as he walked towards his distinctive green Ford Bronco, its personalized “NG” plate shorthand for “not guilty.”

But some of the moments that stayed with me most happened away from the courthouse, on the quiet streets of Duxbury, where I pulled up as close as I could to the Clancys’ former home.

I had to park half a mile away and trek across the grass, with only rustling trees and the occasional car breaking the silence.

I’d seen countless photographs of the house, but seeing it in person was completely different.

The large New England-style property sat behind a sprawling lawn and trees, but my thoughts immediately went to the basement where three young children had been strangled with exercise bands.

It made me feel sick to my stomach.

The house had already been sold a year after the murders, but standing there, it was impossible not to picture the ambulances and police descending on the street on January 24, 2023.

How could anyone make that room feel ordinary again?

Following the case from afar could sometimes feel like watching a Netflix documentary before one had even been made, complete with viral clips, memes, and competing theories.

But looking at the house, all of that suddenly fell away.

I then walked the neighborhood, speaking to people who had actually lived through what happened, including Mark Shortt, 62, who lives two doors down.

His neighbor’s son was among those who saw Clancy after she jumped from the second-floor window, and Shortt told me he believed she was severely mentally ill and belonged in a psychiatric hospital rather than prison.

A new homeowner whose property backed onto the house was unnerved to learn its history, until Shortt reassured him that serious crime was rare in Duxbury, where even a bar fight was unusual.

From the neighboring properties, I could see through the trees what appeared to be the eerie remains of children’s play equipment near the garden, as well as the window from which Clancy jumped.

Across the road, Ruth Hearson, 81, recalled four ambulances arriving that night and initially believing there had been carbon monoxide poisoning.

I also approached paramedics who were friendly but unable to talk, and watched the blood drain from their faces when I mentioned the trial, a clear sign of how deeply what they had witnessed still affected them.

Hearson told me some first responders had been traumatized: “The police, they were all traumatized. Coming down, seeing the babies, and some of them couldn’t go back to work.”

Most people I spoke to felt Clancy belonged in hospital rather than prison, but one woman opposite the house stood out, looking visibly disturbed as I asked questions.

She said: “I don’t have good feelings about her [Clancy], and what she did. I just want it over with. I don’t want to see her face anymore.”

Like the lone juror who would ultimately prevent a unanimous verdict, she was the exception.

I visited Kingsbury Club & Spa, where the children had gone swimming days before their deaths, and other places around Duxbury, finding many people following the case closely and believing Clancy was not criminally responsible.

As deliberations dragged on in Plymouth, the chaos outside the courthouse intensified, with Clancy supporters booing prosecutors and clashing with protesters.

When Reddington emerged each day, it was the biggest media scrum many of us had ever seen, as I fought to keep my microphone near him while trying not to fall into a concrete trash receptacle.

By the final day, the jurors looked like they had run a marathon and still had miles to go, having been sent back repeatedly to deliberate as they remained deadlocked.

When the judge read out their last message saying “with a heavy heart” that they were still unable to reach a unanimous verdict, the courtroom fell silent.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/16962361/lindsay-clancy-murder-trial-first-hand-experience/

THE husband of a woman killed in the 9/11 terror attacks will refuse to look New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani in the eye at this Friday’s emotionally charged 25th commemoration ceremony.

Giovanni Galante’s wife Grace was one of the 2,977 people killed in 2001 when al-Qaida terrorists hijacked four passenger planes, crashing two into the World Trade Center in Manhattan, another into the Pentagon and a fourth in Pennsylvania.

Galante told The U.S. Sun that when Mamdani was elected mayor earlier this year, he launched a petition calling for the Democrat to stay away from the 9/11 memorial.

The Change.org petition has now passed 100,000 signatures, as opposition to Mamdani’s planned attendance has grown ahead of Friday’s ceremony.

Galante believes New York City’s first Muslim mayor should not attend the commemoration.

Mamdani has previously spoken about the discrimination faced by Muslim Americans following the attacks.

He told The New York Times last year that September 11 marked a point when many Muslim New Yorkers were treated as outsiders.

Criticism has also centered on Mamdani’s appointment of Ramzi Kassem as the city’s top lawyer.

Critics have pointed to Kassem’s previous representation of a convicted al-Qaida operative whose brother-in-law was among the hijackers aboard the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

Galante said he has no interest in confronting Mamdani at the memorial.

“We haven’t spoken to the mayor’s office. I don’t want to talk to him — he knows how we feel,” Galante told The U.S. Sun.

“Do you want to talk to someone who is going to lie to your face? I don’t know how to be fake. You have to be like an actor and these people are performing.

“If he is there I won’t look at him. The politicians are in a corner, they can’t get to us and we can’t get to them.

“I won’t talk to him. I know what I know, he knows what he knows, we all have the same feeling. There is no reason to be in a circus.”

Galante said nothing Mamdani could say would change his mind.

“I don’t have the political power to keep him at home,” he said.

“I am just asking as civilians and people who had people who were murdered. Can he, if he has a heart, and sees 97k on the petition, maybe he should take it into consideration?

“Maybe he thought that he didn’t have to be there.

“If he did say that, I would have more respect for him. It would show that yes, maybe he does have feelings for us. I will step back and that is perfect.

“The best thing he can do is stay home and it would be a relief for all of us. It’s not an easy day. It is draining.”

Mamdani has made clear he has no intention of staying away.

The mayor said earlier this week that he plans to attend the main ceremony as well as several other events marking the anniversary of the attacks.

“I’m proud to be the mayor of this city. I love this city. I love this country,” Mamdani said.

“What I want this week to be a focus on is on the families whose loved ones were stolen from them 25 years ago in the horrific act of terror of September 11th, and a focus also on the first responders who gave everything they could to this city and to the people who came together to try and help their fellow New Yorkers.”

The U.S. Sun contacted Mamdani’s office for comment but had not received a response.

Galante, however, is not alone in opposing Mamdani’s attendance.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has also called on the mayor to skip the ceremony.

Speaking to Newsmax, Giuliani said Mamdani’s presence would offend him because he lost friends in the attacks and remained close to many victims’ families.

Asked whether Mamdani should attend, Giuliani said there was “no question” that he should not.

Mamdani revealed earlier this week that newly released documents suggest New York City officials may have withheld or downplayed information about the toxic air residents were exposed to in the aftermath of the attacks.

He released more than 170,000 pages of previously unavailable records Tuesday morning, just days before the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The animosity towards his attendance on Friday, however, remains.

Former New York Governor George Pataki, who was governor when the attacks took place, told City & State that Mamdani should not attend unless he distances himself from views Pataki described as extremist.

He specifically cited Mamdani’s association with online commentator Hasan Piker.

Mamdani condemned Piker’s comments about the 2001 attacks during a mayoral debate last year, although the two have continued to associate.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman has also called for protesters to turn their Fbacks on the Mayor if he attends.

But Galante’s opposition to Mamdani is rooted in a loss that remains as raw as ever.

Grace, who worked for a mortgage company, was in her office on the 105th floor at the World Trade Center on that fateful morning.

Just two days earlier, Grace surprised him with tickets to a Michael Jackson concert at Madison Square Garden.

“It was the best gig of my life,” Galante said.

That morning, Grace arrived at work at around 8:45am, as she did every day.

She would normally contact her family straight away, to let them know she had arrived.

That call never came.

“I worked for Con Edison at the time and my colleague mentioned that a plane had struck the building,” Galante said.

“He said, ‘You should go down there,’ because he knew my wife worked there.”

Galante took what he said was the last train into the area.

“Once I got out, we knew what was happening,” he continued. “You are scared, you don’t know how you will feel.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/16976585/mayor-mamdani-9-11-memorial-giovanni-galante/

Harry Styles is under fire for artwork on a ticket for his Together, Together Tour that contains an eerie nod to Sept. 11 — just two days before the 25th anniversary on Friday.

A social media user shared the image of the ticket, which depicts a yellow car — seemingly with Styles in the vehicle — flying over the Empire State Building and leaving a trail across the iconic New York City landmark’s spire.

The ticket in question is for Wednesday, Sept. 9, the seventh night of Styles’ tour stop at Madison Square Garden.

TONIGHTS TICKET https://t.co/6RkS6hkOnY

— cove 💋🪩 (@familyshowstyle) September 9, 2026

“putting that on the back the week of 9/11 is f–king insane 😭 it’s cute but i fear that was not a good idea,” one person wrote of the artwork, with another noting, “A little bold given its 9/11 week in NYC.”

“bro that’s wild,” a netizen wrote, with another chiming in, “literally who approved this 😭?”

Page Six has reached out to Styles’ representatives for comment.

This ticket fiasco comes as NYC is preparing to mourn the nearly 3,000 lives lost when the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed after two commercial airlines flew into them on Sept. 11, 2001.

The collective 9/11 attacks are the deadliest terrorist attack in United States history.

Styles is currently midway through a 30-night residency at Madison Square Garden that kicked off Aug. 26 and run through Halloween on Oct. 31.

He’s already performed in Amsterdam, London, São Paulo and Mexico City.

He’ll head to Australia for shows in Melbourne and Sydney after wrapping up his time in NYC — his only stop in the United States on his Together, Together Tour.

The tour is Styles’ third solo tour since his split from One Direction and is in support of his fourth studio album, 2026’s “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.”

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/09/09/celebrity-news/fans-outraged-at-harry-styles-over-insane-nyc-concert-ticket-with-eerie-nod-to-9-11/

 

President Trump headlined the Republican Party’s first-ever midterm convention Wednesday night, boasting about his record and offering every American $5,000 if Republicans hold control of Congress in the Nov. 3 election.

Trump implored listeners to “pretend that I’m on the ballot” so he can “finish the job” —presenting a stark choice between “radical left communists” and a continuation of his populist agenda.

The president offered Americans a major financial incentive to stick with him in what he called the “best part” of his energetic barnstorming-style 107-minute speech.

“If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our tremendous economic success… I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000,” Trump said.

The concept was “very much like a successful company will do a cash distribution to its shareholders,” he said.

“We’re going to give you that Trump dividend to $5,000 if we win, and we’re going to win.”

It’s unclear if the idea would pass muster with fiscal conservatives — as it would add more than $1.2 trillion to the already surging $40 trillion national debt.

In 2020, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blocked Trump’s request for $2,000 COVID-19 stimulus checks and made the sum $600 due to fear that printing so much money would devalue the currency.

President Joe Biden later approved the additional $1,400 — with critics saying it fueled an inflation crisis, which peaked at an annual rate of 9.1% in June 2022.

Other Trump-proposed direct payments haven’t been implemented, including plans last year for dividends funded with tariffs and cost savings from the DOGE drive to slash the federal bureaucracy.

Trump vowed a blizzard of new legislation for Republicans to pass in his final two years in office, including bills to end surprise medical billing, require hospital price transparency, slash fees that credit card companies charge on purchases, end state-level cashless bail policies and apply the death penalty for large-scale drug dealers.

He said he would continue to push for stalled national voter ID rules, continue to boost domestic energy production, make permanent his new tax cuts on tips, overtime and Social Security payments and pass legislation barring future presidents from returning to more lax Biden-era border policies.

“Your vote will decide whether our country stumbles at the starting gate of the next 250 years or surges forward and never ever looks back,” Trump told thousands of attendees inside the American Airlines Center, home to the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks.

He also toyed with renaming New Mexico “New America” and renaming the Strait of Hormuz after himself.

“Vote Republican and we will leave the world in our dust for generations to come,” Trump said.

“We hand America’s future to the radical left Democrats, and our nation will spend the next decade just getting back on its feet,” he warned.

“I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot — just one more time, because if we lose, you’re going to lose your border, you’re going to lose your tax cuts, you’re going to lose your safety and security, you’re going to lose your wealth.”

Trump urged voters to consider that the Iran war is dragging on — harming Republicans with higher inflation and gas prices — because Tehran is “hoping that we lose so they can deal with dumb, weak Democrats and they can have their nuclear bomb.”

He predicted the conflict would end shortly after the Nov. 3 vote, causing oil prices to plummet.

‘Sick cloud over our country’

Trump said he plans to campaign at least once in all states with competitive House and Senate races to defend his agenda — and dispel the “sick cloud” of “communism,” especially in the 35 most hotly contested House races.

He interjected colorful attacks on various Democratic candidates, particularly those in Senate races, including James Talarico in Texas, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Roy Cooper in North Carolina.

Cooper, he said, should see his support plunge, likening him to 1988 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis for allowing an “animal” repeat criminal offender to roam free before murdering Iryna Zarutska on public transit last year.

Playing comedian-in-chief, Trump noted that Talarico once promoted vegetarianism with a campaign called “beat meat,” humorously adding to laughter, “I don’t know what the hell he meant by that.”

El-Sayed, he said, was an “extremist” whose sister “celebrated the terrorist slaughter of babies on October 7th” and whose mother “worked for an organization that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to people that follow Osama bin Laden.”

Trump spoke after Republicans cheered on five hours of warm-up acts, including up-and-coming congressional candidates and cabinet secretaries — competing with the opening night of the NFL season as the New England Patriots faced the Seattle Seahawks in a Super Bowl rematch.

“There is a crazy little sick cloud over our country,” Trump said, leaning into the event’s effort to link Democrats writ large with self-declared socialists who won a number of upsets in primary races this year.

“I really believe it’s not going anywhere, but we have to make sure because we will defeat communism in America and vote for American freedom.”

He spoke as Republicans court moderate voters and Hispanics, a voting bloc that polls show is drifting after surging support to Trump’s 2024 campaign, which pressed hard on an anti-socialist message and promises to tame inflation and illegal border crossings.

Fetterman, underwear pic shock attendees

The hastily planned “Trump-a-palooza” made good on hints of surprises.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) appeared in a video denouncing “the extremes and socialism and that anti-American way of life” and praising Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), as speculation mounts that he will switch parties.

Jumbo-screens also shockingly showed a half-naked selfie of anti-Israel commentator Hasan Piker — a close ally of Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. The radical streamer’s tight blue underwear was blurred to obscure the still-visible anatomical contours underneath.

Justin Gaethje, the UFC fighter who won the headline match at the cage match on the White House lawn in June, appeared minutes ahead of Trump, saying the president “took the world by storm, similar to my chances on June 14” and praised the “leader who treats every day like I treated my fight that night.”

“Your next fight is the only one that matters,” he said. “We have to get out and vote… We risk getting knocked out.”

The 21,000-person arena swelled with guests ahead of Trump’s speech, though hundreds of nosebleed seats remained available.

Source : https://nypost.com/2026/09/09/us-news/trump-tells-rnc-midterm-convention-he-must-finish-the-job-lays-out-plan-for-next-two-years-of-gop-control/

President Donald Trump’s administration resumed processing immigrant visa applications from Hungary and Poland last week while maintaining a temporary pause on immigrant ‌visa appointments elsewhere, four people familiar with the matter said.
The directive to prioritize immigrant visas at the U.S. missions in Poland and Hungary came from the White House, two of the sources said. While it was not immediately clear why the U.S. singled out the two countries for special attention, Trump and his senior aides have cultivated far-right allies in both places.

He publicly endorsed former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who was defeated ​at the polls in April, and Poland’s nationalist President Karol Nawrocki, whose election has put him at odds with the centrist government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
In May, Reuters ​reported that U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau instructed senior State Department officials to facilitate a U.S. visa for a fugitive former Polish ⁠cabinet minister who had taken refuge from corruption charges in Hungary.
The White House referred a request for comment to the State Department. A State Department spokesperson did not comment on ​why it resumed immigrant visa processing for Hungary and Poland.

The Hungarian Foreign Ministry and Prime Minister’s Office, as well as the Polish Foreign Ministry, and prime minister’s and president’s offices did not ​immediately respond to requests for comment.
TRUMP TARGETS BOTH ILLEGAL AND LEGAL MIGRATION
Trump has long campaigned on stopping illegal immigration, but his second term has been defined in equal measure by his expansive efforts to curb legal migration. The U.S. has imposed travel bans on dozens of countries, introduced expensive new fees for certain work visas and mandated that all applicants undergo a vetting of their social media history.
In January, the State Department ​said it was temporarily suspending the processing of immigrant visas — which allow people to move permanently to the United States — in 75 countries where applicants were “at a high risk for becoming ​a public charge.”

After a federal judge ruled against the visa ban, the State Department paused immigrant visa interviews at all of its global missions while rolling out a new training program.
The State Department spokesperson, speaking on ‌the condition ⁠of anonymity, said appointments were being adjusted to accommodate the new training. “Whenever there are updated instructions for visa applicants or changes to visa interview appointments, embassies and consulates communicate this information directly to visa applicants,” they wrote.
GLOBAL IMPACT
U.S. consulates and embassies traditionally conduct hundreds of thousands of immigrant visa interviews every year, most of them with relatives of U.S. citizens or permanent residents. In 2024, the last year of Joe Biden’s Democratic presidency, the U.S. issued some 600,000 immigrant visas.

The State Department’s January edict was its most far-reaching attempt to rein in legal migration. The ​visa suspension affected applicants from Latin American countries ​including Brazil, Colombia, and Uruguay; Balkan nations ⁠such as Bosnia and Albania; and South Asian countries Pakistan and Bangladesh.
On August 21, however, U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas struck down the policy as “patently unlawful.”
In the days that followed, the State Department called missions around the world and told them to cancel immigrant visa appointments, ​according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
The State Department acknowledged the global pause in a public statement on August 25, ​saying it would remain ⁠in place until staffers received new training in how to assess whether visa applicants could support themselves in the United States without relying on public benefits.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/us-resumes-immigrant-visa-processing-hungary-poland-pause-remains-elsewhere-2026-09-08/

Israel said on ​Tuesday it was closing Britain’s consulate in East Jerusalem in response to plans by the UK, France and Canada to block imports from Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Britain will also no ‌longer participate in a U.S.-led coordination mission for Gaza and some British officials, including former Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, and other nationals will be banned from entering Israel, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said.

“The British move is morally distorted, and constitutes blatant interference in the affairs of a sovereign state and its electoral process,” he said, describing comments by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband about ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel as accusations that were “outrageous lies”.
The British consulate in East Jerusalem is accredited to the Palestinian Authority in ​the West Bank.
Saar said that he had coordinated Israel’s response with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he accused Britain of interfering in Israel’s upcoming elections, due in late October.
TRADE MEASURES
The trade measures proposed by ​Britain, France and Canada on Tuesday are the latest in a series of actions targeting Israel’s settlement policy and underscore its growing diplomatic isolation among some of its ⁠traditional allies.

“Today marks a further turning point in our approach to protecting the two-state solution,” UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a joint statement.They added that ​they would promote their efforts at the United Nations General Assembly later in September.
The foreign ministers of nine other countries, including Denmark, Norway, Poland, Spain and Sweden, in a separate statement reaffirmed support for a negotiated two-state settlement – ​aPalestinian state co-existing peacefully alongside Israel.
“Together, we are resolute: the two-state solution must be protected, and we will take action in pursuit of a just and lasting peace,” they said.
Miliband said Britain could no longer simply “call out” injustice and suffering, but had to act to oppose the expansion of settlements.

Canada has for decades believed that the two-state solution is the best proposal for achieving long-term peace in the Middle East and addressing Israel’s security concerns, Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand wrote on X.
“Illegal settlements in the West ​Bank significantly undermine these objectives,” she wrote.
The United Nations, Palestinians and most countries regard settlements as illegal under international law. Israel disputes this. A Reuters report published on Tuesday found Israel’s government is financing some of the West Bank’s ​most radical settlers, who use illegal outpost farms to displace Palestinians.
“FRENZIED EXPANSION” OF SETTLEMENTS

France cited the “frenzied expansion” of settlements and a “flare up of violence” as the reasons for it taking action.
But U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the sanctions ‌could be destabilising ⁠for the West Bank, adding that Washington would not block imports from Israeli settlements.
Britain’s chief rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, described the plans for sanctions as “a dark day for British Jews” and accused the UK government of “gesture politics”.
“These measures will succeed only in bolstering the very extremism they seek to target,” Mirvis wrote on X.
The main produce from West Bank settlements is agricultural, including dates, citrus fruits, herbs and wine, and makes up only a tiny fraction of Israel’s total exports.
This means the trade bans are largely symbolic, and will not dent larger bilateral trade flows, but are part of wider efforts to reinforce support for the two-state solution, just as Israel announced plans for 1,000 new ​West Bank homes on Tuesday.
Miliband, who became Britain’s foreign ​minister in July, went further, saying the UK ⁠believes that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank.
“Today we refuse to be bystanders to further suffering and to the destruction of the two-state solution,” Miliband said, referring to a model Israel opposes.
The focus of recent concerns is Israel’s E1 settlement project in the West Bank not far from Jerusalem, which would ​cut across land the Palestinians seek for a future independent state.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-announce-trade-ban-israeli-west-bank-goods-2026-09-08/

Iranian state television also reported the strikes, saying US forces attacked at least three Iranian oil tankers near the southern port of Jask and near Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf. It said the crews were evacuated.

