Top World News

Jul 1, 2026 - World

A presidential historian is sounding the alarm about a recent mining deal that's expected to enrich the Trump family."The audacity is so off the Richter scale," Douglas Brinkley said about a deal between the Trump administration and Kazakhstan to access one of the world's largest untapped reserves of tungsten.The New York Times reported on the $1.6 billion tungsten mining deal with the Central Asian country. The Times noted that the sons of both Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stand to benefit. Tungsten is used in "missile warheads, fighter jets, computer chips, and other critical goods," the Times noted.Brinkley reacted to details of the deal as reported by the NY Times during an appearance on The Jim Acosta Show on Tuesday."People aren't sure what's even going on," Brinkley said. "You have to hope the law will eventually hold President Trump accountable if he did some things that are illegal and illicit, but the law moves slowly."Brinkley agreed with host Jim Acosta's assessment that Trump's self-enrichment during his second term is unprecedented."Just think, not that long ago, there was a scandal because Jimmy Carter's brother Billy had a beer, or you know, Neil Bush got involved with a bit of a hedge fund banking thing run a little bit amok," Brinkley said. "They're so small, and then this is such a huge wake-up call, people."The way Brinkley sees it, "you're having a president of the United States using the White House for personal self-enrichment of a kind of mind-boggling audacity," adding that "it's a crisis, but we've got to get through it."Read on Substack

Jun 30, 2026 - World

Local officials said preliminary reports showed the centre was unregistered and operating inside a privately owned residential building Fourteen children died after ⁠the roof of a tutoring centre collapsed in Pakistan’s eastern city of ⁠Lahore on Tuesday, ⁠rescue ​officials have said, as authorities opened the way for a possible negligence ⁠investigation.Punjab’s emergency service said rescuers found children and a 30-year-old female teacher ⁠under the rubble of the private after-school facility. The ​children killed were aged ‌five to ‌16 with most below nine. Continue reading...

Jun 30, 2026 - World

The internet criticized President Donald Trump's response on Tuesday to the Supreme Court ruling that upheld birthright citizenship and rejected the president's executive order.Trump posted a bizarre — and apparently sarcastic — statement on his Truth Social platform following the ruling."I would like to congratulate President Xi, and the Great Country of China, on their massive Birthright Citizenship WIN!" Trump wrote.Media and political commentators responded to the president's remarks."Sour, miserable, and un-American, even by the denatured standards of this president," Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic, wrote on X."He should resign if he doesn't like the Constitution he swore to uphold. UnAmerican!" Peggy Gabour, progressive political commentator, wrote on X."Translation: 'I’m super jealous that a dictator got permission to flush human rights down the toilet and I didn’t,'" Patric Reynolds, comic book artist and political commentator, wrote on Bluesky."Sorry, but isn’t Trump born of an immigrant?" The political account Mary Shelley’s Fluoxetine wrote on Bluesky.Sour, miserable, and un-American, even by the denatured standards of this president https://t.co/Ougc2u5ot5— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) June 30, 2026

Jun 30, 2026 - World

Government hopes for 30% of city’s fleet to be electric by 2030, in move hailed as ‘gamechanger’ on air pollutionThe unruly chaos of Delhi’s roads would be unrecognisable without the rickshaws and scooters that zip through India’s capital in their millions, emitting toxic fumes in their wake. But now, ambitious policies aim to give the city’s most recognisable vehicles an environmental makeover.On Monday, Delhi’s government announced plans to eventually ban petrol scooters, motorbikes and autorickshaws in favour of those running on electricity, in an attempt to bring down dangerously high pollution levels in the city by the end of the decade. Continue reading...

Jun 30, 2026 - World

Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly disavowed the existence of any formal agreement reached during his August summit with President Donald Trump in Alaska, undercutting months of Kremlin messaging that had treated the meeting as a diplomatic turning point in the war in Ukraine.Senior Russian officials had insisted for months that a path to ending the war — largely on Moscow's terms — had effectively been settled in Anchorage, with only Ukrainian resistance standing in the way, but that narrative has unraveled in recent days, and Putin himself finally undercut Trump's diplomatic claims, reported the Washington Post.“There were indeed no agreements reached in Anchorage," Putin told reporters Sunday.“The spirit of Anchorage — although it wasn’t expressed in any formal documents, and no one put any signatures down — in Anchorage we discussed certain possibilities for ending the crisis in Ukraine,” Putin added, "and the compromises discussed were precisely the proposals the American side made to us.”Three top Russian officials recently accused the White House of failing to honor the supposed Alaska agreement, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov going so far as to suggest the summit may have been a U.S. "ploy to buy time to rearm the Kyiv regime," but Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed back on the premise that any deal had been reached at all."If there had been an agreement, we would have had an end of the war," Rubio told reporters, noting that Russia's actual demands — including the entirety of Ukraine's Donetsk region — had never been agreed to.Analysts close to the Kremlin suggest the reversal reflects a shifting battlefield reality rather than a change of heart. Fyodor Lukyanov, a foreign policy analyst who advises the Kremlin, wrote that Trump likely arrived in Anchorage believing Ukraine's defeat was inevitable, but that Kyiv and European allies have since spent 10 months convincing him otherwise.That shift comes as Russian forces have stalled on the battlefield for the first time in four years, while Ukraine has scaled up drone production enough to sustain strikes deep inside Russian territory, including on occupied Crimea. Military analysts say Russia is increasingly playing catch-up technologically, even as it retains advantages in manpower and conventional weaponry.Meanwhile, Trump's attention has been pulled toward the conflict with Iran, and no major diplomatic breakthrough favoring Russia has emerged since the Anchorage summit.Putin said Sunday that Russia expects renewed U.S.-led peace talks, including a visit from envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, once the situation with Iran is resolved — suggesting Moscow still hopes to revive negotiations on more favorable terms, even as it now concedes the much-touted Alaska "deal" never actually existed.