Top World News

Sep 4, 2026 - World

Seoul reportedly seeking parliamentary approval to send military assets to Middle East but president’s office plays down claimsSouth Korea is reviewing a possible deployment of military assets to the strait of Hormuz amid pressure from Donald Trump over Seoul’s reluctance to provide support in the region, according to domestic media reports.Citing unnamed government and military sources, the reports published on Thursday and Friday said preparations were under way and that the government intended to seek parliamentary approval for a new deployment. The reports, which appeared in major South Korean outlets, said the exact scale and timing had not been agreed. Continue reading...

Sep 4, 2026 - World

Fears that President Donald Trump could freeze foreign assets are driving billions in gold out of New York's vaults, an economics journalist warned.In a Thursday article for The Bulwark, economics editor and columnist Catherine Rampell described the gold retreat as a signal of how far U.S. relationships, in particular with its European allies, have deteriorated."In a frightening sign of just how much trust has been lost between the United States and its erstwhile allies, billions of dollars of gold reserves are being repatriated or otherwise moved out of Trump's reach," Rampell wrote.The Dutch central bank announced on Wednesday that it had moved roughly $12 billion in gold, most of it held in New York, to vaults in London, Rampell noted. France's central bank recently sold about $15 billion in bullion stored in New York and replaced it with bars kept in Paris. Germany and Italy, which are the second- and third-largest holders of gold reserves behind the U.S., have spent the past year weighing whether to bring theirs home too, Rampell added.The concern is less that Trump would seize the gold than that he might freeze it, Rampell explained. Washington and its allies did the same with Russia's reserves after the invasion of Ukraine, she pointed out.A German member of the European Parliament, Markus Ferber, warned that the risk is impossible to dismiss, she noted."Trump is erratic, and one cannot rule out that someday he will come up with creative ideas how to treat foreign gold reserves," Ferber said, per Rampell.Rampell admitted the scale of the fear caught her off guard."It hadn't really occurred to me that investors might be diversifying away from U.S. dollar-denominated assets because they also feared losing access to them," she wrote.The nervousness has built during a string of Trump moves, including his "Liberation Day" tariffs, his threats to annex Greenland, his push to take "golden share" stakes in private companies, and his stated wish to personally inspect Fort Knox, according to Rampell.Because gold sits inside the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Trump's campaign to control the Federal Reserve feeds fears that foreign reserves could be next, Rampell wrote. A representative of Germany's Taxpayers Federation put it bluntly, she noted."It's our money," the representative said. "It should be brought back."

Sep 4, 2026 - World

Will Saletan from The Bulwark unloaded on Thursday about President Donald Trump's new oil deal with Venezuela — a turn of events that, he said, lays bare how "absolutely disgusting" Trump's plot has been all along.Trump, said Saletan, "said it more than doubles American oil reserves ... and he wrote this: 'One of the things I'm going to do with the Venezuelan oil is fill up the strategic national reserves,'" which were depleted severely by Trump's war with Iran. He claims that this oil is a "gift from Venezuela to the people of the United States."Right-wing outlets aren't even trying to hide what this is anymore, said Saletan. They aren't claiming that Trump's operation to capture Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro was about liberating the people, he added, leading him to conclude that it was always about oil.For example, Saletan noted, right-wing commentator Ben Ferguson said of the deal, "I think this vice president and president understand this is a moment in Venezuela where you could have a lot of leverage, and you could get something good, and clearly they're willing to play ball. Now, that's big — they're willing to play along because we have leverage." The leverage, Saletan noted, is the fact that America just attacked their country.Meanwhile, he said, Rachel Campos-Duffy, the wife of Trump's Transportation Secretary, acknowledged on Fox News, "I think in Venezuela, the reviews on this are very mixed — mostly negative — among them, not because they're not happy about the potential economic upsides, but they don't trust Delcy Rodríguez" — that being the acting president the U.S. installed in place of Maduro, despite her having all the same policies as her predecessor apart from being more open to do oil deals.Even Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) — who has talked a big game about genuine liberation for Latin American countries — is now saying, "The United States helped them liberate themselves from Maduro. So the reward is to give fair benefits to the oil companies," including "100 years" of being able to exploit the country's oil reserves. "This is the way Trump and his allies in Congress think — it's always, always about the money," said Saletan.But perhaps the most damning admission, said Saletan, came from former Trump deputy National Security Adviser Victoria Coates, who said Venezuelan oil contracts should "enshrine this deal so a change of government will not imperil those billions of dollars of investment we're going to have to see out of our private sector to make this work." In other words, it needs to be set up so even if the current regime is replaced with a democracy, the oil still flows no matter what the Venezuelan people want."Look, I don't know what your political views are. Maybe you believe in capitalism, maybe you don't," concluded Saletan. "But one thing we should all agree on is that this corrupt, coercive deal is disgusting and ruthless, and it's wrong. It is a total perversion of capitalism combined with the worst kind of socialism." - YouTube www.youtube.com