The US military has destroyed five Iranian crude oil tankers following attacks on a US warship by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, US Central Command said in a social media post on Tuesday.

The US strikes were in response to two Iranian efforts to hit the warship with ballistic missiles over the past two days, the statement added.

Iranian state television also reported the strikes, saying US forces attacked at least three Iranian oil tankers near the southern port of Jask and near Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf. It said the crews were evacuated.

CENTCOM forces destroyed five Iranian crude oil carriers, Sept. 8, after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeted a U.S. Navy warship with ballistic missiles twice over the past two days. The U.S. warship successfully evaded the attempted Iranian attacks and… pic.twitter.com/Gi8a2tloN1

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) September 8, 2026

The latest tit-for-tat strikes come as Washington and Tehran lurch back toward fighting during more than six months of war.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US will not allow Iran’s attacks to go unanswered.

“Iran continues to try to hit US naval ships. And for every time they do that or try to do that, they’re going to lose tankers. And I think you’ll see that again today,” Rubio told reporters Tuesday when asked about the latest attacks in Iran while on a trip to Colombia.

Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran expert at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, warned that such back-and-forth strikes can only risk more retaliation and further impact to the global economy.

“There is no kinetic solution to the Strait of Hormuz problem,” he said on social media. “Every attempt to impose one only brings Washington and Tehran closer to an escalation that may become increasingly difficult to control.”

An Iranian state TV reporter in Jask said an Iranian tanker was struck near the coast of Yekbeni, while another explosion was heard in the area whose source and location were not immediately clear.

State TV later reported that the US military attacked a second tanker near waters off Jask. It said the crews of both vessels were being evacuated by lifeboat toward the Jask coast.

Separately, state television reported that another Iranian tanker was attacked in Kharg Island anchorage area. It said the crew was safely evacuated shortly after the strike.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Navy on Tuesday warned crews of oil tankers near ports in Kuwait and Bahrain to immediately leave their vessels, saying the ships could be targeted in retaliation for US attacks on Iranian tankers. It accused Kuwait and Bahrain of hosting US forces and assisting in the attacks.

On Saturday, the US military said it had struck three Iranian oil tankers after Navy warships were targeted with ballistic missiles, warning that it would, “if necessary, destroy Iran’s limited and exposed oil fleet.” Iran later said it planned to announce a new “exclusion zone” near the Strait of Hormuz aimed at vessels intending to transit.

The latest strikes are part of a dual economic and military approach by President Donald Trump as he struggles to bring an end to a more than six-month-old war with Tehran.

The Trump administration on Tuesday also imposed sanctions on additional elements of Iran’s aviation industry, targeting more than two dozen commercial and private airlines as well as foreign cargo service providers in its new push to isolate Tehran from its remaining trading partners.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-missile-struck-iranian-tanker-off-kharg-island-says-iran-media-12020405?pfrom=home-ndtvworld_world_top_scroll

 

A separate set of orders will ban imports of certain Canadian alcoholic beverages and some dairy products, including whey, from September 29.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday escalated the trade dispute with Canada, ordering new restrictions on Canadian products while raising tariffs on several others.

Under a new executive order, Canadian products including mattresses, motorboats and golf carts will face a 50 per cent tariff from September 15.

A separate set of orders will ban imports of certain Canadian alcoholic beverages and some dairy products, including whey, from September 29.

Alcohol, dairy targeted

Trump cited what he called “discriminatory” provincial boycotts of American alcohol as the reason for the new restrictions.

Canadian provinces have removed many US wines and spirits from their shops as part of a wider consumer boycott of American products that has grown since Trump’s tariff campaign began.

The latest measures come after Canada imposed fresh tariffs on US goods on Tuesday in retaliation for Washington’s duties announced last month.

The White House said the new steps were aimed at protecting American producers and discouraging further retaliation.

“President Trump is doing this to make sure, again, that we keep a level playing field, deter retaliation, and of course protect American production,” a senior US administration official told reporters.

Trump targets government contracts

Trump also moved to restrict Canadian products from major US government procurement contracts.

In a post on Truth Social, he directed the General Services Administration (GSA), working with the US Trade Representative, to remove Canadian-origin products from its Multiple Award Schedules unless Canada provides what he called “full and fair reciprocity” for American companies and farmers.

Trump said the programme accounts for more than $50 billion a year in government purchases.

He accused Canada of restricting American businesses from its government procurement market while allowing Canadian firms broad access to the US market.

“From now on, NO RECIPROCITY – NO ACCESS! I am hereby directing the GSA, working with the USTR, to take all necessary steps to REMOVE Canadian-origin products from GSA’s Multiple Award Schedules unless Canada restores full and fair reciprocity for American Farmers and Companies,” he wrote.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/trump-moves-to-bar-some-canadian-goods-from-us-contracts-unveils-fresh-import-bans-tariffs-ws-l-10317580.html

 

NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe said organisation had not yet completed its investigation into what caused latest failure and that they have no “idea of exactly what went wrong”.

More than 1,000 flights were cancelled across the United Kingdom on Tuesday after a technical problem at the country’s air traffic control provider NATS triggered widespread disruption at major airports.

Nearly 1,300 flights to and from British airports had been cancelled, according to aircraft tracking platform FlightRadar24.

Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Edinburgh were among the airports affected, with Dublin Airport in neighbouring Ireland also reporting dozens of cancellations.

System Issue Now Resolved: NATS

NATS said the fault had affected its flight data processing system. By early evening, the air traffic control provider said the problem had been fixed but warned that clearing the backlog would take time.

“Recovery from today’s system issue has taken longer than we had hoped,” Britain’s air traffic control service, known as NATS, said on X early evening.

“Our system issue is now resolved, we are operating normally and working as hard as possible to clear the backlog of flights,” it noted, adding “this is hugely frustrating and apologise unreservedly”.

Heathrow, the UK’s busiest airport, said arrivals had been suspended for the remainder of Tuesday, while departures resumed amid continuing disruption. Airlines were forced to cancel, delay or divert flights as aircraft and crew were left out of position.

British Airways, Air India Impacted

British Airways cancelled or diverted more than 100 flights, affecting tens of thousands of passengers. Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its customers had been disrupted and that it had cancelled more than 50 flights.

According to FlightRadar24, 177 flights have been cancelled so far on Wednesday in London.

Air India also warned that the disruption could affect some of its services, as aircraft and crew were displaced following the incident. The airline advised passengers to check their flight status before heading to the airport.

Meanwhile, easyJet had 218 of its flights cancelled, KLM 37, Eurowings 22 and Ryanair reported 41 cancelled flights.

Arsenal’s Flight Delayed

The disruption also affected Arsenal, whose Champions League squad was due to travel to Naples for Wednesday’s match against Napoli. The team had to cancel a planned press conference after its flight was delayed.

Britain’s Aviation Infrastructure Comes Under Scrutiny

The latest incident has renewed scrutiny of the resilience of Britain’s aviation infrastructure. It comes after a radar-related technical problem in July last year disrupted flights for more than four hours at major UK airports.

Britain’s air traffic control system suffered an even bigger failure in 2023, when a problem with automatic flight-plan processing caused hundreds of cancellations and delays, affecting more than 700,000 passengers.

Ryanair COO Calls For Sacking Of NATS Chief Executive

The latest outage has prompted renewed calls for action from airlines. Ryanair COO Neal McMahon called for NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe to be removed, while Wizz Air demanded urgent reform of the air traffic control provider.

“Enough is enough, it’s time for the UK government to intervene… and put somebody in charge who can do the job,” McMahon said.

Ryanair stated that nearly 1,50,000 of its passengers have been affected because of delays in flights and that they had to cancel more than 200 flights.

“How many more failures do passengers have to suffer before overpaid failure NATS CEO, Martin Rolfe, accepts responsibility for his repeated mismanagement and resigns?” he asked.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/nearly-1300-flights-cancelled-across-uk-after-air-traffic-control-glitch-sparks-travel-chaos-ws-l-10317603.html

NEW documents are suggesting New York City leaders lied about the toxic air residents were breathing in around the World Trade Center after the attacks on 9/11.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released the documents on Tuesday morning, just days before the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people.

The over 170,000 documents were kept from the public view for over two decades, and city officials say they were only recently discovered.

“These are documents that show what the city knew about the toxic air around Ground Zero, when they knew it, and how they acted to limit liability,” Mamdani said at a press conference on Tuesday morning.

“I think that there is going to be a lot to learn from these documents.”

The release of documents comes soon after The World Trade Center Health Program revealed rare cancer cases have been on the rise in 9/11 survivors.

The report found 2026 was the first year where the number of cancer cases among survivors who attended school, worked or lived near Ground Zero surpassed the number of first responders who had prolonged exposure to the debris and dust.

Nearly 6,000 people who worked and live nearby and first responders have died from cancer caused by the toxic air in the last 25 years, more than double the amount of people who died on the fateful day.

Soon after the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001, volunteers and first responders became concerned about breathing in asbestos and fiberglass, in addition to human tissue and pulverized bone as they searched for bodies.

The burning smell continued for months afterwards, according to survivors.

“It smelled like burning plastic the whole time,” Lori Ellis, a senior manager for Century 21 in lower Manhattan, told the New York Daily News five months after the attack.

Over 1.8million tons of burning wreckage took over the area, and underground fires burned for almost 100 days after the attack.

The new documents indicate officials were concerned about potential lawsuits tied to chemical exposure even as leaders reassured the public that the air was safe.

Mamdani has now directed his administration to release the records to the public via an online portal after years of outrage, demanding answers from city leaders about what they knew regarding the chemical toxins.

Records appear to strengthen the notion that New Yorkers were allowed to return to Ground Zero before it was safe to do so, potentially exposing residents and workers to dangerous toxins in the air.

Attorney Andrew Carboy, who has been fighting to get the documents released, told the New York Daily News the case “shows the worst of government bureaucracy.”

“To keep this information suppressed and then deny it exists is the laziest, most disingenuous form of obstruction that I can think of.”

Health officials have continued to find evidence of asbestos as far as half a mile away from the scene of the fallen towers, according to an air quality records viewed by the New York Times.

“The devastating truth is that the suffering did not end once the smoke cleared and the dust settled,” Mamdani said.

“Now, close to 25 years later, more people have died of 9/11-related illness than were killed on the day itself.”

“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” he continued.

“And then when they began to contend with the symptoms of the illnesses that followed, the government that had not hesitated to send them into harm’s way were nowhere to be found.”

President Donald Trump honored victims and survivors of 9/11 on Friday morning in Washington DC and talked about how the world was “changed forever” after the attacks.

He did not talk about the newly released documents, but did award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the family of Welles Crowther, who is known as the man in the red bandana.

Crowther tied a red bandana around his face on September 11, 2001, and led many people to safety before he was killed.

Mamdani has also instructed his administration to review, redact and publicize several more documents found in insurance and municipal offices that relate to environmental toxins brought about by September 11.

Mamdani also noted the release of documents might help people learn about their eligibility for relief programs related to 9/11.

Lukas Alpert, a journalist who spent weeks covering the attacks from Ground Zero, said in a piece for New York Magazine that it took him 18 years to realize he was a victim of September 11.

He was diagnosed with thyroid cancer years after, and said, “it had never occurred to me that my illness might have any connection to September 11.

“The picture most people have in their minds of a 9/11 victim is of an office worker trapped in the burning buildings or a firefighter rushing into the towers. I was neither of these.”

The first round of documents will provide a snapshot of the months after the attacks in New York City, when officials were struggling to balance recovery efforts with lingering toxins and fears of terrorism.

Only a percentage of air quality reports taken around Ground Zero will be released in the batch, which includes the so-called Harding memo where the city discussed its potential liability stemming from the air quality.

There are also documents related to 7 World Trade Center, which collapsed in the afternoon on September 11, 2001, and how asbestos were found at 15 John Street, a building less than a mile from the trade center.

“The very least our city owes the families, survivors and first responders whose lives were forever changed by the horrific terror attack of Sept. 11 is transparency and accountability,” Mamdani previously said.

The mayor noted on Tuesday that more documents will be released over the coming year, and will be free to access.

Officials noted the only information that will be redacted is personal information and security evaluations that could still pose security risks today.

The portal also puts an end to two lawsuits against the city, ending a years-long legal battle and bringing transparency to New Yorkers, officials said.

Actor Jon Stewart, a longtime advocate for those impacted by 9/11, also spoke at the press conference on Tuesday morning.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/16942380/9-11-air-quality-documents-world-trade-center-mamdani/

 

THREE jurors on the grueling Lindsay Clancy murder trial have spoken out about the deliberations that resulted in screaming matches over a holdout juror.

Three of the 12 jurors breaking their silence comes after Clancy’s murder case ended in a mistrial following allegations that one juror refused to follow instructions on a crucial law that could’ve acquitted her.

Clancy was on trial in Massachusetts after she strangled her three young children Cora, Dawson and Callan to death in January 2023.

She sought an insanity defense, arguing she suffered from undiagnosed postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings and didn’t know right from wrong.

The jurors, including the foreperson who told the judge one person expressed doubt but refused to acquit Clancy, unloaded their frustrations with the lone holdout in a bombshell interview with Boston NBC affiliate WBTS-CD.

“He admitted he had reasonable doubt and I started filling out the forms, I was so excited,” the foreperson said.

The foreperson claimed the holdout juror, a man, said, “But I’m still not going to say that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.”

The jurors’ names were have not been released due to an order signed by Judge William Sullivan on Friday that requires names to be withheld for 14 days.

The jury had five options to deliberate for Clancy’s fate, where they could either find her guilty of first-degree murder, second-degree murder or manslaughter.

Otherwise, Clancy could have been acquitted or found not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility, known as an insanity defense.

The deliberations got so intense, resulting in loud arguing that the six alternative jurors could hear the screaming matches from outside the room, the three women told WBTS.

There was also reportedly some name calling, but jurors were determined to come to a verdict, and supported one another throughout the week of deliberations by sharing laughs, hugging one another and encouraging self-care.

The second juror who spoke with WBTS called the holdout juror “arrogant.”

“He really did not take anything that anybody said,” she said.

She said the man asked questions about medications prescribed to Clancy, and that jurors reviewed toxicology reports and records from the South Shore Hospital, where she was treated following her suicide attempt after the killings.

The jurors only asked the judge one question during their deliberations, and it was to see the knife Clancy used to cut herself after the killings and her prescription pills.

Jurors had around 300 exhibits of evidence to review in the case following five weeks of testimony.

One of the three female jurors revealed in the interview that some of the jury members were nurses.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/16967294/lindsay-clancy-jurors-speak-out-mistrial-holdout/

Dianna Russini will return to work this NFL season, but not without addressing the elephant in the room first.

A source familiar with the situation told Page Six this week that the former Athletic journalist, who resigned from her position in April amid an investigation into her relationship with New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel, will share her side of the scandal upon taking her next job.

Russini, 43, hopes to speak on the matter and move past it once and for all, the source added.

The exact timeline for her comeback remains unclear, but a debut by the start of Week 1 — which kicks off Wednesday night with a Super Bowl LX rematch between the Seattle Seahawks and Vrabel’s Patriots — is unlikely.

The source noted that Russini continues to mull offers from several outlets, and it’s possible she accepts more than one gig.

Russini, the source continued, was inundated with interview requests from major networks, podcasts and even reality television shows as the scandal unfolded, but she rejected them all in favor of speaking on her own terms at the right time.

As for how Russini will be received within the league, the source was adamant that most NFL owners, coaches, staffers and players have been supportive and pulling for her return.

The scandal came to light after Page Six published photos on April 7 of Russini and Vrabel, 51, holding hands, hugging and lounging by a pool at a lavish resort in Sedona, Arizona, in late March.

Since then, more instances of the two hanging out surfaced — including one night at a New York City bar, where an eyewitness snapped pictures of them kissing six years before the Arizona trip.

Russini married Shake Shack executive Kevin Goldschmidt in 2020, while Vrabel tied the knot with his wife, Jen, in 1999. Both couples each have two sons.

The reporter’s former employer released the findings of its internal investigation last week, stating Russini’s relationship with Vrabel was “in clear violation” of its standards.

“Regardless of whether the relationship was romantic, it was a breach and should have been disclosed,” Mike Semel, the editorial director for standards and quality at the Athletic, said.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/09/08/celebrity-news/details-of-dianna-russinis-sports-media-comeback-revealed/

A day at the beach turned into a wild San Francisco brawl after two men began throwing punches in the sand — with one claiming he was simply walking his dog when the confrontation erupted.

The melee unfolded Tuesday at Crissy Field, on the northern shore of the San Francisco Peninsula, and was caught on video.

A reporter for KRON was at the beach for another story and said he heard yelling coming from the water before spotting the two men wrestling and throwing punches in the sand.

One of the men, James Hidalgo, said he was out walking his dog, Argis, when a man he described as loudly talking approached him.

“He said, ‘Are you calling me a dog?’ Because I had a dog, I guess,” Hidalgo told the outlet.

Hidalgo said he tried to defuse the confrontation, telling the man he had no idea what he was talking about — but the situation quickly turned physical.

“And then he came in and he tried to punch me so then I pinned him down to the ground until the cops got here,” Hidalgo said.

The man remained pinned in the sand for several minutes as witnesses called 911.

Source : https://nypost.com/2026/09/08/us-news/sf-man-walking-dog-caught-in-violent-crissy-field-beach-brawl/

Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s first leader after the city returned to Chinese rule, has died at the age of 89.

The former shipping scion took over the reins from the last British Governor Chris Patten in July 1997 when the UK handed Hong Kong back to China, ending more than 150 years of British control.

Tung’s rocky tenure was marked by the Asian Financial Crisis, two major epidemics, and historic protests which attracted criticism of his administration. He eventually resigned in 2005.

Tung died on Tuesday night surrounded by loved ones, local media reported. His office described him as a man “devoted to his country and its people”.

Born in Shanghai in 1937, Tung graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from Liverpool University in the UK before moving to the US, where he worked at General Electric for almost a decade.

In 1969, he moved to Hong Kong and worked in his father’s shipping conglomerate, the Orient Overseas, eventually taking over the reins in 1979.

His political career began in 1992 when he was appointed a member of Patten’s executive council.

Despite having little political experience, Tung was believed to be handpicked by Beijing to lead Hong Kong after the handover. He was seen as a loyalist, especially after China’s state-run banks helped rescue his family business during a global slump in the mid-1980s.

During a reception at the Great Hall of the People in January 1996, China’s then-president Jiang Zemin walked across a packed room to shake Tung’s hands – a widely photographed gesture that at the time famously signalled Beijing’s backing of Tung for the top job.

The Asian Financial Crisis hit shortly after Tung took over, which sent home prices diving. His administration was also beset by a series of public health challenges, including a bird flu outbreak from 1997 to 2002 and the 2003 outbreak of Sars, also known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

But Tung’s biggest political challenge took place in July 2003 during his second term, when half a million Hongkongers took to the streets to protest against a proposed national security law they feared would threaten their civic rights.

His administration abandoned the proposed legislation following the massive outcry, which also contributed to Tung stepping down in March 2005.

At the time his declining health was cited as a reason – but some said he was pressured by Beijing to step down.

Beijing ultimately imposed a national security law on Hong Kong in 2020, which authorities have argued is necessary to maintain stability. Critics however have called it “the end of Hong Kong” and say it has created a climate of fear in the city.

Tung’s last public outing was in July 2021, at an event marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. He underwent heart surgery months later, according to reports.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn457lq938jo

The UK has announced sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, accusing Israel’s government of turning a blind eye to the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians by settlers.

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said the move marked the “beginning of a new approach” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which “not only calls out injustice and suffering but acts”.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar responded by accusing him of spreading an “outrageous lie” and announced counter-measures including shutting the UK’s consulate in East Jerusalem.

The UK sanctions will ban settlement goods but also act against companies and individuals providing services for settlement expansion.

