Top World News

Feb 25, 2026 - World

Four-day Caricom summit dominated by debate about US interventions in the region as military strikes against suspected drug boats continueUS interventions dominated speeches at a summit of 15 nations from the Caribbean and the Americas on Tuesday, as the region’s leaders met amid deadly military strikes against suspected drug boats and an oil blockade on Cuba.During the opening ceremony of the four-day Caricom summit in St Kitts and Nevis, leaders of the regional bloc called for a strategic collaborations to deal with the impact of recent US policies. Continue reading...

Feb 25, 2026 - World

Critics say proposal to fold department into a new ‘mega ministry’ will dilute accountability and put nature protections at risk New Zealand’s government is seeking to abolish its dedicated environment ministry to cut down on bureaucracy, a move critics say could dilute environmental protections.Under the plan, the department would be folded into a new “mega-ministry” that will cover housing, urban development, transport, local government and the environment. Continue reading...

Feb 25, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump has long been posturing toward military action in Iran — but one of his top generals pumped the brakes on the whole thing, enraging him, Slate reported on Tuesday."The military warning — first reported in the Washington Post, then confirmed in the New York Times — must be particularly rankling," wrote Fred Kaplan. "According to the reports, in a recent White House meeting with many top officials present, Gen. Dan Caine — whom Trump selected, and has since highly lauded, as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — said that a shortage of munitions and the absence of any allies would make a prolonged war with Iran very difficult.""It is unusual for Trump’s advisers to dampen his fantasies of easy wins, and it is less common still for high-level discussions of military plans to be leaked," the report continued. "The fact that Caine confronted Trump on this plan, and that someone spilled this to the public, suggests a growing concern among some inside players that the president’s increasingly casual adventurism could engulf the armed forces, the region, and the nation in danger."Trump, for his part, has said that Caine “has not spoken of not doing Iran” in response to the article — but, Kaplan notes, the original reports never actually said Caine told Trump not to attack Iran, but simply explained why it would be extremely difficult.Caine, for his part, did oversee the Trump administration's strike on Iran's nuclear facilities last year, which, while controversial, did not come at a great cost to the United States.However, said the report, "Operation Midnight Hammer, as the attack was known, was a speedy one-off venture where three B-2 bombers dropped bunker-busting bombs, watched them hit their targets, and sped back home, the end ... A larger attack on Iran — whether to wipe out more of its nuclear infrastructure, destroy its ballistic-missile fleet, or overthrow the regime — would be a much more elaborate, time-consuming business."

Feb 25, 2026 - World

Secretary of State Marco Rubio held an unusual briefing on Tuesday that raised concerns among intel lawmakers over whether the U.S. may launch military attacks on Iran. Rubio's private meeting was held virtually just hours before President Donald Trump's State of the Union address and included both Senate and House lawmakers, including high-ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Politico reported. The move has raised questions over the Trump administration's decision to take military action in the Middle East. Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) expressed alarm over Rubio's comments. "Rep. Jim Himes, top Intel Committee Dem, on Trump and Iran: 'I'm very concerned. Wars in the Middle East don't go well for presidents, for the country, and we have not heard articulated a single good reason for why now is the moment to launch yet another war in the Middle East,'" Sahil Kapur, senior national political reporter for NBC News, wrote on X.House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) shared his apprehension about Trump's previous statements on Iran and what could happen next. Last year Trump had claimed that U.S. military strikes in Iran had dismantled the country's nuclear program. "What happened to Iran's nuclear program being 'completely and totally obliterated'?... Donald Trump's words, not our words. Clearly he was lying to the American people or he's lying right now," Jeffries said in an interview with reporters that was shared by journalist Aaron Rupar on X.

Feb 24, 2026 - World

Firefighters search for 39 people missing in debris after river burst and houses were swept awayThree firefighters pulled a man’s body from the mud amid the rubble of houses swept away in a landslide in south-eastern Brazil, where 30 people died and 39 were still missing on Tuesday after torrential rains.A river in the state of Minas Gerais burst its banks and streets became raging currents of brown water after an overnight downpour in a region that has seen record rain this month. Continue reading...