Sep 4, 2026 - World

MS NOW anchor and former Republican Party chairman Michael Steele barely concealed his anger on Thursday while laying out the suffering that President Donald Trump's war in Iran has inflicted on U.S. Navy sailors.The USS Abraham Lincoln has become a poster child for the issue, having been deployed to the Persian Gulf for a record amount of time, leaving sailors with strained resources and a mental health crisis."There are 18 families who have proof ... when we look at how this began, where we are now, and the lack, I think, of regard for the sacrifice of those 18 service members," said Steele.Steele then went on to tear down remarks on the subject made today by Vice President JD Vance.His red flags, he said, were "on high, high red alert when he says, we're not going to set an artificial timeline. What if I told you three weeks? Well, the president told us four. Mr. Vice President, do you remember that? Did he miss that part of the conversation? In the month of February? March? He told us four weeks when he says, you know, I have a problem with the phrase an end to the war. I want to push back on that just a little, because major combat operations are currently not ongoing.""Well, sir, that's not the definition of a war," said Steele. Regardless of whether combat operations are taking place, he said, "once I can still shoot at you and you still be in war, that's what Iran is doing. You have no response to that."It's high time, he continued, for Congress to "step in and bring some coherent sanity to this madness before more lives are lost.""We have the USS Lincoln just docking, taking, getting to a port after how many months at sea. And no one in this government had the common sense to realize we can't leave that big-behind ship out there all this time, with none of the soldiers or sailors getting off at a port. Someone has got to take control of this. The country at this November election is going to be looking to someone to do that, because clearly these numbnuts can't do it." - YouTube www.youtube.com

Sep 3, 2026 - World

A businessman dubbed "MAGA's Man in Latin America" who once accepted an award at Mar-a-Lago is now sitting in a Bolivian jail accused of plotting to have his pregnant ex-girlfriend killed, according to a new report. Fernando Cerimedo, a business associate of Brad Parscale, the digital mastermind behind two of President Donald Trump's presidential campaigns, was arrested at Bolivia’s Viru Viru Airport last month on conspiracy-to-murder charges, the Bulwark reported Thursday.Cerimedo built a career advising conservative populist leaders across the region on digital strategy, including Argentina's Javier Milei, according to the report.At a February "Hispanic Prosperity Gala" at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, Cerimedo accepted an award for "Hispanic Political Consultant of the Year" and singled out his benefactor: "Thank you to Brad Parscale! For believing [in] me all the time, and giving me your technology."Six months later, on Aug. 17, gunmen posing as delivery drivers shot Cerimedo's pregnant ex-girlfriend, Nadia Beller, outside a hotel in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, according to the report.Beller survived and began giving interviews from her hospital bed "implicating Cerimedo," the Bulwark reported. Cerimedo was arrested attempting to fly to his native Argentina and now "faces preventive detention" and separate investigations into alleged drug trafficking, The Bulwark Reported reported."The scandal is raising questions about Parscale’s ties to Cerimedo as well," The Bulwark reported."The New York Times and the Economist both described Cerimedo as Parscale’s 'partner.' La Derecha Diaria, a right-wing website in Argentina founded by Cerimedo, announced last year that Cerimedo would be the 'representative' in Latin America for two of Parscale’s companies."Paracale, whose career in politics was eclipsed after he was taken into custody by police in 2020 over what were described as "mental health" problems, declined to comment to The Bulwark.