The sanctions were launched alongside France and Canada, which in a joint statement with the UK said the action “marks a further turning point in our approach to protecting the two-state solution”.

Settlements are illegal under international law, and there has been a rise in violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank by settlers in recent months.

In a statement to MPs, Miliband said: “The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists.

“And all too often the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and worse, members of it have made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement of Palestinians.”

He said ethnic cleansing was defined by the UN as a “purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent means another ethnic or religious group from certain areas”.

Miliband said the official view of the government was that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank was unlawful because of the “entrenchment of its control, its intention to extend permanent sovereignty, and its expansionist agenda via illegal settlements”.

He said this position, which is in line with a 2024 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, should be reflected in the UK’s “economic relationship” with the occupied West Bank.

As a result, over the next six to nine months, the UK will introduce “a new comprehensive sanctions regime”, he said.

The foreign secretary also announced a ban on advertising illegal West Bank settlements in the UK.

“The sanctions regime will target illegal settlements and settlement expansion, not Israel,” Miliband added.

Later on Tuesday, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the targeted measures were “aimed not at the Israeli people, but in support of the two-state solution”.

Announcing the closure of the consulate – which represents the UK government in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza – Israel’s Foreign Minister Saar said at a press conference: “We know that we have many friends in Britain.

“Unfortunately, we have a hostile Labour government that is consistently operating against the State of Israel, and it has left us no choice but to respond to its hostile actions.”

He added that 11 UK MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and all five sitting Green Party MPs, would be banned from entering Israel, accusing them of “antisemitic and anti-Israel activity”.

The UK also issued a joint statement with 11 other countries; France, Canada, Denmark, Spain, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Portugal and Sweden.

It said the group was unequivocally committed to the two-state solution and would introduce national measures or support European restrictions on trading goods with West Bank settlements.

The UK announcement comes after Israel opened up tenders for the construction of some 1,200 settlement homes in the so-called E1 area – a strategically important area east of Jerusalem. The plans have drawn widespread international condemnation. Israel has held off on plans to build in the area for decades under global pressure.

Miliband told the Commons the UK’s “new approach” was necessary because plans for the E1 development in the West Bank would render a two-state solution “unviable” by “cutting through the heart of Palestine”.

Elsewhere, he said the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which triggered the Gaza war, carried “terrible echoes of the centuries of persecution of the Jewish people” and stressed Israel had “the right to protect its people and defend its territory”.

However, he added, “that cannot justify what has happened in Gaza”.

He said: “International humanitarian law imposes clear rules for states fighting wars, including to ensure access to food and medical supplies, to avoid mass displacement of civilians, and to avoid the targeting of civilians. Serious and international violations of this law, if proven, amount to war crimes.

“What has occurred, including the actions of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), have been examined in depth by a number of organisations, including the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry.

“The conclusions of these reports represent increasing evidence that war crimes appear to have been committed, and we support legal processes to determine this.”

He added it was up to international courts to determine if Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

Israel’s leaders have consistently rejected allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. They have insisted that Israeli forces have operated in accordance with international law.

Miliband began his statement to the Commons by referring to his Jewish roots and childhood experiences of visiting Israel, as well as recent antisemitic attacks in the UK.

He described himself as “a proud British Jew” and outlined his steadfast support for the state of Israel.

He said: “My personal story and that of thousands of British Jews is one of the many reasons why I say to anyone here or around the world who questions Israel’s right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people – you are wrong, and we will call you out whenever you engage in this attempt at the erasure of Israel.”

But the UK’s Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis said it was a “truly a dark day for British Jews”, saying the sanctions were “little more than political flag bearing for mendacious anti-Israel rhetoric” that would embolden people who “use hatred as a weapon against Jews”.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews expressed “deep regret” over Tuesday’s announcement, and urged both the UK and Israeli governments to “avoid pursuing what appear to be party interests over national interests”.

In an interview with Jewish News after speaking in the Commons, Miliband said “any person who targets British Jews because of the actions of the Israeli government is an antisemite in my view”, a position which he said was “shared across the House of Commons”.

He said the response from the Israeli government had been “deeply regrettable”.

Responding in the Commons, Conservative shadow foreign secretary Tom Tugendhat claimed ministers were “enacting policies that the Foreign Office knows won’t work”.

He agreed that illegal settlements were wrong and “some Israeli ministers have indulged in hateful propaganda and incitement” but added “this isn’t about Israel alone and it certainly isn’t about reducing the complexity of the region to a single sentence. Sadly, the government is in the process of doing just that”.

Israel’s foreign minister Saar said on Tuesday evening he had spoken with Tugendhat and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, thanking them “for their firm opposition to the hostile Labour government’s announcement today and its series of anti-Israel policies since taking office”.

He also said British representatives from the International Gaza Support Center in Kiryat Gat in southern Israel would be removed, and UK activities to train Palestinian Authority forces in Judea and Samaria – how the Israeli government refers to the West Bank – would be terminated.

Speaking earlier on Tuesday, the country’s President Isaac Herzog said the decision would “fall on the wrong side of history”, adding: “In the current context, it would be a gross interference in the democratic elections of a sovereign nation.”

Herzog said the move would directly harm Palestinians and urged foreign governments to turn towards “constructive dialogue” and cooperation, adding “sanctions are not a solution”.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters the White House had no comment on the joint action, adding that “obviously we’re not going to do what the UK did”.

Earlier, Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee earlier told the BBC that the US – Israel’s most powerful ally – would “without a doubt” respond to the expected sanctions, warning of a “huge economic impact on British businesses”.

He suggested action could be taken by individual US states as well as at a central, federal level.

The Palestinian presidency welcomed the UK’s decision, saying it was “an important step towards confronting Israel’s colonial system and its violations against the Palestinian people”.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g7zen0vveo

A Singaporean man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a racketeering conspiracy charge in the US for organising one of the biggest ever cryptocurrency thefts.

Malone Lam admitted to teaming up with friends to steal $245m (£181m) of bitcoin and laundering the proceeds.

The 22-year-old and his associates used the money to spend up to $500,000 a visit to nightclubs, according to the US Department of Justice (DOJ). It also said they bought a fleet of exotic cars, ranging in value from $100,000 to $3.8m.

Lam faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly did not immediately schedule a sentencing hearing for him.

“If you build a cybercrime empire, we will find you, dismantle your operation, and hold you accountable,” said US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said.

“This defendant led an international network that preyed on victims through deception, invaded their privacy, and stole hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency,” she added.

Lam told investigators in the US that he had dropped out of secondary school in Singapore when he was 14. He travelled to the US in October 2023 and remained there after his visa expired in January the next year.

According to court documents, the conspiracy began no later than October 2023 and continued to at least May 2025.

The co-conspirators, who came from California, Connecticut, New York, Florida, and outside the US, met via online gaming platforms.

The DOJ said Lam, who also went by the names Anne Hathaway, $$$ and King Greavy, was the ringleader of the criminal enterprise, who identified victims and coordinated the roles of the different conspirators.

They tricked people into giving away confidential information and conducted occasional home break-ins to obtain details that allowed them to drain their victims’ cryptocurrency wallets, the DOJ said.

The stolen cryptocurrency was also used to buy Hermes Birkin handbags, valued in the tens of thousands of dollars, which were thrown into crowds at nightclub parties, according to the DOJ.

Other items that the DOJ said the proceeds were spent on included high-end watches worth up to $500,000, luxury clothing valued in the tens of thousands of dollars, rental homes in Los Angeles, the Hamptons, and Miami, private jet rentals for travel and a team of private security guards.

Lam was “notorious” in the Los Angeles and Miami nightclub scenes because of his flamboyant lifestyle, and his crypto windfall had also drawn attention, a Florida district court heard earlier.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crl6z03pr0do

Esmail Baghaei said Iran would use the BRICS Summit as an opportunity to continue discussions with India on areas of mutual interest.

Iran on Monday praised its ties with India as “very good” and said it attaches “great importance” to the relationship, more than a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in Bishkek.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said the two countries share a “long-standing, historic and civilisational relationship”, adding that Tehran attaches “great importance” to its ties with India.

“India is a member of both the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS. It is also one of the countries with which we have good relations in various areas, particularly trade and economic cooperation,” he added.

Esmail Baghaei, @IRIMFA_SPOX Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the I.R. #Iran:

One of the meetings that President Masoud Pezeshkian held in Bishkek was with the Prime Minister of #India. Our relationship with India is a long-standing, historic and… pic.twitter.com/To8UVIbCGz

— Iran in India (@Iran_in_India) September 7, 2026

Baghaei’s remarks came ahead of the 18th BRICS Leaders’ Summit, which will be held in New Delhi from September 11 to 13 under India’s chairship.

Iran Eyes More Talks With India

Speaking at a press briefing, Baghaei said Iran would use the BRICS Summit as an opportunity to continue discussions with India on areas of mutual interest.

“Various issues are usually discussed during consultations between Iran and India, including the Chabahar Port, which is important to both countries,” he said.

“We will certainly make use of the opportunity provided by the BRICS Summit to continue our discussions and consultations with India in areas of mutual interest.”

Baghaei added that Iran’s relationship with India “continues to develop”.

PM Modi and Pezeshkian met on August 31 in Bishkek, in their first meeting since the West Asia war broke out earlier this year.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/great-importance-iran-hails-india-ties-after-modi-pezeshkian-meet-eyes-deeper-brics-talks-ws-l-10315529.html

 

The woman alledged that cops were pressuring her husband to join the Russian army to fight against Ukraine.

New Delhi has responded to an Indian woman’s SOS call from Moscow, alleging her husband was detained by Russian police and was being pressured to join the Russian military. Sources in the government said the Indian Embassy in Moscow was in touch with local authorities and working to secure the release of the Indian man, who, according to cops, was detained along with a friend for drinking in public and damaging public property.

The response came after Sneha Gupta, who said she’s based in Moscow, shared a video on social media urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to intervene and help in securing her husband’s safe return.

The SOS video

In her appeal video, the woman identified her husband as Chandan Gupta, an engineer from Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. She said their family was in Moscow on her husband’s ‘highly qualified specialist’ visa, issued through his Noida-based company.

Gupta said that Russian police arrested her husband around 12.30 pm on Sunday and that he was being held in jail despite, according to her, having committed no wrongdoing.

The woman further alleged that in detention, cops were pressuring her husband to join the Russian army to fight against Ukraine. She claimed a supposed shortage of personnel in the Russian military had led to attempts to forcefully recruit foreign nationals, including Indians, into the country’s armed forces.

Without giving any proof, Gupta also alleged that cops had harassed her husband around Moscow Day before he was detained.

In her emotional plea, the woman said the couple has a 10-year-old son and that the family has been left deeply distressed by the situation. She appealed to the Indian government and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to immediately intervene in the matter to secure her husband’s safe release.

What Sources Said

Sources told NDTV that Gupta is an employee of Flex Films Rus LLC, a local subsidiary of the Indian company Flex Films. He was detained along with a friend, identified as Ashish, at around 11:30 pm (local time) on September 5 from Moscow’s Red Square premises on “charges of drunkenness and breaking glasses of an ambulance nearby.”

“They are currently detained at the Baumanskaya police station, Moscow. The embassy has raised the matter with local authorities and requested their release. Meanwhile, consular access has also been sought,” they said.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/hes-told-to-join-russian-army-wife-says-noida-engineer-detained-in-moscow-12012616?pfrom=home-ndtvworld_world_top_scroll

In a statement from Geneva, the experts also called on Pakistani authorities to ensure the protection of the community and uphold the country’s international human rights obligations.

Voicing grave concern over continuing reports of discrimination and violence targeting the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan, UN human rights experts on Monday asked Islamabad to break the “pattern of impunity” that allows perpetrators to act without restraint.

In a statement from Geneva, the experts also called on Pakistani authorities to ensure the protection of the community and uphold the country’s international human rights obligations.

“We are deeply concerned by persistent reports that members of the Ahmadiyya community continue to face harassment, criminal prosecution, violence, and exclusion because of their religious identity,” the experts said.

“Pakistan must break the pattern of impunity that has allowed perpetrators of attacks and incitement to hatred and violence to act without restraint,” they said. “These attacks take place with tacit official complicity whilst the cycle of fear prevents people and institutions from upholding the rights and dignity of these minority groups.” Pakistan’s Parliament in 1974 declared the Ahmadiyya community as non-Muslims. A decade later, they were banned from calling themselves Muslims. They are banned from preaching and from travelling to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage.

The experts noted with concern reports of on-going attacks on Ahmadi places of worship; desecration of graves; interference with peaceful religious observance, including in the context of Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Adha; arrests and prosecutions related to religious practices or identity; and hate speech.

These reports underscore the need for effective measures to prevent violence, ensure accountability, and protect vulnerable communities, they said.

They added that every individual has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief. “No one should be subjected to discrimination, intimidation, or violence, nor should they be prevented from peacefully manifesting their faith, or face discrimination with respect to any of their human rights.” “The State has a responsibility to exercise due diligence to prevent human rights violations, investigate allegations promptly and impartially, prosecute those responsible in accordance with international standards, and provide effective remedies to victims,” the experts said.

The experts said that no individual should face arrest, detention, surveillance or criminal prosecution simply for observing their religious festivals and practices.

They called on the Government of Pakistan to ensure that all individuals, regardless of their religion or belief, enjoy equal protection under the law without discrimination.

The experts also urged the government to review legislation and administrative measures that may be inconsistent with its obligations under international human rights law, including the rights to freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression, freedom of association and assembly, cultural rights, and equality before the law.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/un-human-rights-experts-ask-pakistan-to-end-violence-on-ahmadiyya-community-12015257?pfrom=home-ndtvworld_world_top_scroll

HAUNTING new details have emerged in the fiery Amazon cargo plane crash at a major airport that left five people dead and five others injured.

The harrowing incident occurred on Sunday when the massive Boeing aircraft overran the runway at Miami International Airport and plowed into several vehicles, including a work van that was carrying a cleaning crew.

“I would describe it in one word as devastating, utter devastation,” Jennifer Homendy, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said during a press conference on Monday.

“You can see on the paved surface tire marks that continues through the grass, there’s debris everywhere.

Homendy said the Econoline van, which was carrying seven people, was completely destroyed.

“The vehicle SUV, you can see airbags, surrounding airbags. You can see components from vehicles, both passenger vehicles and the aircraft itself,” she added.

“Hard to see. I’m sure it must’ve been very difficult for the responders as well.”

Despite the investigation being in the recovery phase, Homendy said NTSB officials are looking at the history of the flight, the crews’ experiences and training, radar data, and aircraft performance.

The chairwoman said the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder were both recovered and are being evaluated.

The cargo plane was about 1,300 feet above the runway when it shot over the airstrip, striking airport equipment, and a cleaning work van that was inside the airport perimeter.

The aircraft then proceeded to rip through the perimeter fence, plowed through a Toyota Corolla traveling on a nearby road, and continued onto a grassy field.

The plane finally stopped near an area where a row of parked Tesla robotaxis.

Dramatic footage showed thick black smoke billowing into the sky as first responders rushed to extinguish the flames and rescue survivors.

Video obtained by NBC affiliate WTVJ captured the moment the pilot jumped out of the cargo plane immediately after the crash.

“It was shocking to witness all of that; then, unexpectedly, we saw the pilot jump out of the cockpit door and run for his life as the plane rapidly burst into flames,” Olvin Henriquez, who drove past the crash site, told the outlet.

“My family and I quickly turned the car around, fearing the plane might explode violently.”

Homendy revealed the Amazon flight crew survived the crash.

They have since been released from the hospital, according to the outlet.

The victims have not been identified.

Harrowing emergency audio showed the pulse-pounding seconds firefighters scrambled to tackle the raging blaze and rescue survivors trapped under rubble.

“The plane is on fire,” first responders are heard saying over radio traffic, according to audio obtained by the Miami Herald.

“The plane is one fire. Put your game faces on guys.”

Firefighters raced to get hoses close enough to the aircraft to douse the heavy flames and smoke pouring from the wreckage.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/16963810/amazon-cargo-plane-crash-utter-devastation-miami/

 

LINDSAY Clancy can battle back from the devastating effects of her mental illness – but two leading experts have told The U.S. Sun the horrifying consequences of killing her three children could haunt her forever.

The Massachusetts mom of three will now look ahead to September 29, when her next legal steps will be discussed following a mistrial ruling in her bombshell murder case last Friday.

Clancy, 36, admitted to strangling her three young children to death in January 2023.

Her defense team, however, argued that she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, asserting over six dramatic weeks that she was experiencing postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings of Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan.

Dr. Kenneth Spielvogel, a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist who has practiced for more than 30 years and delivered more than 15,000 babies, said the mental illness is not necessarily permanent.

“Someone can recover from postpartum psychosis,” Spielvogel, Senior Medical Officer at Carrara Treatment, told The U.S. Sun.

“Just like anyone who has bipolar disease or bipolar with psychotic features, schizophrenia with psychotic features, with proper treatment and medication, people can live healthy, productive lives.

“That’s not to say that there aren’t going to be challenges along the way in adjustments to treatment, but absolutely, it’s not a terminal illness type diagnosis.”

The doctor said he has often encountered women struggling with similar issues, although Clancy’s circumstances are radically different from those of someone recovering from an isolated episode of psychosis.

Spielvogel said the consequences of her actions, her physical disability and the deaths of her children could see her stuck in a permanent state of hell.

“I cannot imagine the prison that she’s living in when she’s outside of that psychotic dissociated state,” he said.

“She’s now wheelchair bound. Her three children are dead at her hands. Beyond, like the loss of relationship and everything else and her freedom. So that in and of itself is its own prison.”

Spielvogel predicts her treatment plan could last a “lifetime” and involve a combination of therapy, medications and other treatments, including electroconvulsive therapy.

Electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, is most commonly used for severe mental health conditions, particularly major depression that has not responded adequately to other treatments.

During ECT, a controlled electrical current is passed through the brain while the patient is under general anesthesia, intentionally producing a brief seizure.

Treatments are typically given several times over a few weeks under careful medical supervision.

Experts say it can be highly effective, especially for severe depression, depression with psychotic symptoms or situations in which rapid improvement is needed, such as when someone is at high risk of suicide.

“My experience and seeing patients who are frankly psychotic and major depression with a plan to commit suicide, they have dramatic results in the aftermath,” Spielvogel continued, “and, having continued maintenance counseling, obviously medication adjustment, go on to lead very healthy, functional lives.

“But there’s absolutely treatments, whether it’s proper medication, even things like ECT which has become more in vogue lately and the technique has improved and the results are impressive. There are options.”

Nicole Kumi, CEO of a maternal mental-health and wellness organization, The Whole Mom, who specializes in training in perinatal mental health, also stressed that psychosis is not necessarily permanent.

It’s the pain and anguish of confronting her tragic actions that could become too tough to bear.

“From the clinical lens, we talk about recovery from mental health disorders specifically for her with postpartum psychosis, recovery is absolutely possible for individuals because psychosis is not a state, a permanent state that one is in,” Kumi said.

“So I think what’s really important for us to understand here is even if she is not actively psychotic, she is not in the state permanently. Recovery is possible.”

Overcoming the tragic deaths of her children, however, is a separate question.

“Recovering from that alongside mental health conditions kind of puts things in a different perspective,” she said.

“That is where the clinical teams really are going to come in and assess her comprehensive risk assessments, evaluation, mental state, risk for harm, self harm.”

While the jury of nine women and three men failed to reach a unanimous verdict at Plymouth Superior Court, mental health experts have begun to chart out the next steps for the former delivery nurse.

Clancy, who had been suffering mentally and was reportedly on 13 separate medications, was found outside her Duxbury, Massachusetts, home after throwing herself out of a window in a failed suicide attempt following the killings.

She has since been remanded to Tewksbury State Hospital, where she returned following the latest court proceedings and is expected to remain for the foreseeable future.

The heartbreakingly brutal case has been widely dubbed “America’s saddest trial” – but experts say the worldwide attention has also shone a fresh spotlight on the devastating issue of postpartum psychosis.

Clancy told investigators that, after the killings, she heard a male voice commanding her to kill the children and herself.

Defense experts characterized the voice as a “command hallucination,” which they said indicated psychosis.

Even if the condition that experts say overwhelmed Clancy has resolved, clinicians say she could face years, or potentially a lifetime, of psychiatric treatment – along with the devastating consequences of what happened.

Ahead of a potential second trial later this year, Clancy will already be well aware of the possible outcomes.

