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Jul 23, 2026 - World

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed on Thursday that President Donald Trump has used Truth Social to announce changes to the Saudi nuclear deal, sparking backlash online.Leavitt told reporters during a White House press conference that Trump had made the public comments despite the fact that he had not consulted them this time."As you know, the president just put this statement out a few hours ago," Leavitt said. "I don't believe he's had a call with MBS in the hours since. However, this is something that he has raised in previous conversations and has also said many times in the past."Social media users responded to the change.Journalist Aaron Rupar shared a clip from the press conference and noted the significant shift. "Leavitt confirms that Trump is unilaterally changing the terms of the Saudi nuclear deal via Truth Social posts without even contacting any Saudi officials," Rupar wrote on X.Others were quick to point out the president's move."This is why Trump is a failure on the world stage," Vince Wilson, a YouTube creator and liberal political commentator, wrote on X. "It’s all theatrics."U.S. politics and culture historian Joanne Freeman suggested Trump's post represented a repeating pattern."He will never stick with any deal," Freeman wrote. "He will never accept that he has lost…anything. He sees nothing but himself. Pretty clear by this point."Oeishik a political commentator, with more than 11,000 followers, openly mocked Trump's tactic."That's one way to do diplomacy, I guess. In this upside-down world," Oeishik wrote.Denison Barb, a progressive commentator with more than 19,000 followers, responded on X, When you have a demented old man at the helm no one knows what's going on."Leavitt confirms that Trump is unilaterally changing the terms of the Saudi nuclear deal via Truth Social posts without even contacting any Saudi officials pic.twitter.com/DjcRBANhvj— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 23, 2026

Jul 23, 2026 - World

The men were convicted over alleged plan to stage coup and organise deadly demonstrations over fuel prices last yearTwo Russian men have been found guilty by an Angolan court of terrorism and spying after being accused of planning a coup and helping to organise deadly demonstrations in the southern African country last year.Lev Lakshtanov and Igor Ratchin were sentenced to eight and 11 years in jail respectively. They had denied the charges, claiming they were in Angola for cultural and business activities. Continue reading...

Jul 23, 2026 - World

September exercise called off after Kenya raises concerns over funding and jurisdiction for criminal offencesThe British army has been forced to cancel training for its troops in Kenya after the Kenyan government refused to ratify a bilateral defence agreement.While the UK government wanted to renew the existing agreement, Kenyan lawmakers had sought changes to give local authorities greater powers to hold British soldiers accountable for any offences committed in the country. Continue reading...

Jul 23, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump's controversial nuclear deal with the leadership of Saudi Arabia is now in doubt after the president threw the Middle Eastern nation a curve on Thursday morning.Trump abruptly inserted a bombshell condition into a nuclear agreement that was supposedly finalized just 24 hours earlier: Saudi Arabia must normalize relations with Israel to receive U.S. nuclear technology, The Washington Post is reporting.The move has thrown the entire agreement into chaos, according to the report. Trump announced via Truth Social that the civil nuclear deal—which would allow Saudi Arabia to develop nuclear power plants and pursue enrichment programs—is "totally subject" to Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, the initiative from his first term designed to normalize Israeli-Arab relations.“The Civil Nuclear Deal (There will be no enrichment of material!) being made between the United States Department of Energy and Saudi Arabia, which pertains only to non-military use such as the ones that Iran and UAE (and others) already have, will be approved,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday. “But is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.”The problem is monumental: Saudi Arabia has consistently refused to join the Abraham Accords and shows no signs of capitulating now.According to the Post, "That attaches a major string to the deal. Saudi leaders were nearing a normalization agreement with Israel in 2023, just before the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 of that year. Since then, however, talks have been paused. Saudi leaders have said they would want guarantees of an eventual Palestinian state, and Saudi public opinion has soured toward Israel because of its handling of Gaza. Any nuclear deal tied to Saudi-Israel diplomatic breakthroughs has seemed remote."The nuclear technology deal itself has generated controversy in Congress. Lawmakers worry that expanding enrichment programs across multiple nations increases proliferation risks and could eventually result in more countries possessing nuclear weapons capabilities.Trump's sudden new condition transforms an already contentious agreement into a political landmine—potentially derailing both the nuclear deal and his broader Middle East diplomatic agenda.

Jul 23, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump's election theft speech put his CIA director in the spotlight — and now calls are mounting for him to push back, according to a new report. Questions are being raised about Director John Ratcliffe's conduct during the initial investigation into foreign election tampering and his silence now as the president fires off "Looney Tunes" accusations, MS NOW's David Rohde reported Thursday. Ratcliffe's complicity—or silence—has become impossible to ignore, according to Rohde.As Trump's current CIA director, Ratcliffe served as Director of National Intelligence from May 2020 through January 2021, controlling what intelligence reached the president's desk and what remained hidden.The timing, Rohde argued, is damning.Trump claimed in his recent speech that U.S. intelligence agencies discovered Chinese interference in the 2020 election but deliberately concealed it from him.Yet Ratcliffe was the gatekeeper deciding what Trump saw and didn't see during that exact period, Rohde noted.Trump's declassified documents, released to support his election fraud narrative, claim U.S. intelligence learned in 2020 that China had "bought, stolen or hacked" tens of millions of Americans' voting records. According to Trump, spy agencies kept this bombshell secret.But Ratcliffe was one of the officials who decided what warranted inclusion in Trump's daily briefings, Rohde wrote. He argued if the intelligence existed as Trump claims, then Ratcliffe bore responsibility for either including or excluding it."Critics say that Ratcliffe should stand up to Trump and threaten to resign — or actually resign — as cabinet members did in his first term, including former Defense Secretary Gen. Jim Mattis, former Attorney General Bill Barr, and former CIA director Gina Haspel," Rohde wrote.Instead, Ratcliffe has maintained silence—enabling what former CIA analyst Julia Curlee describes as a "conspiracy of silence" enveloping Washington.Curlee, who recently resigned after 20 years of service, told MS NOW, "To me, it was crossing a Rubicon where the institution itself was being conscripted into the creation of a product to reinforce the president's messaging. I never thought that I would see the CIA participating in a presidential effort to delegitimize elections in the eyes of Americans."Former senior CIA official Marc Polymeropoulos acknowledged Ratcliffe's impossible position: protecting both his job and the CIA's institutional integrity while serving a president hostile to both."Ratcliffe certainly does need to play it both ways in some respects, as he's got a workforce at CIA that will not react well to sources and methods being compromised based on cherry-picked intelligence to promote Looney Tunes conspiracy theories," Polymeropoulos, an MS NOW contributor added. "But at the same time, he's gotta protect his job from the mercurial Trump. So far, he's managed to successfully dance through the raindrops on this issue."