Top World News

Weather tracker: Severe thunderstorms sweep Europe and east Asia

Strong winds and heavy rain batter Slovenia, while France experiences atypical heatwaveSevere thunderstorms swept across the Balkans last week, bringing widespread destruction to parts of the region. The storms developed as unstable hot air lingered over the Adriatic Sea while a cold front plunged south-eastward.The front began its journey on 10 June in Slovenia, where the Slovenian Environment Agency recorded 65mph gusts at Ljubljana airport. Heavy rain also fell widely across the region with 23mm reported in Kranj. Continue reading...

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JD Vance not traveling to Switzerland for Iran talks: report

Vice President JD Vance will have to stay home instead of traveling to Switzerland to finalize the memorandum of understanding the Trump administration struck with the Iranian regime last weekend, according to a White House spokesperson.On Sunday, Trump announced his administration had struck a deal with the regime that would immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz and provide a pathway to ending the conflict. The final agreement was initially scheduled to be signed on Friday in Switzerland. CNN journalist Kristen Holmes reported on Thursday that a White House spokesperson told her, "The Vice President is not departing tonight." The spokesperson added that "as the Vice President said at his press conference, the plans for the upcoming technical talks have not been finalized," referring to the deal to end the Iran war."The U.S. delegation has been prepared to depart at the first available opportunity," the White House spokesperson told Holmes. "But the logistics of these negotiations have never been simple or predictable."

Trump tipped his hand and revealed the new 'big lie' he's trying to sell: analyst

President Donald Trump has already revealed the next big lie that he plans to sell to Americans, a foreign policy analyst said.Robert Kagan, a contributing writer for The Atlantic and a foreign policy analyst, said during an appearance on CNN that Trump will try to frame his deal to end the Iran war as "regime change" and "unconditional surrender."He added that Trump will deny that the money going to Iran is "reparations" for the war."He's all about the big lie," Kagan said. "And this is going to be his big lie. I just don't think that even he, who is one of the great con artists of all time, can sell the American people on this being anything other than an American surrender."Kagan also pointed out, "The one thing we're confident is happening is that Iran is going to get billions of dollars, tens of billions, and probably hundreds of billions of dollars in return for nothing," and described it as "an easy tell" that gives away Trump's lie."Now, that's called reparations, and if you look at history, reparations are paid by the loser to the winner," Kagan explained. "In World War I, Germany paid reparations to Britain and France. If Germany had won the war, Britain and France would have paid the reparations, so that's how you know what happened in this war."In other words, "Trump essentially paid the Iranians to give him a fig leaf that would allow him to come home and tell the Americans that everything is fine," Kagan summed up.

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CDC to tap $107m in emergency funding for Ebola response in DRC and Uganda

Number of people infected now tops 1,000 though health officials say the global risk remains lowSign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will tap $107m in emergency funding for Ebola outbreak response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda, officials said on Thursday.The continued Ebola outbreak in the DRC comes as Canada, Mexico and the US jointly host the Fifa World Cup, attracting visitors from around the world. The officials said the outbreak, now the third largest on record, required “strong immediate support”, but that the global risk remained low. Continue reading...

Barbados prime minister announces manifesto for slavery reparations

Updated document, which emphasises harm done to African women, is being considered by other Caribbean countriesBarbados’s prime minister, Mia Mottley, has announced a new manifesto from Caribbean leaders asserting the “moral, ethical and legal case” for reparations over damage caused by hundreds of years of enslavement.Mottley was speaking at a “historic” conference in Ghana to advance the push for reparatory justice after the United Nations adopted a landmark resolution declaring the trafficking of enslaved Africans as the gravest crime against humanity. Continue reading...