A not-guilty verdict would not necessarily mean an immediate release from psychiatric care.

“I don’t see it in a case where she’s going to be released immediately,” Kumi said.

“I see this maybe taking months again if she’s found not guilty, months of strong evaluation, safety precautions, protections put in place to ensure her safety and well-being outside of the institution she’s in.

“She is at high risk for suicide. We’re seeing that now because of her being on a suicide watch where she’s currently being housed.”

A guilty charge, meanwhile, would arguably see a far worse level of care in a prison.

“Anyone who pretends that wouldn’t be the case isn’t living in reality,” said Spielvogel.

Rather than assuming Clancy has recovered simply because she is no longer actively psychotic, clinicians would need to establish what her current baseline looks like and build treatment around it.

“We know that the psychosis happened in a specific period of time,” Kumi said.

“She’s not actively psychotic. So now they have to evaluate what does her baseline look like.

“And then a treatment plan would be developed from that, probably including individual therapy if daily if not weekly group programming, other guidelines that might be imposed upon her, again depending upon her mental health state.”

That treatment could change over time, particularly around emotionally difficult dates.

“There will be times and places for increased intensive supports, and then there may be times where they can pull back a little bit and have her in more of a generalized setting,” said Kumi.

“There’s fluidity within this. She may need more support around the children’s birthdays, around the anniversaries of of their deaths.”

If she were eventually considered safe enough to leave an institution, Kumi said she could move through different levels of care.

Treatment teams ordinarily take stock the situation after three months and then make any necessary adjustments.

“If she is found not guilty and she is released, I wouldn’t assume there would be step down procedures,” she said.

“There’s levels of treatment. So they’re inpatient. There’s intensive outpatient programs. “

For Spielvogel, one of the most troubling possibilities is what could happen if Clancy eventually emerges fully from the psychotic and dissociated state described by experts.

Becoming mentally well enough to understand what happened, he said, could itself be devastating.

“Guilty. Not guilty. She’s going to be imprisoned forever,” Spielvogel said.

“It’s almost like when you think about it is the cruelest of cruel because her moving to a non-psychotic, non-dissociated state is going to allow her to have insight into what she’s actually done. And I cannot imagine what a mother, how a mother could live with that.”

Kumi similarly believes Clancy’s recovery would involve constructing a new life rather than simply returning to who she was before the psychosis.

“She will never return to the person she was,” Kumi said. “There is no version of her that can exist in this post-trial outcome.”

“Her recovery is going to be based solely on reestablishing who she is as a person now, with all of this behind her at some point.”

Kumi cautioned against imagining recovery as a dramatic transformation. It could instead involve small, incremental improvements.

“It’s easy to say recovery would be that she’s, you know, moving around better and she’s smiling and she seems healthy. Maybe recovery is that she hasn’t thought about suicide today, and maybe she’s sleeping better through the night and a medication regimen is working for her.”

“I think it’s going to be much smaller than we as a society think.”

Both experts said Clancy’s case also raises questions about whether more could have been done before the tragedy, and the level of attention she received.

Spielvogel said postpartum psychosis can be difficult to identify during routine medical appointments.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/16962563/lindsay-clancy-murder-postpartum-psychosis/

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is “very, very close” to taking power in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, its deputy parliamentary leader has told the BBC, after a historic victory in elections there.

Sunday’s preliminary results show it fell three seats short of an outright majority, with 43.8% of the vote. It is now seeking support from other parties or individuals in order to govern.

While most German political parties refuse to work with the AfD, Beatrix von Storch called for its opponents to enter talks and said: “You cannot say, I do not accept the vote of the people”.

Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was “deeply shocked” by the result, describing it as “seismic… not just in the country but also in my own political party and I take that very seriously”.

His party, the conservative CDU, saw its share of the vote almost halved to 17.2% in the state’s preliminary results.

Merz said it was not possible to return to “business as usual”, adding that the country needed “profound reforms” and the CDU needed to “reach people at an emotional level”.

No far-right party has controlled a German state since World War Two, and governing at state level would mean powers over policing and local education.

Von Storch said the state’s results “were on the table and now democrats have to talk to [one] another. This is what democracy demands”.

She added that if parties refused to work with the AfD, “then we might end up in severe chaos and maybe we have a new election”.

Her comments were echoed by AfD’s leader in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, who told a news conference on Monday that the party had won a “clear mandate to govern”.

The state’s defeated premier, the CDU’s Sven Schulze, also said the mandate to govern Saxony-Anhalt “now lies with the AfD”.

Saxony-Anhalt has a small population of 2.1 million and the AfD in the state is assessed by domestic intelligence as “right-wing extremist”, a classification rejected by Siegmund, 35.

The party’s plans for Saxony-Anhalt, which include segregating child refugees into special classes and setting up a task-force to help detain and deport migrants who no longer have the right to be in the state, are highly controversial within Germany.

The AfD is currently heading for 39 seats in the 83-seat state parliament instead of the 42 needed for an outright majority, although the result has not yet been finalised.

Von Storch told the BBC the AfD was talking to individuals within the CDU group – the largest party in both the state’s outgoing coalition and Germany’s government – because they were “very, very unhappy with their own party”.

What could happen now?

One idea being floated is an informal deal whereby a small party – the BSW – could give their tacit support to allow the AfD to form a minority government.

The left-wing populist BSW, which is set to win five seats, is also tough on immigration and backs importing Russian gas.

Siegmund said discussions with other parties were initiated on Sunday night and could potentially take days or weeks to conclude.

“We reach out to everybody first, we will have consultations and then we’ll see whether [there are] individual parliamentary groups or MPs who would be willing to help us,” he added.

Another possibility – at least in theory – is a messy, minority coalition government led by the conservative CDU party. But that appears very unlikely.

There’s also the prospect of another election to break the deadlock – an idea which has been mooted by Siegmund who has said he doesn’t want to compromise on his policy goals.

The AfD leads the opinion polls nationally, ahead of the ruling conservatives of Merz and the Social Democrats, but their heartland lies in the eastern states.

They also won the 2024 state election in neighbouring Thuringia, but failed to secure enough seats to win power.

Merz described the Saxony-Anhalt defeat as the worst the CDU had suffered “in years, if not decades”, acknowledging that the results in upcoming regional elections in Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania and Berlin could have “increasing significance”.

Among the AfD’s policies is a highly controversial plan for “remigration”, which is widely understood to mean mass deportations of migrants, although the party says it refers to deporting criminals and those in the country illegally.

Commentators and political opponents called AfD’s victory a watershed and break with the past.

“This isn’t just about Saxony-Anhalt,” Siegmund told supporters overnight. “It’s a signal for the whole of Germany – a self-confident signal.”

On Sunday, US President Donald Trump posted a screenshot of the state’s projected results on his Truth Social platform. Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev then took a screengrab of Trump’s post and praised a “historic win for the pragmatic AfD”.

Dmitriev had earlier praised the Russia-friendly AfD as “the party of hope and reason, co-operation truth and hope for Germany”. Ahead of Germany’s federal election last year, US Vice-President JD Vance endorsed the party, in a move criticised in Germany as political interference.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd0113082eo

The boss of the biggest UK-headquartered tech firm has said that artifical intelligence will find a cure for cancer that humans cannot in our lifetimes.

Rene Haas, chief executive of Cambridge-based chip designer Arm Holdings, said while modelling how a DNA marker is impacted by cancer was currently “too complex” a problem, computers are “going to solve it” in the future.

Haas also told the BBC that AI would lead to widespread humanoid robots in the next five years, but that its current rapid growth was being held up by a shortage of chips needed to build data centres.

However, he was sceptical about the idea chips could be manufactured in the UK in the future.

Arm designs the brains or CPUs of microchips already used in hundreds of billions of phones, cars, smartwatches and gadgets across the globe.

Earlier this summer, the company’s peak share price amid the AI boom made it, in cash terms, the most valuable UK-based company in history.

Haas, who stepped down from the board of British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca in April, told the BBC’s Big Boss Interview podcast: “AI is going to… find a cure for cancer that today you and I, other humans [could] not in our lifetimes. I believe in our lifetime, AI will help cure cancer.

“Modelling a cell, modelling a human, modelling how a DNA marker is impacted by cancer – it’s too complex a problem, not only for humans today, but the computers that run AI.

“However, going forward, as we feed more and more of the models into these computers, and the computers get more sophisticated to run the models, they’re going to solve it,” said Haas, who also holds a key role in Arm’s main owner, the Japan-based Softbank, which has a range of investments in tech including in OpenAI.

Prof Chris Bakal, from the Institute of Cancer Research, London, and CEO of Sentinal4D, said the real question was no longer whether we use AI, it’s what we feed it.

He said in labs like his, they are training AI on data generated themselves from patient samples.

“It is not scraped from the internet. It does not need a giant data centre to run. The future of medical AI will not belong to whoever builds the biggest computer. It will belong to whoever has the right measurements.

“That kind of prediction could cut years from the time it takes to develop new treatments. This is where AI delivers real benefit to patients.”

Job losses ‘overstated’

In a wide-ranging interview, Haas said the chips Arm designs would fuel self-learning AI robots “in a very large way” in manufacturing, cleaning, security, building bridges, and doing repairs within a decade.

“With artificial intelligence, these robots can see, learn, and essentially be reprogrammed for new tasks. So, in the service industry, the robot that was programmed to make a bed can also learn how to arrange the towels in a room, or clean the dustbins, or whatever you want to go off and do.”

Addressing concerns that AI would lead to mass job losses, Haas said while there would be some change for workers, “the estimates of jobs going away and being completely replaced by machines is a bit overstated” and outweighed by new opportunities.

He also said fears over a correction in the remarkable rise in the stock market value of AI companies were overstated, because of the long-term demand for AI.

Arm’s power-efficient technology was now being used in half of AI data centres worldwide, he said.

This has led to a significant evolution in its business in recent months, selling its own microchips. Facebook-owner Meta asked Arm to develop the Arm AGI chip and “demand has been off the charts”, according to Haas, with more than $2bn worth of demand since it was launched in March.

There have, however, been challenges in the supply of many types of chips, which Haas believes is holding back the roll-out of AI and data centres.

He pointed to plans for massive “multi-gigawatt” data centres in France and the US as well as plans to put them in space.

On the first day of the new Palestinian school year, the head-teacher of al-Mughayyir boys school arrived at work before dawn, walking past the freshly installed barbed wire fencing and reinforced school gates as the sun began creeping through olive trees around the village, deep inside the occupied West Bank.

“We are scared,” Bassam al Assaf told me. “The students are afraid, and their parents are afraid.”

Six people, including three pupils at the school, have been killed in al-Mughayyir this year, in a surge of settler-related violence against Palestinians. One of them, 14-year-old Aws al-Naasan, was shot dead by a settler outside the school gates in April.

“I was inside my classroom and two little students came rushing to tell me there were settlers close to the school wall,” remembers English teacher Waheed Abu Naem, whose brother Jihad was also killed by an Israeli soldier in the same attack.

Waheed said he was trying to move pupils to safety inside the school gate when the settler fired towards them. Mobile phone footage shows the moment Aws was shot.

“When I turned him onto his back, I saw lots of blood coming from his nose and mouth, and the bullet in his head,” said Waheed. “We lost him.”

He told me that bullets continued hitting the school building, as students hid behind the walls of their classrooms, or lay on the floor.

The Israeli military said in a statement at the time that stones had been hurled at a car carrying “civilians including a reservist soldier”, and that the reservist had got out of the vehicle and fired at suspects.

Israeli media reported the reservist was later suspended from duty and an investigation launched.

Since that day, the casualties have grown alongside parents’ fears.

Over the summer, two more pupils were shot dead by Israeli forces during settler attacks and incursions in the village, along with a 19-year-old who had just left the school.

In both cases, Israel’s army said its forces responded to instigators of “a violent riot”.

With three empty desks in the classrooms, some parents were reluctant to send their children back for the new school year.

The school sits right on the edge of Al-Mughayyir, an isolated village north-east of Ramallah, increasingly surrounded by Jewish settler outposts, and regularly blocked by Israeli forces who frequently operate an ad-hoc checkpoint at the entrance.

Bassam al-Assaf has installed a long barbed-wire fence around the compound and reinforced the school gates, to try and reassure parents. Ambulance crews are now stationed on the road outside, and several parents have volunteered to wait outside the school all day as an extra layer of protection.

“I came because it makes the children feel their parents are with them, that they are safe, it gives them a kind of security,” said Haroon Bishara, whose boys are in the first and second grades.

“We fear for our children more this year,” he told me. “We know the situation is not safe at the school.”

But he said that fear was mixed with a determination not to let the threat from settler attacks force them out.

Lined up in the playground for their first assembly, pupils heard the instructions repeated by teachers again and again throughout the day: if soldiers or settlers approach the school, don’t shout, don’t go near them, don’t react.

Just over an hour after classes began, settlers were spotted through the school windows: two men, driving sheep through Palestinian fields a couple of hundred metres from the school, as Israeli soldiers stood close by.

Minutes later, another settler with a flock of sheep appeared.

Cipriani Residences Miami is putting the finishing touch on its Brickell skyscraper with a pair of penthouses so lavish they come with their own zip code in the sky, The Post has learned.

The Italian hospitality empire unveiled The 1931 Collection this week, a two-unit offering perched atop the 950-foot tower that now stands as the tallest residential building south of Manhattan.

Together, the penthouses carry a combined price tag of $53 million, with the larger unit listed at $33 million and its companion at $19.8 million.

Named for the year Giuseppe Cipriani first opened the doors of Harry’s Bar in Venice, the two residences sit on the building’s uppermost floors and are meant to channel nearly a century of the family’s hospitality instincts into full time living spaces rather than hotel suites.

The pricier of the pair, dubbed The San Marco, unfolds across three levels and 9,677 square feet of combined indoor and outdoor space. A 24-foot Great Room anchors the home, while a chef’s kitchen finished in lacquered wood and Calacatta marble, an integrated wet bar and a dedicated wine display round out the entertaining areas.

The real showstopper sits upstairs, where a private rooftop delivers an infinity pool, summer kitchen, cold plunge, hot tub, massage pavilion and even a putting green with sweeping views of Biscayne Bay.

Its sibling unit, The Torcello, trades scale for intimacy at 6,703 square feet. Buyers still get their own infinity pool, gym, wellness room, cold plunge and hot tub outdoors, plus a private screening room and wine storage inside.

A standout feature is The Midnight Bar, a dedicated space built for cocktails and late night gatherings.

Both homes come stocked with the kind of perks money alone can’t always buy elsewhere.

Residents get in-home dining prepared by the Cipriani culinary team, along with reservation privileges across the brand’s international network, from the original Harry’s Bar in Venice to Cipriani outposts in New York, Monte Carlo, Dubai, Hong Kong and Punta del Este.

Source : https://nypost.com/2026/09/07/real-estate/cipriani-tops-off-tallest-tower-south-of-manhattan-with-53m-penthouses-and-a-global-perks-book/

In their honeymoon era.

Newlyweds Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce stepped out for a romantic date night in New York City over the weekend, just two months after tying the knot at Madison Square Garden.

The couple dined at the Indian restaurant Ambassadors Clubhouse, a hotspot located in the NoMad district, on Sunday night.

As seen in pics obtained by Page Six, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end held his wife close as they walked into the restaurant from their SUV.

The pop star dressed to impress for the outing, wearing a metallic brown halter dress by Stella McCartney.

She paired the look with a burgundy purse by the same designer, bronze metallic shoes and the Elizabeth Taylor opal ring and bracelet set, which Kelce gifted her for Christmas last year.

Kelce, for his part, donned a white, silk, striped button-up with brown pants and checkered Vans.

The duo’s date night comes two months after they said “I do” in a star-studded ceremony at Madison Square Garden on July 3.

While the singer has yet to break her silence on the lavish event, Kelce gushed over the “magical” night earlier this month.

“We needed it to be a private feel. And MSG went above and beyond to give us that,” he told fans during an episode of his “New Heights” podcast. “I can’t thank everybody enough that showed up, but also that helped put the show on, and it was a very magical, magical night.”

Swift and Kelce, both 36, have made several public appearances since the big night. Their first outing as husband and wife was at JuJu Smith-Schuster and Laura Kruk’s wedding, just one week after their own nuptials.

In photos obtained by Page Six at the time, Swift wore a strapless pink floral ball gown while Kelce opted for a gray suit. The couple looked all loved-up as they joined guests making their way into the venue.

The couple’s Sunday night date comes just days before the official start of Kelce’s NFL season. The Kansas City Chiefs will face the Denver Broncos on Monday, Sept. 14 at Arrowhead Stadium.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/09/07/entertainment/newlyweds-taylor-swift-and-travis-kelce-step-out-for-romantic-date-night-in-nyc/?_gl=1*11c4hdr*_gcl_au*NDQ4MTIzNjMxLjE3ODc3MTQ2ODI.*_ga*MTE0NzUzODc5NC4xNzc4NDY2Mjg4*_ga_0DZ7LHF5PZ*czE3ODg4MzU1MTYkbzQ0JGcxJHQxNzg4ODM1NTMxJGo0NSRsMCRoMA

 

A delirious Kabir Maharjan drifted in and out of consciousness in a pool of muddy water in complete darkness, trapped for nine days in a tunnel beneath the wreckage of Nepal’s worst flood disaster in decades.
When he finally awoke at a hospital after a miracle rescue, he did not recognise his wife. Confused, he asked her why she had not given him a bed sooner.
Maharjan was one of hundreds of hydropower workers believed to have been buried when a glacier collapsed above Nepal’s Trishuli valley on August 26, unleashing a wall of mud and water that killed more than 1,300 people and left thousands missing across Nepal and neighbouring Tibet.
He and mechanical foreman Sanjay Sah survived in an air-filled chamber, said lawmaker Shri Ram Neupane, a veteran tunnel engineer who helped lead the rescue effort.

Their rescue against the odds has given hope to search teams working at the sites along the devastated valley that some of the 121 workers still believed to be trapped in tunnels as of Monday are still alive.
Reuters has reconstructed the full story of the men’s survival and the frantic effort to save them through exclusive interviews with a dozen people, including the previously unreported accounts shared by relatives, engineers, government officials and rescuers directly involved in the operation and a review of site documents, maps, and internal conversations between rescuers.
THE MORNING
At 7:30 a.m. (0145 GMT) on the day of the disaster, Maharjan called his wife before his shift at the Upper Trishuli 3A hydropower project.
“I have to go inside the tunnel,” he told her. “There won’t be any network inside.”
Around 60 minutes later, a glacier collapsed at the Langtang Lirung mountain some 25 miles upstream, causing a landslide so powerful that it formed a wall of water that flattened villages and submerged a network of 12 hydropower projects with nearly 900 workers inside.

In the capital Kathmandu, electricity department officials were monitoring the projects’ power supplies on their screens. Then the fields started going blank — one after another, stations disappearing from the control panels, falling like dominoes.

Suraj Dahal, an engineer at the Nepal Electricity Authority who led parts of the rescue effort, said he was not immediately alarmed because “floods are normal” in Nepal.
They soon understood otherwise. Because the 3A station manager was abroad, it took officials two extra minutes to reach out on call to the roughly 40 workers estimated to be inside. By then, at least two hydropower projects upriver had already been hit.
At 9:15 a.m. — two minutes after Maharjan’s wife, Hira Shova Maharjan, had tried and failed to reach him — officials gave the final order to 3A: “Evacuate!”

Sah, who worked in the power house’s control room, sped from floor to floor, warning colleagues individually, he later told rescuers.
Outside the tunnels, evacuating workers tried to run away from the flood, but were not fast enough. Officials pointed to footage showing a group of roughly 30 workers swept away by a wave many times their height.
Rescuers later identified an escape ladder which, had workers known of it, could have saved as many as two-thirds of those inside, said Dahal.
But they “didn’t know where to go,” he said.
Of the tunnel’s four access routes, engineering drawings seen by Reuters showed one ran more than 180 meters to the underground powerhouse — but rescuers believed it was fully flooded, offering no hope of survivors.

Neupane instead turned his attention to a shorter cable-duct tunnel that sloped upward and was less exposed to the floodwaters. It was there that Maharjan and Sah had taken shelter, just 160 meters from the exit — “at the corner, at the edge of the tunnel,” as Maharjan would later describe it to his wife.
FEAR OF THE WORST

For the next nine days, the air pocket that had saved their lives became their prison. Sah said he recited Hindu prayers to keep his courage. Maharjan sipped the same muddy water he slept in to stay alive, his wife said.
When Hira Shova first heard about the flood, she assumed the powerhouse would be safe.
She tried calling her husband, colleagues, anyone who might know something. No one answered.
When officials later showed her photographs of where the site entrance once stood — now a bare riverbank — she told herself, “he couldn’t possibly be alive”.
“Deep down in my heart, a terrible hopelessness was setting in,” she recalled, but to her sons, 15 and 10, she kept up a brave front.
RACE AGAINST THE MOUNTAIN
Officials believed that oxygen pockets scattered through the wreckage might help some workers survive.
With more than 7,500 houses destroyed across the valley, according to Dharam Raj Uprety, chief of Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, rescuers had to make brutal triage decisions about where to dig first. But 3A ranked near the top of the list because officials hoped its multi-story structure of turbines and ventilation floors might have trapped pockets of air.

Lawmaker and engineer Sagar Dhakal, along with Neupane, reached the site by army helicopter the day after the disaster. They found heavy machinery couldn’t move in immediately; the debris was too saturated.

“Everything you drop on that place just goes under,” said Prakash Pokhrel, a geologist with Nepal’s disaster management authority.
Crews first had to build a stable platform before any excavation could begin.
Serious digging didn’t start until three days after the disaster. All four tunnels were blocked — mud, rock, timber and debris, some of it buried under 15 to 30 meters (49 to 98 feet) of landslide material. Rescuers turned to drilling, controlled blasting and heavy equipment to inch a path forward.
A breakthrough came when a 5-inch borehole drilled from above finally confirmed the tunnel’s true alignment, giving crews a fixed point to dig toward.
Rain made everything worse. Several nights, downpours refilled the excavated shaft with fresh water and debris, undoing hours of work in minutes. It took rescuers nearly six days just to reach the tunnel’s buried entrance, said Amshu Kiran Shahi, a board member of the Nepal Electricity Authority. When they called out for survivors, nobody answered.
THE BREAKTHROUGH
The night before the survivors were found, rescuers hit a wall of mud-clogged debris they couldn’t move. Dhakal’s crew improvised, tapping a natural channel some 15 meters above the tunnel and forcing water through it with a high-pressure jet that cleared 4 to 5 meters in minutes during testing.
Then the rain came again, triggering a partial collapse that briefly trapped several rescuers themselves. The operation stalled for hours before colleagues talked them back inside, and crews reinforced the passage with metal sheeting and gabion wire.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-how-two-men-survived-nine-days-nepal-flood-tunnel-2026-09-08/

Israeli strikes on a southern Lebanese town killed at least 12 people including two children early on Monday, Lebanon’s health ministry said, in one of the ‌deadliest days of Israeli bombardment in recent weeks.
Fears of a renewed Israeli military campaign are mounting in Lebanon after days of escalating strikes despite a June ceasefire that was meant to halt fighting between the Israeli military and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

A woman who said she was related to at least three of the dead said one attack hit a residential building as children were getting ready for school. The Israeli military ​said it struck people seen transferring weapons in the area of the town, Kfar Rumman.
At the site, Reuters reporters saw children’s schoolbooks strewn between chunks of concrete ​where the building once stood. Rescue workers with heavy machinery had worked throughout the morning to pull bodies out from underneath the rubble.
Eight-year-old ⁠Mustafa Farhat lost his grandparents and his mother in the strike, locals said. Rescue workers were still searching for his father’s body on Monday morning while the boy lay in ​the hospital being treated for his wounds, they added.

One of his relatives, Mona Farhat, told Reuters it was their home that was hit in the run-up to school-time.
“What did they target? ​What is the goal they are targeting? Do they want us to leave our land? They are mistaken,” Farhat said at the hospital.
Lebanon’s health ministry said 11 people, including two children and four women, were killed in that attack on a residential building on Monday. State media had earlier said the attack happened after midnight.
A separate Israeli drone strike on a civilian vehicle in the town killed one medic, the ​health ministry said. Two other medics were wounded in the strike, the ministry said.
The strikes on Kfar Rumman came without an online evacuation warning from the Israeli military.
ISRAEL REVIEWING REPORTS ​OF CIVILIANS HURT

Israel’s military said steps had been taken to mitigate harm “to uninvolved individuals, including the use of precise munitions and aerial surveillance.” The military said it was reviewing the report that “uninvolved individuals” were ‌harmed as ⁠a result of the strikes.

The Israeli military said Hezbollah had launched two explosive drones overnight towards Israeli troops operating near the Ali al-Taher ridge, a strategic cluster of hills in southeastern Lebanon where Hezbollah is thought to have built an underground military complex.
Israel said last week that it had cleared Hezbollah fighters out of the ridge. Hezbollah has not commented and Reuters could not independently confirm the military situation at Ali al-Taher.
In the days since, Israel has ramped up deadly strikes on towns to the ridge’s north and west where residents had returned after the June ​ceasefire, Lebanese security officials told Reuters.
The officials ​said they were anticipating continued escalations in ⁠the south in the coming weeks.
On Sunday, at least 11 people were killed in Israeli strikes on three towns near the ridge, Lebanon’s health ministry said in an updated toll.
Two of the dead were women killed in strikes on the town of Arab Salim, where Israel’s ​military had issued an online evacuation warning at 6:04 a.m. local time (0304 GMT).
The health ministry said separate Israeli strikes on Sunday had ​destroyed the Ghandour hospital ⁠in the town of Nabatieh al-Fawqa.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-strikes-southern-lebanese-town-kill-11-state-news-agency-says-2026-09-07/

At the World Humanoid Robot Games in China last month, robots jumped, boxed and danced. Some fleet-footed bots ran faster than Usain Bolt over 100 meters. Spectators cheered the machines’ improving capabilities and their meme-worthy stumbles, opens new tab .
Two days after the Games ended, the People’s Liberation Army’s official newspaper drew its own conclusions from the show. The PLA Daily called for researchers to accelerate the transfer of cutting-edge technologies from laboratories to military training grounds for robotic “combatants.”

China’s defense establishment ​is accelerating research into humanoids’ military uses and planning for their eventual wartime deployment, according to a Reuters review of more than 100 Chinese military procurement notices, academic studies, patents, official publications, government records and defense-company materials.
Military institutions are testing humanoids against battlefield requirements, seeking ‌to acquire robots and technologies to train them, and studying how they might function alongside troops, the previously unreported records show. The work gained momentum in 2025 and 2026, focusing on robot perception, manipulation, and training data.

Chinese manufacturers accounted for about 95% of global humanoid shipments in 2025, according to BofA Global Research. That commercial dominance gives the PLA access to an expanding industry while developing its own military applications.
China’s robot defense research underscores how rapidly military technologies are evolving globally. In the Russia-Ukraine war, semiautonomous drones that use artificial intelligence for navigation and targeting have transformed reconnaissance and attack, while robots carry supplies and retrieve casualties. Reuters has previously documented the Chinese military’s efforts to learn from Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

That evolution is driving worldwide military interest ​in autonomous systems.
“Going where we don’t want humans to go is one of the most compelling reasons to develop robots in the first place,” said Dennis Hong, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA. “If losing a robot means avoiding the loss of a human life, then the robot ​can become expendable.”

China’s defense ministry and the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), the PLA’s premier research institution, didn’t respond to requests for comment about humanoid robots’ military applications.
Reuters found no evidence that China has deployed an armed humanoid with an operational ⁠PLA unit. The robots remain energy-intensive and unreliable outside controlled demonstrations. Battlefield environments pose many variables and challenge robots’ abilities in unpredictable ways, said Aaron Johnson, a professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.
URBAN ASSAULT FORCE
Already, China has a vision for humanoid robots in urban warfare.
Six “combat robots” – humanoids, robot dogs or unmanned vehicles – would be ​split up between two assault teams. Working with ground troops, the robots would clear an enemy-occupied building, floor-by-floor and room-by-room.
That scenario was described in an August 2025 paper by researchers at NUDT’s test center in Xi’an. The study modeled an urban assault force using equipment the authors projected could be available within five to 10 years. ​It didn’t specify the robots’ rules of engagement, the weapons they would carry, nor how they would handle civilian encounters.
Improvements in balance, perception and endurance could make humanoids useful in places including buildings, tunnels and ship interiors, said Juo-Min Chou, a researcher at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research. “Their two hands and two feet could, in theory, combine mobility, climbing and manipulation,” she said.
For simpler reconnaissance or logistics missions, however, quadruped, tracked or wheeled robots would generally be cheaper and easier to deploy at scale, Chou added.

Chinese military commentary envisions an expanding range of roles for humanoids. A July 2025 article in PLA Daily argued that humanoid missions could eventually evolve “from supporting combat toward primary combat” and discussed how robots might be authorized to fire on ​a living target that had been verified by a human.
In December, the PLA Eastern Theater Command released an AI-generated montage that showed military robots, including humanoids and quadrupeds, overwhelming Taiwan’s defenses in a hypothetical future conflict.
China isn’t alone in exploring battlefield uses for humanoids. Last year, the U.S. Army launched a competition to develop “militarized humanoid ​capabilities” that could eventually work alongside soldiers. The Army said potential roles included reconnaissance, security, obstacle clearing, hazardous-material operations and offensive and defensive missions in urban terrain. Up to 10 finalists were due to test their systems with U.S. military experts this year, with as much as $1.25 million available for follow-on contracts.
The U.S. robotics industry, however, trails far behind China ‌in developing two-legged and ⁠four-legged machines. Reuters reported last month that China’s Unitree robots – among the world’s leading producers of humanoids and quadrupeds – based designs for its best-selling robot dogs on innovations financed by the U.S. military.
The Pentagon and the U.S. Army didn’t comment for this story.

INFILTRATING ENEMY LINES
Chinese interest in humanoid robots’ military applications began to pick up in 2024. That year, NUDT and China’s Academy of Military Sciences hosted a defense-technology forum that included a session on military applications for humanoid systems, according to NUDT’s website. Neither institution responded to Reuters’ questions.
A year later, NUDT explicitly framed humanoid robots as battlefield tools. A university competition in June 2025 featured an event that simulated “infiltration behind enemy lines,” requiring robots to enter an area, map it and locate targets, according to its website. Another envisioned robots conducting identity checks, discipline inspections and security patrols at military bases.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/dance-floor-war-china-readies-humanoid-robots-combat-2026-09-07/

Brazil’s opposition took to the ​streets on Independence Day on Monday as right-wing presidential candidate Senator Flavio Bolsonaro sought to capitalize on a Supreme ‌Court crisis to bolster his campaign against leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in next month’s election.
In chilly temperatures, some 28,500 people massed on Sao Paulo’s Paulista Avenue for the conservatives’ rally, researchers from the University of Sao Paulo’s Monitor do Debate Politico estimated.
Organizers cast the demonstration as a protest against Lula’s government ​and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ahead of first-round voting on October 4.
The justice aggressively pursued former President Jair Bolsonaro, the ​senator’s father, over a 2023 coup plot and won his conviction in 2025, making Moraes one of Brazil’s most polarizing ⁠figures.
“This consortium of Lula and Moraes will come to an end,” Flavio Bolsonaro told supporters. “Anyone who votes for Lula is voting ​for Alexandre de Moraes.”
A Quaest poll released on Monday showed Lula and Bolsonaro tied at 41% each in a potential presidential runoff, which would ​be held on October 25.
Speaking from a sound truck alongside other conservative politicians, Bolsonaro sought to revive mass street demonstrations that were a hallmark of his father, though turnout fell short of the elder Bolsonaro’s crowds.
A similar event last year drew about 42,000 people, while a rally called by Jair Bolsonaro in ​early 2024 attracted roughly 185,000 supporters.
An inflatable doll depicting U.S. President Donald Trump, a longstanding ally of Bolsonaro, holding a jailed ​Lula figure towered above the crowd. Many demonstrators waved Brazilian flags, while others carried U.S. and Israeli flags.
SUPREME COURT CRISIS
Bolsonaro’s running mate, Congressman Alfredo ‌Gaspar, similarly linked ⁠Lula to Moraes, casting the justice as a political partner of the leftist leader.
“There is no Lula without Alexandre, nor Alexandre without Lula. That’s why we say: ‘Out Lula, out Moraes’,” he told the crowd.

The rally came as unprecedented conflict engulfed the Supreme Court after Justice Andre Mendonca, a Bolsonaro appointee, disclosed a report raising questions about alleged contacts between Moraes and a banker accused of leading a multibillion-dollar fraud ​scheme, prompting calls for an ​investigation of the justice.
Moraes responded ⁠by seeking an investigation into Mendonca for alleged abuse of authority.
Bolsonaro has argued that his father, currently under house arrest and barred from running for office, is the victim of political persecution by Moraes.
“The ​dissatisfaction is enormous with a whole corrupted system. We are Bolsonaro supporters. It’s a shame ​what Bolsonaro went ⁠through, and now our option is Flavio,” said attendee Deisi Moro, adding the crowd was significant despite the cold weather.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/bolsonaro-son-hold-rallies-brazil-court-crisis-offers-opening-against-lula-2026-09-07/

The United Arab ​Emirates is building alternative routes for its energy exports and trade to ensure they are not “held ‌hostage” by the ongoing war between the U.S. and Iran, UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said on Monday.
The conflict has had a significant impact on Gulf Arab states, including the UAE, after Tehran fired missiles at the country and attacked its oil tankers in the Strait ​of Hormuz.

“Our energy exports will not be held hostage, nor will our trade and economic activity,” Gargash ​told the Hili Forum in Abu Dhabi.
The UAE has been expanding port capacity along its eastern ⁠coast, as well as developing pipelines, railways and trade routes for alternative corridors, he said.
While acknowledging that relations with Iran ​could eventually recover, Gargash warned that rebuilding trust after the attacks could take decades.
He also criticised Gulf Arab states ​for failing to mount a coordinated response to Iran, saying they had been unable to translate shared concerns into a unified strategy.

U.S. ALLIANCE NOT ENOUGH
Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson echoed similar concerns at the policymakers’ forum, saying Gulf Arab countries should not rely solely on ​their strategic partnership with the U.S. for security.
“We need to realise in the Gulf that having international forces ​in the region, having a strategic alliance with the U.S. is very important but is not enough,” Majed al-Ansari said.
“Self-sufficiency when it ‌comes ⁠to security is the only way forward.”
Gargash argued that while the partnership with the U.S. is essential, the six-month conflict has exposed the importance of national capabilities.
“Our security is our first priority. When we depend entirely on others, we cannot always assume it will be their priority,” he said.
HORMUZ REMAINS A STICKING POINT
Iran followed through on its ​threat to close the Strait ​of Hormuz, once a ⁠conduit for a fifth of global energy supplies. The disruption sent energy prices soaring and sparked a global economic crisis.

The waterway’s status remains a central obstacle in negotiations between ​Washington and Tehran, mediated by Qatar and Pakistan, with Iran claiming the strait ​belongs to Iran ⁠and Oman — a position Gulf states broadly reject.
“Freedom of navigation is not a concession to be granted, nor a principle to be renegotiated under pressure,” Gargash said, adding that any long-term resolution must include credible guarantees against further Iranian attacks ⁠on Gulf ​Arab states.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/uae-builds-alternative-trade-energy-routes-after-iran-attacks-official-says-2026-09-07/

Chinese banks have been buying U.S. Treasuries ​over the past few months after lifting dollar deposit rates, according to people familiar with the matter, moves that could help slow gains in the ‌yuan and which come amid a spike in U.S. yields.
The purchases, which have not been previously reported, represent a shift in strategy for Chinese commercial banks. Reuters was, however, not able to ascertain the amounts of money involved or whether they move the needle in terms of China’s overall holdings of U.S. Treasuries.

For many Chinese banks, U.S. Treasuries represent an attractive investment at a time when yields on Chinese government bonds ​are very low and heavy investment in the domestic bond market has attracted attention from Chinese regulators.
HIKES TO DOLLAR DEPOSIT RATES
Dollar interest rates offered by China’s “Big Five” ​state-owned lenders on most deposits have been capped at 2.8% since 2023.
But account holders with balances over $50,000 have been able to negotiate ⁠rates above 3% since June and even close to 4% at some smaller banks or foreign lenders since August, according to a state banker with direct knowledge of the deals.

Some ​of the smaller and foreign banks have even sought to woo customers to dollar deposits by advertising on social media.
After paying the deposit rates of 3% to 4%, banks can earn ​income from Treasuries. The 10-year yield has risen more than 30 basis points since the start of June to 4.76%, on a combination of inflation and U.S. debt worries as well as an improved U.S. growth outlook.
“Essentially, domestic yields are too low, so banks need to attract dollar deposits to purchase U.S. Treasuries,” said a separate banking source, saying lenders had been prodded into action by a “famine” of attractive safe ​assets to invest in.
The source said, however, that banks were reluctant to convert yuan to dollars themselves given recent regulatory scrutiny of offshore investments.
All sources were not authorised to ​speak publicly on the subject and declined to be identified.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the country’s central bank, did not immediately respond to Reuters’ faxed requests for comment.
MORE DOLLARS IN CHINA
According to banking sources, ‌there is ⁠much more dollar liquidity in China at the moment.
Foreign exchange deposits in China have been rising on the back of booming exports and record trade surpluses. They stood at $1.18 trillion at end-July, up 17.9% from a year earlier and for the first seven months of the year, they grew $121.2 billion, PBOC data showed.
Hikes to dollar deposit rates in China have also meant that keeping money in U.S. dollars, rather than converting it into yuan, has become more attractive. The rate for yuan deposits at major state banks is just 0.95%.
Smaller banks started lifting ​dollar deposit rates in June, forcing larger banks ​to follow suit or lose out on ⁠dollar funding, said another person familiar with the market.

The move coincides with signs China is looking to slow down a rise in its currency as the domestic economy struggles.
Higher deposit rates at banks can soak up dollars and prevent the yuan from rising too fast, the sources ​said. Investing cash abroad also relieves some of the downward pressure on domestic yields.
The yuan is one of the strong currencies ​performing against the dollar, ⁠having gained nearly 9% on the dollar since the beginning of last year. And since the Middle East conflict began at the end of February, China’s bond market has been the world’s strongest.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-banks-buy-treasuries-boost-dollar-deposits-sources-say-2026-09-04/

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is expected to unveil on Monday a ​boost in EU investments in Greenland and closer political ties with the Danish Arctic territory, which Donald Trump ‌has insisted should belong to the United States.
Von der Leyen arrived in Greenland on Sunday for a two-day visit serving as a show of support for the governments of Greenland and Denmark, which have strongly rebuffed Trump’s campaign to annex the world’s largest island.

The head of the 27-nation European ​Union’s executive body, von der Leyen is expected to unveil plans to invest in sectors including critical minerals, satellite ​communications and renewable energy in Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of the Danish realm.
On Sunday in Nuuk, ⁠the capital, von der Leyen said the package would be “substantial” but gave no details. Greenland Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen said his ​country wanted to build on its “close friendship and good partnership” with the EU.
Von der Leyen’s visit reflects the increasing geopolitical importance ​of the Arctic to major powers, such as the United States, Russia, China and Europe, as melting ice opens new shipping routes to make the region’s mineral wealth more accessible.

“Greenland’s stunning landscapes and natural beauty will stay with me for a long time. But so will the ​visible scars of climate change on the ice sheet,” von der Leyen posted on X after a boat trip under ​clear blue skies in a fjord scattered with chunks of ice.
“As the ice melts, a new reality is taking shape.”
TRUMP’S PUSH TO ACQUIRE ‌GREENLAND SPARKED ⁠CRISIS
Trump, the U.S. president, sparked a crisis in U.S.-European ties and turmoil within the transatlantic NATO military alliance this year when he stepped up his demands for the U.S. to control Greenland, arguing that fellow NATO member Denmark could not defend it.
European officials stressed Greenland is part of NATO territory, meaning it is covered by the alliance’s mutual defence pact, and that ​the U.S. already has the ​right to increase its military ⁠presence there under a longstanding treaty.

Tensions lowered after Trump and NATO boss Mark Rutte agreed in Davos in January that the United States, Denmark and Greenland would begin talks to resolve ​their differences and NATO would step up its role in Arctic security.
However, the trilateral talks ​have yet to ⁠yield an agreement and, at a NATO summit in Turkey in July, Trump restated his insistence that the U.S. should control Greenland.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-give-greenland-cash-boost-amid-trump-annexation-drive-2026-09-06/

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) surged into first place in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, exit polls showed, putting ​a far-right party within reach of power at the state level for the first time since World War Two.
While short of an overall majority, the AfD won 44% of the vote and delivered ‌a drubbing to Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives, reflecting the deep unpopularity of Germany’s ruling coalition in a fracturing political landscape.

The AfD is already Germany’s most popular party at the national level and is seeking to secure a foothold for advancing its agenda, which includes heavy restrictions on immigration, restoring ties with Russia, cutting support to Ukraine and quitting the euro.
As counting continued, it remained unclear whether the AfD could form a government but the wider political significance was clear for the election, which according to broadcaster ZDF drew a heavy turnout of 77%.
“We have made ​history in this country,” said Ulrich Siegmund, the 35-year-old AfD lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, who attracted thousands to his campaign rallies and who repeatedly cast victory in the state as a first step towards securing national power ​in federal elections due in 2029.

“The people have made it absolutely clear that they finally want political change and, above all, they have shown that they want it with ⁠us,” Siegmund said.
As the first exit polls were published, he stood arm-in-arm with his party’s two national leaders, who laughed gleefully as the extent of the victory became clear. Jubilant celebrations broke out at the party’s election night gathering in ​the city of Magdeburg, where people waved German flags and hugged each other in triumph.
U.S. President Donald Trump posted a screenshot of the result without comment on his Truth Social site, while far-right leaders in other European countries cheered the ​election as a mandate for change.
SETBACK FOR MERZ
The result marks a significant setback for Merz, whose personal approval rating has sunk to historic lows as voters turn away from both his planned reforms to revive Germany’s sluggish economy and his gaffe-prone personal communication style.

A poll from the ARD broadcaster showed 87% of the state’s voters were unhappy with the federal government. Siegmund has described Merz as the AfD’s best campaigner, given his unpopularity in the state.
“This election result is, above all, a vote of no confidence in the federal government,” Marcel Fratzscher, ​the president of the German Institute for Economic Research, told Reuters.
Merz has vowed to revive Europe’s largest economy with business-friendly reforms and increased spending, while warning that an AfD win in Saxony-Anhalt would damage the state and deter foreign companies from investing ​there.

Germany’s mainstream parties have all refused to work with the AfD, which has been classified as right-wing extremist by the local office of Germany’s domestic intelligence service.
One outlier is the small Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance party (BSW), which looked set to clear the threshold to ‌enter parliament. The ⁠BSW has floated the idea of rule for Saxony-Anhalt by a non-partisan state premier relying on shifting majorities, including with votes from the AfD.
Siegmund, however, rejected the BSW’s idea as a “mess” and ruled out any arrangements with other parties that would prevent the AfD from delivering on his promise of change. “If push comes to shove, there will simply be new elections,” he said.
Merz’s conservatives said they would explore talks with other parties, although that could require pulling together parties with vastly different policy agendas. In the neighbouring eastern German state of Thuringia, the conservatives run a minority government with passive tolerance from the Left party.
Although Saxony-Anhalt, formerly part of Communist-run East Germany, is one of the smaller German states, with a population of just ​over 2 million, the result underlines the rapid advance ​of the AfD since it was created in 2013.
The ⁠AfD is now Germany’s most popular party nationally, polling at 28% according to a recent INSA poll, comfortably ahead of the conservatives on 20%.
HARD LINE ON MIGRATION
While hard-right parties have gained ground elsewhere in Europe, Germany’s Nazi past has contributed to a reluctance among mainstream parties to cooperate with the AfD.
The AfD has dismissed accusations of extremism as scaremongering and an ​insult to the party’s millions of supporters.
During the campaign, the AfD tapped into growing disillusionment with established parties, which it characterises as tired and out of touch, offering ​instead a range of hardline policies ⁠and a nostalgic vision of a return to cleaner and safer streets and taking pride in being German.
“It is clear that we need change in Germany and in Western Europe. And I believe a starting signal is definitely going out from here – whether you like it or not,” said Antony Lee, an attendee at the AfD’s election party. “I am a father, I am an entrepreneur, and I know that things cannot continue like this in Germany.”

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/germanys-far-right-afd-seeks-landmark-state-victory-saxony-anhalt-votes-2026-09-06/

Iran said it will step up efforts to tackle problems ​created by U.S. sanctions that are crippling its economy, while a senior Iranian official warned of a “painful response” if it comes under further attack.
Six months after U.S.-Israeli strikes ‌on Iran launched the war, the conflict appears to be at a stalemate. A preliminary ceasefire accord reached in June has unravelled, and little progress has been made in diplomatic efforts to get the peace process back on track.

After a pause in military action for much of August, tit-for-tat strikes have resumed with U.S. Central Command saying it hit three Iranian tankers on Saturday after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched ballistic missiles at two U.S. Navy ships.
Following the attacks, Iran’s Parliament Speaker ​Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on Sunday that the U.S. should understand that the rules of the game have changed “before it is too late”.
“From now on, any attack against Iran’s ​interests and security will receive a faster, heavier and more painful response,” he said in a speech published on his Telegram channel.

A restricted zone will ⁠be announced outside the Strait of Hormuz in coming days, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Sunday, according to state media.
He added that the zone would include ​areas in the Gulf. Few details were provided on the plan initially, but Rezaei said any ship entering the new zone would be added to a sanctions list.
Tehran has shown it retains the capability ​to attack U.S. interests in neighbouring countries and to shut down oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil supplies flowed prior to the conflict.
SANCTIONS, OIL BLOCKADE SQUEEZE ECONOMY
However, the U.S. campaign to throttle Iran’s economy by blockading its oil exports and stopping sanctions evasion is growing increasingly difficult to withstand, three senior Iranian sources have said.

In his speech on Sunday, Qalibaf added that alongside the military front, Iran’s main battle ​was now over production and people’s livelihoods.
He cited sharp currency fluctuations, inflation, unemployment and market management as major challenges, adding Iranians could tolerate hardship but not mismanagement or inaction and expected the government ​to act quickly.

Iran’s Economy Minister Ali Madanizadeh said that Tehran planned to respond to U.S. economic pressure with reforms and rejected the notion that sanctions would cause it to change course, according to state media on ‌Sunday.
“They speak of ⁠economic pressure and isolation, of breaking off financial ties and they think that by pressuring the economy of a country they can change the decisions of its people,” Madanizadeh said.
“I have to clarify one point: The responsibility of reforming Iran’s economy is with its government and people, not with the U.S. Treasury.”
Separately, Economy Ministry Deputy Morteza Zamanian said on Sunday that the ministry’s “Economic War Headquarters” was doubling down on its work to resolve problems caused by the war, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
KHARG ISLAND HIT 550 TIMES IN PRIOR MONTHS, IRAN SAYS
Iran is the third-largest producer in the Organization of ​the Petroleum Exporting Countries and exported 90% of ​its crude via its Kharg Island export hub ⁠before the war. Flows have been disrupted since a U.S. blockade of Iranian oil exports began in mid-April.
U.S. Central Command said on X that as of Sunday it had redirected 92 commercial vessels, disabled three and boarded two to ensure strict compliance with its blockade.
On August 31, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a one-line ​social media post accompanied by an AI-generated video depicting Kharg Island being “blown to smithereens.” Iranian authorities have vowed a strong response if Kharg is ​attacked.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-tackle-economic-issues-says-further-attacks-will-be-more-painful-2026-09-06/

Amazon cargo plane that crashed at Miami International Airport was a 32-year-old Boeing 767-300 freighter that had earlier operated as a passenger jet.

At least five people were killed and five were injured after an Amazon Prime Air cargo flight overran a runway and crashed while landing at Miami International Airport on Sunday, local officials said.

Prime Air Flight 7598 overran the airport’s diagonal runway shortly before 2 pm EDT (1800 GMT) and struck multiple vehicles on the ground, officials said during a news conference on Sunday afternoon.

Among those injured, three are in a critical condition, Miami-Dade Fire Chief Ray Jadallah said. At least two people were trapped in vehicles that were struck by the plane, and the pilot and co-pilot were trapped inside the plane by the crash, Jadallah said, Reuters reported.

As of late afternoon, emergency personnel were still dealing with an active fuel leak from the aircraft, Jadallah added.

More than 60 units and over 200 personnel responded to the incident responded to the incident and were deployed at the scene, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said. The department added that “units arrived to find an airplane that had caught on fire as a result of this crash, with heavy flames and smoke showing.”

Plane – a Boeing 767

The plane, which departed from San Juan, Puerto Rico, was a 32-year-old Boeing 767-300 freighter that had operated as a passenger jet for various airlines from 1994 to 2015, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24.

Shocking visuals surfaced showing an Amazon Boeing 767 cargo jet lying crashed on a road just outside Miami International Airport. The footage, shared by NBC 6, shows the massive aircraft sitting sideways across the road as thick black smoke rises from the wreckage.

Esto acaba de pasar en el aeropuerto internacional de Miami. Un avión no pudo despegar y nos tocó ver cómo se alzaron las llamas. Dios quiera todos lograran salir antes 😔 pic.twitter.com/pgDtuX8XXw

— Joy (@joybepach) September 6, 2026

Cargo airline 21 Air operated the plane for Amazon, an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement.

“We are devastated by the accident involving one of our aircraft in Miami today,” 21 Air said on its website. “Our deepest condolences are with the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives.”

Flightradar24 said the plane was traveling at 112 knots (129 mph) when it exited the usable runway.

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/amazon-prime-air-cargo-flight-overruns-crashes-at-miami-international-airport-death-toll-injured-101788741994054.html

 

The envoy’s comments come amid intensifying Western sanctions and possible secondary tariffs targeting countries that continue to import Russian oil.

Russian Ambassador to India Denis Alipov has reiterated India’s stance and said that New Delhi purchases Russian oil for its own energy security, not to help Moscow fund the Ukraine war.

In an interview with DD News, Alipov said, “India does not buy Russian oil for the sake of helping Russia. It is buying oil for itself and its own national development, keeping in mind the well-being and welfare of its own people”.

The envoy’s comments come amid intensifying Western sanctions and possible secondary tariffs targeting countries that continue to import Russian oil.

The United States is considering legislation, such as the proposed Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, that grants the president discretionary authority to impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on imports from the five largest buyers of Russian crude oil or natural gas.

The proposed legislation argues that such trade helps Russia’s economy by which in turn makes it easier for the nation to finance its military operations in Ukraine.

Along with targeting Russian President Vladimir Putin, the bill mandates severe direct sanctions on top military generals, state-owned banks and energy projects.

West Choosing “Pressure Tactics”

Alipov told ANI that those imposing such measures have chosen “pressure tactics instead of honest cooperation” over the particular matter.

“Unfortunately, those who impose sanctions and tariffs have taken the path of pressure tactics instead of honest cooperation. Who prevents those countries from offering a better deal to India in oil than us? But nobody is able to do that. Hence the pressure and punitive measures,” the Russian envoy said.

#WATCH | Delhi: On being asked how confident Moscow is about the India-Russia energy cooperation, Russian Ambassador to India, Denis Alipov, says, “The question is – how confident is India? India has shown that it’s able to stand its ground and defend its national interests. And… pic.twitter.com/gOZ3HFA4TR

— ANI (@ANI) September 4, 2026

“The question from my point of view is how confident India is. But it has shown that it’s able to stand its ground and defend India’s national security and national interests,” he added.

He said that Russia is willing to supply India with as much oil as it requires.

India Defends Russia Trade

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, who was in Kyiv for an official visit on Friday, said curtailing India’s purchase of Russian oil will not stop the war in Ukraine, pushing back on the Western position that cutting Moscow’s economic lifeline would force it to abandon the conflict.

Addressing the media, the minister stressed that the conflict, which is in its fifth year, could only be resolved by dialogue, diplomacy, and negotiation.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/india-buys-oil-for-itself-not-to-help-us-russian-envoy-denis-alipov-amid-sanctions-12009947?pfrom=home-ndtvworld_world_top_scroll

 

The R-60 missile was considered outdated when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But it is now being used again by Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter jets.

Ukraine is running short of some of its key missiles used to shoot down Russian drones and missiles. Ukrainian fighter jets are now using an old missile designed in the 1970s.

The missile is called the R-60. It was considered outdated when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But it is now being used again by Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter jets, according to Euro Maidan Press.

The move to use old missiles comes as Russia is sending more fast-moving drones and missiles into Ukraine. These include the Geran-3, Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones, as well as Banderol missiles. Some of these weapons can travel at speeds of up to 700 kmph. This makes them harder to stop with ground-based air defence systems and slower interceptor drones.

Ukraine is therefore using fighter jets to chase and destroy them. Its fleet includes Western-made F-16s and older Soviet-designed MiG-29s. The MiG-29 can carry several types of missiles. These include the R-60, R-73 and R-27. The R-73 has been the preferred missile for attacking fast Russian drones.

Ukraine had a large stock of these missiles when the war began in 2022. It is also believed to have received more from its allies. But supplies are limited. Some parts of the missiles were made in Ukraine, while they were assembled in Russia.

Ukraine has also used R-73 missiles in roles they were not originally designed for. They have been fitted to some ground-based air defence systems after Ukraine began running short of missiles for its Soviet-era Osa systems. Some have also been used on robotic boats.

The shortage is now forcing Ukraine to bring back the older R-60.

Last month, an R-60 missile was seen in the wreckage of a Ukrainian MiG-29 that crashed. This week, a video also circulated showing a MiG-29 shooting down a Russian Banderol missile with an R-60 while flying at very low altitude.

The missile shortage spreading to F-16s really concerns me.
Because at the same time out of nowhere we are seeing Ukrainian MiGs flying combat sorties with older R-60 missiles and not R-73s.

Here’s a recent video of an R-60 being used against a banderol cruise missile : pic.twitter.com/UMhtXW2o2p

— capt. Wild Bill Kelso (@_wild_billkelso) September 4, 2026

Ukraine is also running short of missiles for its F-16 fighter jets, with some pilots flying missions with only the aircraft’s built-in gun. The F-16 normally uses AIM-120 AMRAAM and AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles to shoot down Russian drones and cruise missiles, according to Euro Maidan Press.

But Ukraine is now rationing these missiles because its supplies are limited. The shortage is even more serious because AIM-9 and AIM-120 missiles are also used by Ukraine’s NASAMS air-defence systems.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/ukraine-runs-short-of-key-missiles-mig-29-jets-bring-back-1970s-weapon-12009538?pfrom=home-ndtvworld_world_top_scroll

 

Ukraine is considering legalising pornography to raise up to $25 million in annual taxes, reduce corruption and help fund its war effort, a report has claimed.

Ukraine is considering legalising its pornography industry and bringing it into the formal tax system as it looks for additional revenue to support the country’s war effort, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.

The proposal is aimed not only at generating tax income but also at addressing corruption and the legal contradictions faced by thousands of people earning money from adult content.

Pornography production, distribution and possession are currently illegal in Ukraine and can carry a prison sentence of up to seven years.

However, the report said the country has been unable to eliminate a large and lucrative adult-content industry, with many creators operating online, from abroad or through arrangements designed to avoid the existing restrictions.

Legalising Porn Could Generate $25 Million A Year In Ukraine

Ukrainian opposition lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak, who chairs Parliament’s finance committee, is leading the push to legalise pornography. A bill co-authored by him has already passed its first vote in Parliament in July and is awaiting a second reading.

Zhelezniak estimates that legalising and taxing the industry could generate up to $25 million annually for the Ukrainian government.

While that would be a small amount compared with Ukraine’s stated annual defence requirement of around $120 billion, he estimates it could be enough to fund approximately 30,000 drones.

The report said supporters also believe legalisation could reduce corruption by removing the criminal status of an industry that already exists on a substantial scale.

Zhelezniak described the current situation as a contradiction because authorities are demanding taxes from people whose underlying activity remains illegal.

Tax Payments Create Legal Contradiction

The issue became more prominent after Ukrainian tax authorities obtained information from Fenix International, the UK-based parent company of OnlyFans.

According to figures cited in the report, 7,900 Ukrainians earned more than $131 million from OnlyFans in 2023. That created millions of dollars in potential tax liabilities.

Authorities subsequently began sending letters to creators, some of whom were earning more than $20,000 a month. However, declaring that income could also expose them to accusations of illegally producing pornography.

Zhelezniak said people were effectively being forced to choose between not paying taxes and facing tax-related criminal charges, or paying taxes and potentially admitting to activity prohibited by Ukraine’s pornography laws.

Crackdowns And Allegations Of Corruption

The report also highlighted allegations that the existing system has created opportunities for corruption.

Ukrainian authorities had previously turned a blind eye to parts of the industry, while some studios allegedly operated with the involvement of corrupt law-enforcement officials.

The office of Ukraine’s general prosecutor said in May that police departments in three regions had each been receiving more than $20,000 a month in bribes, according to the report.

The crackdown also affected individual creators.

Svitlana Dvornikova, an OnlyFans creator with around one million subscribers, told the report that police searched her home while she was preparing her daughter for school. Officers seized electronic devices and around $200,000 in cash that she said she had kept aside to pay taxes.

Dvornikova alleged that officers offered to take half the money as a bribe. She said she refused.

Creators Move Abroad To Continue Work

The legal uncertainty has pushed hundreds of Ukrainian OnlyFans creators to move abroad or produce content outside Ukraine.

Dvornikova herself travels to rented villas in France or Spain to stream content because producing pornography inside Ukraine could expose her to criminal prosecution.

Those who remain in Ukraine have developed workarounds.

The report described a business in Lviv operated by Iryna Mosiychuk that presents itself as a consulting company but houses webcam studios used by several dozen models.

Mosiychuk said her models earn between $2,000 and $7,000 a month and that she currently pays around $5,000 in taxes each month.

She has argued that the tax contribution could increase substantially if the industry were legally recognised.

The war has also directly affected such operations. Models working from the Lviv studios monitor air-raid alerts and sometimes have to abandon livestreams and head to bomb shelters.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/ukraine-considers-legalising-porn-to-fund-war-effort-ukraine-pornography-plans-war-revenue-drones-ws-l-10313485.html

 

The Islamic Republic is planning to combine its forces, often referred to as the “Axis of Resistance”, with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, Hamas and pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria in one single assault, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Iran is actively coordinating a comprehensive, multi-front October 7-style attack against Israel alongside its regional proxy networks, according to Israeli intelligence assessments.

The Islamic Republic is planning to combine its forces, often referred to as the “Axis of Resistance”, with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, Hamas and pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria in one single assault, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Even though the October 7 attack was launched without the other fronts joining in, Hamas documents seized from the Gaza Strip revealed that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar envisioned a broader regional war with Hezbollah and Iran to join a wider campaign against Israel.

Sinwar assumed the initial success of Hamas’ assault would force Iran and Hezbollah into a full-scale regional campaign.

However, the report cited published US and Israeli assessments which stated that Iran and Hezbollah had not been informed about the details of the October 7 attack or on which date it would be carried out.

This lack of prior synchronisation resulted in a fragmented response, with Hezbollah launching limited strikes in the north rather than a massive, parallel offensive that morning.

Israeli intelligence indicates that the “Axis of Resistance” is seeking to correct the coordination gaps exposed on October 7.

Rather than hoping a localised attack will draw in other factions, Tehran is organising a synchronised multi-front blueprint. This strategy aims to ensure that Hezbollah, the Houthis, and various Iraqi militias can start simultaneous campaigns from day one, formalising the multi-front pressure Sinwar had initially envisioned.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/iran-planning-bigger-october-7-style-attack-on-israel-using-proxies-report-12009455?pfrom=home-ndtvworld_world_top_scroll

FAMOUS for its dramatic volcanic landscapes and luxury seaside resorts, Jeju Island is a honeymoon paradise.

But a string of mystery deaths and botched missing persons investigations on South Korea‘s largest island has sent shockwaves across the country.

A work-shy 34-year-old officer who allegedly closed two missing persons cases with no evidence has cast doubt over the South Korean police force on what is now dubbed “death island”.

Officials eventually discovered that Bu, identified only by his surname, had falsified reports on the victims and concealed the files in the hopes of not being foiled by colleagues.

Later, a review revealed more mismanagement of cases.

He marked a missing person as dead and closed the case without any evidence – just to avoid the “extra work”, investigators allege.

For two of these cases, the cop claimed to have contacted the missing persons and confirmed they were alive but the devastated families claim he never reached out at all.

Both people were found dead last month, sparking fury for their loved ones.

In more emotional heartache for victims’ families, officials said cases where “death” was recorded in the file would be permanently deleted from the database.

Morgan Wright, founder and CEO of the National Centre for Opened and Unsolved Cases, said: “There is no way any single individual or any agency should be able to delete reports in a system of record.

“This is a failure on one of the largest levels I have ever seen.”

Embers from the case fanned out onto social media with users claiming a serial killer was on the loose on the island.

Others purported theories suggesting a human trafficking ring on Jeju.

But police were quick to stamp out these ideas, saying that there are no confirmed connections.

Wi Seong-gon, Jeju’s Governor, has now been sucked into a crisis management crusade, pushing to calm fears among holiday-goers that the destination has become “Jeju Horror Island”.

“The spread of fake news and rumours suggesting Jeju is more dangerous than other regions in the wake of this false case closure must urgently be corrected,” he said.

“Accurate facts and necessary information must be communicated quickly, and we must respond actively so that unverified information does not deepen anxiety about safety in Jeju.”

Now, South Korean police are painstakingly poring over 310,000 missing persons cases that were closed in the last three years, siphoning away valuable resources that could be tackling new crimes.

Shabnam Chaudhri, a former Metropolitan Police detective who headed the Missing Persons Unit across Hackney, told The Sun: “It’s incompetence and laziness by the officer.”

When she worked as a detective inspector for Community Safety for four years in the 2000s, one of the officers she oversaw in her unit was faced with looking into several big domestic violence cases.

Shabnam said: “He had around 29 investigations and he closed 26 of them filing reports saying the victims had been contacted but claimed that they didn’t want to go through the criminal justice process.

“A high load were not interested where most officers were working really hard to convince the victims to go to court. These were victims of serious violence.”

She couldn’t join the dots as to why they would refuse to go to court, so she decided to take matters into her own hands.

It turned out the victims said they were never contacted by the officer.

“After I found out, he offered no explanation as to why he did it but just implied that the victims had misunderstood,” Shabnam said.

In the case of Jeju Island, Shabnam said making the officer a “scapegoat” is “not appropriate”.

Instead, she says, it showed “a serious lack of leadership and supervision from the South Korean police force”.

She said: “Why were they unable to approach somebody and say they were overworked?”

In August, after scouring the island for clues, South Korean police finally located four bodies in a matter of three days between August 22 and 24 – which included two that Bu personally handled.

One victim was a 60-year-old man whose name has not been revealed to the public.

In this particular case, Bu reassured his family that he was safe but passed on the message that the victim wanted his location to remain a secret.

However, 51 days later, his body was found.

Another was 37-year old Jang Mi-Ran whose body was discovered at a palm tree farm in Hallim-Eup, Jeju City, on August 24.

Bu, who was part of the Jeju West Police Station’s missing persons investigation team, falsely claimed that he had made contact with Ms Jang, authorities allege.

After she was reported missing on May 15, he confirmed she was alive and well to her boyfriend but said “she was asking not to disclose her location”.

Around two hours after the missing report had been made, the case was closed.

Her body was found 104 days after her disappearance.

Hong Seok-gi, the National Police Agency National Office of Investigations director, said they are still in the dark with the circumstances around her death.

Public scrutiny turned onto the police for jumping the gun in announcing her death as suicide before eventually rowing back to say all possibilities remained open.

A full review of the 298 cases handled by Mr Bu between March 2025 and July 2026 found that, during his time in the missing persons unit, he closed 25 of them.

Bu admitted to the cops that he had entered wrong information, deleted the records, and closed the case.

He is also suspected of claiming a “traffic accident” caused Ms Jang’s death but then deleting it from the system.

Bu has been charged with forging public electronic records, obstruction of official duties and dereliction of duty, according to the Jeju Police Agency.

He has denied the allegations.

The Jeju Provincial Police Agency attempted to explain on Tuesday what caused Bu to take procedural shortcuts at the expense of the victims’ families.

It said: “He was driven primarily by work-related negligence arising from accumulated workload pressures and fatigue associated with increased responsibilities.”

Officers receive more than 70,000 reports of missing adults each year where cases are resolved fairly quickly, according to the Korean National Policing Agency.

Simon Kwon, founder of Kwon and Partners in Seoul, told The Sun: “Korea files criminal complaints at a rate no comparable country does.

“Japan, with twice our population, sees roughly 10,000 accusation cases a year; Korea puts 700,000 people into the criminal process through complaints in the same period.

“Police in Korea have been already burdened with a hefty workload where caseload per investigator in 2021 was 101 files. Now in 2025, it is 134.”

Over the past two years, approximately 1,200 Korean officers handed back their investigative certificates in defeat, according to Simon.

The soaring missing persons and scandal over closed cases has forced the South Korean President Lee Jae Myung to order a complete overhaul of how they investigate people who’ve disappeared.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/16956491/jeju-island-police-missing-persons-cases-closed/

MIRACLE skydiver Holly Wiffen said she cannot wait to go up in a plane and jump again — despite nearly being killed in a ­terrifying freefall accident.

The 35-year-old is recovering at home on crutches after a group dive last month went horrifyingly wrong.

She says she is lucky to be alive after being accidentally kicked in the head by a fellow jumper soon after leaping out of a plane, knocking her out cold.

She then hurtled 10,000ft to the ground before hitting a conifer tree, which slowed her descent and almost certainly saved her life.

The dental therapist, who has been on 425 jumps, said: “If I hadn’t hit the tree I would have hit the ground and would have been soup. Most people don’t survive skydiving accidents like that.”

But, incredibly, it has not put her off the extreme sport, as she said: “I want to get back to skydiving as soon as I can.

“Although, knowing what happened and that I could have died also makes me a little nervous.”

Holly had been taking part in a group skydive known as “tracking” where experienced jumpers freefall horizontally to build up speed.

She had just leapt from the plane at around 12,000ft and was manoeuvring into position when another jumper in the group appeared to misjudge his own area and crashed into her.

Terrifying GoPro camera footage showed the moment of the 100mph mid-air collision, above a festival at Langar airfield near Nottingham.

It appears to show the male parachutist’s shin slam into the back of Holly’s helmet, knocking her unconscious and smashing her own camera off her helmet.

She can then be seen plummeting towards the ground at 150mph, passed out and completely helpless with no parachute.

Another jumper attempts to catch up with her as she spins out of control, reaching out to her desperately with his hand.

But he could not grab hold of her in time before he was forced to deploy his own parachute when he reached 3,000ft.

Meanwhile, Holly then disappears from the footage into the patchwork of fields below.

She said of her fellow skydivers: “They thought I was dead.”

Despite having no memory of her fall, Holly was at some point able to pull her ripcord.

She estimates this would have happened at 1,000ft — five seconds before deadly impact.

Her secondary emergency chute then also deployed because it registered she was going too fast and was too low.

But the combination of both chutes together created a “downplane” effect, resulting in a dangerously rapid descent.

It sped her up to around 40mph or 50mph before she crashed into the conifer tree.

Crucially, it cushioned the impact when she eventually hit the ground, just yards from a main road, and close to power lines.

Holly, who had landed hundreds of feet away from the field where she was supposed to touch down, said: “I came down amidst caravans, buildings, trees, roads, all sorts. It was just an absolute mess of a place to land.

“There’s also power lines all around that area as well, so I was very lucky not to hit any of those.”

Holly, who had already completed three jumps on the day of the incident, went on: “I was just tumbling but I felt like I was dreaming about skydiving and falling.

“I didn’t come around until I was lying on the ground.

“My helmet had come off and I looked down at my leg and it was pointing in a different direction.”

She recalled: “I looked up and saw the reserve in the tree and realised something had gone wrong.

“People had to fight through brambles to find me. They saw me disappear and wanted to get to me as fast as they could — they were just assuming they were picking up a dead person. People started arriving and the first thing I said is, ‘Help me get my kit off’, before the paramedics cut it off me.”

Against all odds, Holly, from Okehampton, Devon, survived with just a badly broken left leg, fractured spine and bruising following the crash on August 7.

She was put on a stretcher and dashed to hospital in Nottingham, where she was operated on six days later to place a metal rod in her leg.

Holly is now hobbling around on crutches while she recovers at her parents’ farm.

Since leaving hospital, she has also received an apology from the other skydiver who crashed into her, sparking the horror fall.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/16958826/skydiver-survives-10000-ft-fall-unconscious/

Bhutan becomes the first WHO South-East Asia country to eliminate dog-transmitted human rabies, achieving success through vaccination, surveillance, and One Health collaboration.

Bhutan has become the first country in the WHO South-East Asia Region to achieve validation for eliminating dog-transmitted human rabies as a public health problem, marking a major milestone in rabies prevention and control.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has validated Bhutan’s achievement following a rigorous assessment of the country’s long-term rabies control programme. The success reflects more than a decade of coordinated action under a One Health approach, which recognises the close connection between human health, animal health and the environment.

Rabies remains one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases. Once clinical symptoms develop, the disease is almost invariably fatal. However, dog-mediated rabies is preventable through widespread dog vaccination, rapid identification of exposures and timely post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP).

🎉 Congratulations #Bhutan on becoming the first country in the WHO South-East Asia Region to eliminate dog-transmitted rabies as a public health problem!

This has been made possible with sustained efforts and investment in a One Health approach — proof that human, animal &… pic.twitter.com/4ZUI25axU5

— World Health Organization South-East Asia (@WHOSEARO) September 4, 2026

 

Trump’s administration has pursued a range of renaming initiatives, including military bases and airports, leading to public backlash and legal challenges surrounding these changes.

US President Donald Trump has made another striking claim about a geographical landmark, saying “The moon is ours” in a Sunday post on Truth Social alongside an image of the natural satellite and a US flag. The post came as Trump appeared to extend his long-running campaign of renaming or rebranding geographical features, public buildings and institutions.

On the same day, he shared a map of the US state of New Mexico in which the word “Mexico” had been crossed out in red and replaced with “America”.

The latest posts follow a series of controversial naming changes and proposals during Trump’s second term, including the US government’s decision to refer to Lake Ontario as “Lake America” for federal purposes and his suggestion that the Strait of Hormuz could be renamed the “Trump Strait”.

 

According to Iran, the proposed area would stretch from the location of the US naval blockade towards the Strait of Hormuz and further into the Persian Gulf.

Iran is preparing to establish a new “exclusion zone” near the Strait of Hormuz, with Tehran warning that vessels attempting to use the strategically vital waterway could be identified and placed under sanctions.

Mohsen Rezaei, the newly appointed head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, announced the plan in comments to Iranian state television on Sunday. He said details of the zone would be made public in the coming days or weeks.

According to Rezaei, the proposed area would stretch from the location of the US naval blockade towards the Strait of Hormuz and further into the Persian Gulf.

“The new zone should be announced in the coming days and weeks and “will begin from the line of the U.S. naval blockade, extend toward the Strait of Hormuz, and from this side continue into the Persian Gulf,” Rezaei said.

“Any ship that enters this area with the intention of passing through the Strait of Hormuz and is identified will be placed on our sanctions list,” he added.

The announcement comes amid a sharp escalation between Washington and Tehran. A day earlier, the United States struck three Iranian oil tankers after Iran launched ballistic missiles towards US warships.

US Blockade Adds To Hormuz Tensions

The exact geographical limits of the US blockade referenced by Rezaei remain unclear. Washington has been using the blockade to restrict Iranian oil exports and increase economic pressure on Tehran.

The US military has said that more than 20 warships are involved in enforcing the blockade. As of Sunday, the operation had resulted in 92 commercial vessels being redirected and three being disabled, according to the US military.

Iran has continued to target or challenge vessels attempting to navigate the Strait of Hormuz, turning the waterway into one of its most important sources of leverage during the ongoing conflict.

Earlier on Sunday, Tehran claimed that it had struck an unmanned US vessel attempting to enter the strait. The US military rejected the claim, calling it a “total lie.”

Fighting Resumes After Weeks Of Relative Calm

The latest confrontation follows the resumption of US-Iran attacks last week after roughly a month of relative calm. The renewed fighting has again brought the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s southern coastline into the centre of the conflict.

At least five people were killed earlier in the week during US strikes, including in an attack that renewed attention on the area where a school had been hit during the opening phase of the war.

The Trump administration is simultaneously pursuing military and economic pressure on Tehran. Alongside responding to attacks around the strait, Washington has moved against foreign financial institutions accused of facilitating Iranian financial activity.

Iran’s leadership, meanwhile, has indicated that it intends to withstand the pressure. Tehran has spent decades developing methods to bypass sanctions and continues to seek ways to sell its oil despite the US blockade.

Iran Seeks Guarantees In Diplomacy

Rezaei also criticised the handling of the now-collapsed negotiations between Washington and Tehran, expressing doubts about both the United States and the countries that had acted as intermediaries.

The memorandum of understanding reached by the two sides in mid-June deteriorated within days, with Washington and Tehran accusing each other of breaching its terms.

“We had trusted our friends in Pakistan, Qatar or Oman, thinking that since they had stepped in as mediators, one of a mediator’s responsibilities is that if one side violates the agreement, they should stop them,” Rezaei said. “We are now pursuing diplomacy with guarantees,” he added.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/iran-plans-new-exclusion-zone-near-strait-of-hormuz-warns-ships-of-sanctions-ws-l-10313487.html

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he expects the war with Russia to continue into the winter, following talks with Donald Trump’s top envoys in Kyiv.

The discussions finished without an announcement of a major breakthrough, after Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner travelled to Ukraine for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion. The previous day, the pair had held talks with Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

Witkoff said he was “encouraged” by what he called “substantive” and important talks in Kyiv.

Zelensky stressed that he wanted a just peace with no opportunity for renewed aggression by Russia.

Following rounds of talks on Sunday, which lasted several hours behind closed doors, Zelensky told reporters they had agreed officials from Ukraine, Europe and America would meet in the near future to continue discussions. He also called for a trilateral meeting with Russia and the US.

“We’re confident there’ll be a good resolution here,” Witkoff said, adding the negotiators had “made a lot of progress in Moscow”, referring to the pair’s discussions on Saturday.

When asked about the talks in Moscow, Kushner said the US team “went through a lot of the ideas that hadn’t worked to date” and “tried to think about” what elements are needed for “durable peace”.

“It was a very good dialogue, he [Putin] asked a lot of questions, we asked a lot of questions.”

Witkoff said the envoys had met the Russian leader prior to travelling to Kyiv as they “needed to hear where he stood”.

Zelensky emphasised that should the war continue into the winter – “which is what it looks like for now” – Ukraine would need air defence and energy support.

Ukraine has relied on American-made Patriot interceptors to combat Russian ballistic missiles, but the US has used many of its stockpiles during its war with Iran.

In past years, Russia has focused its attacks on energy infrastructure during winter months.

Zelensky said Ukraine needs to develop its own anti-ballistic system, but added the Americans will be increasing production next year, which they are “counting on”.

The US envoys had travelled to Kyiv by train after flying to Poland – Zelensky told the media that it was not possible for them to land their plane despite preparations.

Putin and Zelensky agreed to halt strikes on each other’s capitals for three days while the negotiators carried out their trip.

Zelensky greeted Witkoff and Jared Kushner at Kyiv’s St Sophia Cathedral, near where a Russian drone hit the headquarters of Ukraine’s security services on Friday.

Overnight, Russian and Ukrainian forces continued to exchange strikes, with Ukraine confirming they struck an oil refinery, an airfield, and two air defence systems.

Earlier, Ukraine’s Air Force reported that Russia attacked Ukraine with 108 long-range drones and small cruise missiles.

The country’s air defences downed 82 drones and six missiles, but 11 locations were hit, with debris falling at a further seven sites.

Saturday’s talks in Moscow lasted three hours and were held behind closed doors in the Kremlin, according to Russian state media.

Putin’s adviser Yuri Ushakov described the talks as “constructive, extremely frank”.

He said they spoke about resolving the war, economic issues, and potential “mutually beneficial Russian-American projects”.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6248nvqy8po

The talks in Kyiv were rich in symbolism. The sight of Donald Trump’s envoys setting foot on Ukrainian soil for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The fact they had to travel by train because they could not risk flying and running the gauntlet of Russian drones – weapons launched on the orders of the man at whose table they sat in the Kremlin only hours ago.

The symbolism of Ukrainian President Zelensky greeting Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at Kyiv’s Saint Sophia Cathedral, not only an icon of Ukraine’s ancient history, but also just a few yards from where Russian drones hit the headquarters of the country’s security services on Friday.

You did not have to join too many dots to work out the point Zelensky was making.

Both sides held talks for several hours; they were later joined by some European national security advisers, including the UK’s National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell.

And afterwards, all sides spoke warmly of having held substantive discussions. They spoke hopefully of reviving past “trilateral talks” involving both the US and Europe.

But fundamental differences remain. The US envoys had come hot foot from Moscow where Vladimir Putin had told them Russia was making “tangible advances” on the battlefield.

The story they heard from Ukraine was different, in fact the opposite. Ukrainian officials claim that in August they gained more territory than they lost and Russia suffered 42,000 casualties, dead or wounded.

Putin had also told the US envoys the root causes of the conflict had to be addressed, shorthand for his longstanding strategic demands that Ukraine cede territory, abandon hopes of joining Nato and reduce the size of its army.

After the talks, Zelensky insisted Ukraine would require “strong and clear” security guarantees, including a strong army. Nor did he give any sign of being willing to give up any territory in the eastern Donbas region, an issue he described dryly as “difficult”.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c980j5m8mpro

 

President Trump posted a map showing New Mexico rebranded as “New America” during a rapid-fire Truth Social storm on Sunday.

The post, one of 34 made in less than an hour, showed a map of the southwestern state with the word “Mexico” crossed out and replaced with “America.”

The rebrand would be the latest America-themed name change by the president after he ordered that the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario be rechristened the Gulf of America and Lake America, respectively.

Trump renamed the Gulf of America after coming back into office in January 2025, claiming the change in name would “honor American greatness.”

Source : https://nypost.com/2026/09/06/us-news/trump-posts-map-that-renames-new-mexico-new-america/

Former Gov. George Pataki, who led the Empire State through the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and its aftermath, revealed he is fighting lung disease related to his exposure at Manhattan’s Ground Zero.

Pataki, a Republican who served between 1995 and 2006, told The Post in an exclusive interview that he suffers from restrictive airway disease that stems from his exposure to toxins at the site of the destroyed World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in downtown Manhattan.

He was diagnosed with the condition over the last five years, he said.

“I just look at it as I’m one of the lucky ones,” Pataki told The Post, humbly deflecting questions about his condition.

“You know, 25 years later, I feel great. I have this minor residual impact from that time. But compared to so many others, I consider myself very lucky,” he said.

A rep for former Big Apple Mayor Rudy Giuliani confirmed that the politician-turned Trump attorney had also been diagnosed with restrictive airway disease after he landed in the hospital in critical condition with a case of pneumonia earlier this year.

The disease, caused by toxic dust and the fine particulate matter that filled the air in southern Manhattan after the towers fell, makes more common illnesses such as the flu particularly dangerous.

Pataki, who had never before revealed his condition, continued pointing the spotlight to those working around him at the time, especially the first responders and other public servants who flocked to lower Manhattan to rebuild after Islamic terrorists intentionally crashed highjacked commercial airplanes into the World Trade Center, causing them to collapse.

“The people who were with me at Ground Zero over and over for months after those attacks, many of them have serious illnesses, far more serious than anything I might be experiencing,” Pataki said, noting that he has not been diagnosed with cancer related to Ground Zero.

Pataki, who previously served in the state Senate and as mayor of the Westchester County city of Peekskill, was the last Republican to win statewide office in New York.

He recently drew headlines when he suggested democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani should consider staying away from the remembrance ceremony at Ground Zero unless he changes course and condemns the antisemitic slogan “globalize the intifada.”

Source : https://nypost.com/2026/09/06/us-news/former-ny-gov-george-pataki-reveals-he-has-9-11-related-illness-days-before-25th-anniversary/

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Saturday met with Palestinian Americans , including relatives of U.S. citizens killed by Israeli settlers, ‌in a Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank that has been the target of settler attacks.
The visit comes as settler violence, and what is widely perceived as the Israeli government’s inaction, has increasingly drawn international condemnation, including from U.S. allies.

The Israeli government has condemned settler violence, though perpetrators are rarely arrested and even less frequently prosecuted.
Washington has not criticized Prime Minister ​Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over the violence, though has called for perpetrators to be prosecuted with Huckabee labelling them as terrorists.
Huckabee described his meeting ​in Turmus Ayya, where most of the town’s Palestinian residents are U.S. citizens, as constructive.
While Huckabee, a Baptist minister ⁠and longtime supporter of Israeli settlements, has previously called for violent settlers to be prosecuted, he also says he believes they represent a minority of the ​settler community, which numbers around 750,000.

Around 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, with tens of thousands estimated to be American citizens.
Palestinians in the ​West Bank have faced a surge in settler violence while their freedoms have been increasingly curtailed under military occupation since Netanyahu’s coalition, the most right wing in Israel’s history, came to power in late 2022.
In Turmus Ayya, Palestinians are facing what Mayor Nawwaf Zaghoul said were constant settler attacks. About 80% of the Palestinian town’s residents hold U.S. citizenship, he said.

VISITS TO ​SHILOH
Israeli settlements have been established around the town, including Shiloh, which Huckabee has visited twice since 2025. Huckabee, the first evangelical Christian to serve as U.S. ​ambassador to Israel, refers to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria, its biblical name, which is used by the Israeli government but has not been adopted by the United ‌States.

Huckabee ⁠told reporters in Turmus Ayya it was in the Israeli government’s interest to take action against those carrying out “criminal behaviour and terrorism”, and that a “tiny group of little marauders”, who he said numbered a few hundred people, were damaging the country’s reputation.
He also said he had told Palestinian Americans that the U.S. embassy had no power or authority to take action and could only seek to influence and call attention to issues that the U.S. government believed needed to be ​corrected.
In January 2025, shortly after returning ​to office, President Donald Trump rescinded sanctions ⁠imposed by the Biden administration on far-right Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of being involved in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Yasser Alkam, a Palestinian American and a municipality spokesperson, disagreed with Huckabee’s characterization that only ​a few hundred settlers were carrying out violence against Palestinians. There were thousands, he said, not hundreds.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-ambassador-visits-palestinian-town-amid-rise-west-bank-settler-violence-2026-09-05/

Russian President Vladimir Putin held more than three hours of “highly useful” talks ​on Saturday with two U.S. envoys seeking a deal to end the Ukraine war, a Kremlin aide said, but he gave no indication of ‌any breakthrough.
The aide, Yuri Ushakov, said Americans Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner “outlined a number of ideas regarding possible avenues for a settlement”. Ushakov did not say what these ideas were.

He said Putin had told the pair that Russia was making “real progress” on the battlefield and was confident of achieving its goals, while stressing the necessity of addressing “all the root causes of the conflict”.
These are statements that Moscow has ​made repeatedly since Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Russia’s smaller neighbour in February 2022. Both sides have intensified long-range air strikes in recent weeks while ​the front lines remain largely static.
PUTIN PRAISES TRUMP’S EFFORTS
A White House official told Reuters the talks had been “substantive” and that next ⁠steps would be announced in the coming weeks.

There was no comment from Witkoff and Kushner, who were visiting Moscow for the first time since January on behalf of President Donald ​Trump. They flew out of Moscow soon after the talks and are due to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Sunday.
“The talks went beyond a mere exchange ​of views on resolving the Ukrainian crisis. Economic issues and potential major, mutually beneficial Russian-American projects were discussed in some detail,” Ushakov said. “Overall, one can say that the negotiations were timely and highly useful for both sides.”
Putin’s investment envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, posted on X that the meeting had been an “important peacemaking visit”. He and Ushakov were both present at the meeting.
The Russian president praised Trump’s efforts to ​end the war.

Item 1 of 5 Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, as U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff stands nearby during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, September 5, 2026. Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel/Pool via REUTERS

“Understanding that he is entering a difficult situation, he nevertheless does not stop his efforts to help bring about a settlement and to make his contribution ​to resolving the Russian-Ukrainian conflict,” Putin said in televised remarks at the start of the talks.

Trump suggested on Friday that the U.S. had a fresh proposal aimed at ending the war but did ‌not elaborate.
Putin promised ⁠to ensure the safety of the U.S. negotiators. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier that Putin had ordered the Russian military not to strike Kyiv for three days because of their trip.
A VAST GULF IN POSITIONS
Over the previous 10 days, Russia pounded the Ukrainian capital day and night with missiles and drones, including an attack on Friday on the headquarters of the SBU security service.
Ukraine has inflicted damaging hits throughout the summer on Russian refineries, oil terminals and warehouses of online retailer Wildberries, in an attempt to raise ​the cost to Moscow of continuing the ​war. Zelenskiy said Kyiv was prepared to ⁠refrain from strikes on Moscow through Monday.
Russia and Ukraine remain far apart on how to end the war, the deadliest in Europe since World War Two.
A person close to the Kremlin, speaking before reports emerged of the trip by Trump’s envoys, said Putin ​was still intent on capturing more territory.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putins-envoy-dmitriev-meet-witkoff-kushner-upon-their-arrival-moscow-sources-say-2026-09-05/

U.S. ​and Iranian forces fired at vessels in waters around Iran on Saturday, including three Iranian oil carriers struck by ‌the Americans and three tankers that Iran said it targeted while on unauthorized routes in the Strait of Hormuz.
U.S. Central Command said it struck the three Iranian vessels, including one off the coast of Kharg Island, near Iran’s oil export hub, after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched ballistic missiles at two U.S. Navy ships.

“Let ​the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even ​higher economic cost — taking out three of yours,” said Admiral Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, which ⁠oversees the U.S. military in the Middle East.
The IRGC responded by threatening intensified strikes against U.S. military vessels in the region, and said ​later it targeted the three tankers as well as three U.S.-linked vessels in other areas.
“Do not be deceived by the ‘terrorist’ U.S. military and refrain ​from any suspicious movement aimed at passing through unauthorized waterways,” the IRGC Navy said in a statement carried on Iranian state TV. “Otherwise, you will be targeted.”

Tasnim, the semi-official Iranian news agency, had reported that four U.S. missiles hit a tanker in the area of Kharg’s anchorage. Tasnim quoted local sources as saying there ​were no casualties and the tanker’s crew was being evacuated.
No American personnel were harmed, Central Command said.
The exchange of attacks followed an escalation ​in the past week that threatens to deepen a conflict that has continued since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran in February, disrupting global ‌energy supplies ⁠and drawing opposition from a majority of Americans before congressional elections in November.
TRUMP’S THREATS OVER KHARG ISLAND
While U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to pivot toward an economic clampdown on Iran by widening sanctions, the president himself has kept open the possibility of military action.

On August 31, Trump issued a one-line social media post accompanied by an AI-generated video depicting Kharg Island being “blown to smithereens.” Iranian authorities have vowed a strong response if ​Kharg is attacked.
Iran is the third-largest ​producer in the Organization of ⁠the Petroleum Exporting Countries and exported 90% of its crude via Kharg Island before the war. Flows have been disrupted since a U.S. blockade of Iranian oil exports began in mid-April.
Trump has spoken of an ​attack on Kharg before. He said on June 11 that he wanted to take over the island, ​but then said ⁠a U.S. military operation there was off the table, days before Tehran and Washington signed an interim agreement aimed at ending the war on June 17.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/explosions-heard-near-irans-kharg-island-gulf-origin-unknown-fars-news-says-2026-09-05/

Jodi Fournier spent 15 days at the courthouse – sitting, listening and waiting. It was a personal duty, she felt, to show support for Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother charged with murdering her three children.

Katelyn Kazmirci, from North Carolina, convinced her mother to make a detour to the courthouse in Plymouth on their way to a family funeral, intrigued by the case she had followed on TikTok.

All around them, dozens of women wearing pink rallied in support of Clancy. Not everyone felt the same and across the country, on social media and at dinner tables, Americans have been debating the case with passion.

For nearly seven weeks, the trial transfixed and divided the nation on whether Clancy was a victim or a criminal who deserved to be behind bars.

The 36-year-old nurse’s defence team argued she had been suffering from postpartum psychosis when she strangled her young children and so could not be held criminally responsible. The prosecution alleged the killings were intentional and calculated.

The judge declared a mistrial on Friday after jurors – who had heard the testimony of dozens of witnesses and deliberated for 40 hours – failed to come to a unanimous decision.

Their inability to agree mirrored the wider discourse around the trial – one that trial attendee Maryanne Drysdale, 65, saw play out within her own family.

She and her 28-year-old daughter believe Clancy needs mental health treatment, not prison, while her three adult sons, who have children of similar age to Clancy’s, completely disagree.

“It’s black and white for them, [Clancy] killed the kids and that’s that,” she said. “I brought these kids up – how can we think so differently about this?”

Fournier believes Clancy was wronged by the US health system and felt compelled, as a woman and a mother, to show up for a case that has given a spotlight to postpartum struggles.

“It only takes one person to change the narrative,” she said. “This is a global issue. This isn’t just Massachusetts-small-town. This is… women everywhere.”

Clancy claims she experienced hallucinations and delusions before strangling her three children – five-year-old Cora, Dawson, three, and Callan, who was eight months old – and then jumping from a second-floor window, leaving her paralysed.

The court heard testimony from more than 10 expert witnesses on Clancy’s mental and postpartum health during the trial.

But some of them seemed to dispute the defence’s claim that postpartum psychosis – a rare post-childbirth condition characterised by mania, depression, hallucinations, delusions and losing contact with reality – precluded Clancy from criminal liability.

Jennifer Tufts, who treated Clancy during more than a dozen sessions over five months, testified that she had not shown signs of psychosis.

Psychiatrist Avram Mack later testified that the American Psychiatric Association did not recognise postpartum psychosis as a diagnosis.

These declarations only deepened staunch opinions for many – on both sides.

Texas mother-of-four Nicole Russell, who followed the trial remotely, noted the prosecution’s presentation of how much medical care and support Clancy had received – from doctors, her husband, nanny and family – calling it “way more help” than most mothers receive.

Clancy’s struggles were said to have begun following the birth of her youngest child. She repeatedly sought care, visiting a hospital emergency room, different medical professionals and even calling a suicide hotline.

Many observers took that as evidence that Clancy had been proactive and done everything within her power to heal but had been failed by the system, prompting sympathy from some.

Melissa Merrill had been treated at the same hospital as Clancy after the birth of her son.

“I see myself in her, as a mum who had suicidal ideation,” she told the BBC outside the Plymouth courthouse.

Throughout the weeks of emotional testimony, Clancy, who uses a wheelchair, could be seen crying, holding her attorney’s hand and making agonised utterances in court as sometimes harrowing details were shared.

After one of the trial days, Merrill rushed to Clancy’s defence attorney outside the court and gave him a pink envelope holding a message of support and hope for his client, believing Clancy was a “sad, defeated woman”.

But other parents, like Texas mother Russell, railed against “toxic empathy”, insisting Clancy was “not a martyr or a symbol for tired mums”.

“Lindsay Clancy cannot be the poster child of what difficult motherhood looks like, because millions of mothers give birth to children and endure all kinds of hardship, and they do not hurt their children,” Russell argued.

Ukraine’s third-biggest city Odesa will decide this week whether to back a controversial plan to ban the Russian language in the arts.

The proposal being considered by councillors in Odesa on the Black Sea coast aims to add to existing restrictions on Russian imposed by national legislation.

It is particularly significant because Odesa is overwhelmingly Russian-speaking, although the ban would only affect public spaces and everyday usage of Russian would remain unaffected.

For millions of Ukrainians, Russian is their first language including many of the troops defending the country in its war with Russia. But Ukrainian is the only state language and spoken by the majority, and some see Russian as a tool of Russian influence.

The proposal in Odesa, which is targeted daily by Russian drone and missile strikes, calls for a complete halt to Russian-language content in music and literature, in streets, parks, public institutions and state-run arts and entertainment venues. It would also recommend a ban in privately owned spaces.

In a city famous for Russian-language writers and musicians, it has provoked strong passions.

The ban would extend in public spaces to old Odesa songs almost universally known throughout the former Soviet Union. All Russian-language books would be removed from display in public libraries. Currently, they can be shown, but not prominently.

“The Russian language is a weapon of Russia, and we need to try to fix that,” says Odesa lawyer Artem Kartashov, who has advised local authorities on an official programme to “decolonise” the city of its historic Russian legacy.

“With Russian-speaking music and other things, Russians try to deconstruct Ukrainian identity and influence especially young people, because they grow up in a Russian-speaking environment.”

But comic actor Borys Barsky, one of Odesa’s best-known entertainers, says: “Russian isn’t [only] the language of Putin, it’s the language of [writers like] Dostoyevsky and Bulgakov.

“Who benefits from setting people against other people who love Ukraine just as deeply, only love it in a different language? Only Putin benefits from this.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has often referred to what he falsely describes as repression of the Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine as one of his justifications for launching his invasion of the country.

Russian and Ukrainian are closely related, but distinct in many ways. Many in Ukraine speak a mixture of the two, known as surzhyk.

Russian is the native language of President Volodymyr Zelensky, which he used often in his election campaign but has since used only Ukrainian in public.

But a 2019 law requires use of Ukrainian in many public and professional contexts including education, public services and customer service.

Public-facing workers – including waiters, shop assistants and doctors – must address customers or patients initially in Ukrainian, though they can later switch to Russian if the client prefers that.

Odesa’s Mask Theatre, run by Barsky, has been fined for infringements of the legislation including using Russian in publicity materials. A later inspection found further violations such as a cafe sign with the Russian word for coffee.

“This isn’t even like Orwell or Kafka, it’s just madness,” he says.

Barsky has been able to continue to perform in Russian because it is a private theatre.

The new language proposal – similar to one already in force in the capital Kyiv and some other cities – would urge but not require private premises including shops and cafes to adopt the ban.

Odesa’s state-appointed language ombudswoman, Anna Nerush, who inspects premises to check on alleged violations of the rules, thinks if passed it will put pressure on them to comply.

“All businesses interact in one way or another with local government,” she told the BBC. “They rent premises, they need advertising permits, and so on. So for many entities it’s important to comply with a council decision, even if doesn’t provide for sanctions for non-compliance. ”

Public playing of songs by Russian citizens is already illegal across Ukraine, with exceptions for some artists who have publicly condemned the war, but Russian-language songs composed or performed by Ukrainians are still allowed.

Under the proposals they would also be banned in public places.

Anna Nerush said it would not affect someone celebrating their birthday in Russian in a private room in a restaurant, as it could not be heard outside.

“But on the streets, [hearing] the Russian language can be a real trigger, for example to [former] prisoners of war and people who’ve come from occupied territories,” she said.

Many native Russian-speakers in Ukraine have switched to Ukrainian in recent years, particularly since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Photographer Natalia Mykhailenko switched even earlier. She has led tours of Odesa highlighting non-Russian elements of its history.

These include landmarks such as a Cossack cemetery that dates back to before 1794. That is the year Russian empress Catherine the Great is said to have founded the city, although it has been widely questioned in recent years.

A statue of Catherine was removed from a central Odesa square after a council vote in 2022, and streets have been renamed to commemorate some Ukrainian writers and activists.

“We must understand we were a colony,” said Mykhailenko. “And these [language] laws are very important. I understand it’s maybe sometimes not democratic. But without it, there will be no normal Ukraine in the future.”

Anthropologist Anastasia Piliavsky, part of a group called Ukrainian Cosmopolis which aims to defend freedom of thought and speech, believes Russian-speakers are being made to feel like second-class citizens who are deprived of their heritage.

“In Ukraine, the vast majority of people understand both Russian and Ukrainian. So the question is not really one of language, it’s one of liberty,” she said.

“Ukraine has been fighting for freedom. The point of this war is not to be under authoritarian rule. That’s what Russia has to offer. So when fines, or the threat of being fired [for breaking language laws] arrives, then people start wondering: what are we fighting for?”

It is unclear how much support the new language proposal has. It is opposed by an influential group of councillors linked to former mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov.

Beyond Odesa, a national poll showed 80% support for Ukrainian dominating “all spheres of communication” in 2022. However, a more recent survey of students in Kyiv found that 82% chose to speak Russian during break times, even though Ukrainian is enforced in classrooms.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c33kzvgn8pyo

Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa and 11 other people have been sentenced to death by hanging after being convicted of drugs charges.

According to state-owned al-Ahram newspaper, they were part of a criminal gang which imported ingredients used to make drugs with the intent of selling them.

They also had illegal firearms and munitions.

Khalifa, 39, is best known for her TV programme Mission Impossible which dealt with crime issues. She has denied the charges.

Nine fellow defendants have been sentenced to life imprisonment, while seven have been acquitted.

Khalifa’s lawyer said she would appeal the death sentence.

The verdict was first announced last month.

However, it was only confirmed a month later after the court obtained a religious opinion from the grand mufti of Egypt – a legal requirement in death sentence cases.

During the trial, the court heard that authorities had seized more than 750kg (1,653lbs) of narcotics and the imported raw materials to make them.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y7gk9knnlo

 

OASIS are heading to Sin City and will play a string of shows in Las Vegas, The Sun can reveal.

Today our insiders leaked a new batch of venues for Noel and Liam Gallagher across North America and Europe, with massive concerts planned in Boston and Amsterdam.

The shows will be formally announced in the coming days, alongside their mammoth run of gigs in the UK at the Etihad Stadium and Knebworth.

The Sun can now confirm Oasis will perform a series of shows at the Johan Cruyff Stadium in Amsterdam, alongside a string of performances at Barcelona’s Olympic Stadium.

Additionally, Noel, 59, and Liam, 53, are poised to announce concerts in North America.

Our insiders revealed the brothers will perform in Boston at the USA Gillette Stadium, as well as in Las Vegas at the USA Allegiant Stadium.

A source said: “Noel and Liam are raring to go.

“As well as playing Scotland, Ireland and England, they’re going across Italy, Spain, France and Germany – along with the US.

“Playing Las Vegas is going to be huge – the Sin City strip won’t know what has hit it when the Gallagher brothers come to town”

Insiders said demand for tickets for their second run of shows was expected to be phenomenal.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/16952212/oasis-plan-las-vegas-shows/

HOWARD Stern has had a number of feuds over the years, including one with a late-night legend, one with a Today Show host, and another with a Gen Z mogul, plus many, many more.

Stern, 72, has started beef with plenty of people over the years, and his vitriol has become practically synonymous with The Howard Stern Show brand.

The U.S. Sun has previously exclusively revealed some of the ill will the radio icon harbors, but here is a non exhaustive list of Stern’s biggest beefs over the years.

Stern had taken to sending jabs at the late-night legend David Letterman, despite the pair having been pals when they were both working at NBC‘s home at 30 Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan in the early 1980s.

The King of All Media and the arguable King of Late Night used to speak on the phone, but Stern started broadcasting details of those calls on his radio show, which Letterman did not appreciate.

Stern would also insult Letterman and take shots at his then-girlfriend, Regina Lasko.

The SiriusXM star later apologized to Letterman in 2011.

The shock jock came on The Late Show with David Letterman and said: “I really want to apologize to you for doing that, and if you should call me again, I would not reveal what you said.”

He also locked horns with Kathie Lee Gifford, but again, he decided to reconcile with the daytime Today Show host later in life.

Stern started taking shots at Kathie Lee back in 1995 after Gifford sang the National Anthem at the Super Bowl that year.

According to her book, I Want You To Matter, as she sang, she heard the crowd booing, only to later learn Stern had called on his legions of fans to jeer at her introduction.

She decided to forgive him.

In 2011, when he appeared on the Today Show, she went out of her way to congratulate him on his hosting gig on America’s Got Talent.

She wrote that he later left her a voicemail, in which he said “I can’t believe how nice you were to me.

“I’ve been so rude to you and you were so nice. I just need to apologize to you. Please call me.”

They spoke, and she told the shock jock she had forgiven him years ago, and even had him over for dinner.

As The U.S. Sun exclusively revealed, he also allegedly has disdain for fellow SiriusXM star Alex Cooper; however, he attempted to deny it on a broadcast in September of last year.

Sources had claimed that he was jealous of the Gen Z star’s mega power and influence.

Stern took to his show in September of 2025 and said he had read that he was “leaving because of Alex Cooper,” though there were no reports to that effect.

While attempting to change the narrative, Stern pretended not to know who she was.

The radio icon has also been jealous of another SiriusXM star, Andy Cohen.

The Bravo honcho has become somewhat of a Golden Boy over at the streaming giant.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/16949834/howard-stern-feuds-alex-cooper-andy-cohen-david-letterman/