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Sep 18, 2026 - World

The Iran-backed militia that once triggered one of the most damaging scandals of President Donald Trump's second term is back — and the president is trying to avoid a fight he already walked away from once, according to a new report.American diplomats met with Houthi representatives at the U.S. Embassy in Oman over the weekend in an effort to cool tensions and keep Red Sea shipping lanes open, a source briefed on the discussions told MS NOW. Both sides reaffirmed a ceasefire reached last year, under which the Houthis agreed not to strike U.S. targets in exchange for the U.S. standing down.That truce was born out of Trump's frustration with his military campaign that spawned Signalgate. In spring 2025, the U.S. launched a seven-week, more than $1 billion military operation against the Houthis — one that top officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, discussed on the Signal messaging app.The chats became public after then-national security adviser Mike Waltz mistakenly added a journalist to the thread, setting off months of controversy and staff turnover.Frustrated by the campaign's lack of progress, Trump halted it in May 2025 and struck the ceasefire instead.Now that decision has narrowed his options, reported MS NOW's Felicia Schwartz. With the U.S.-Iran war ongoing and Tehran controlling the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia had rerouted oil exports through the Red Sea to avoid the chokepoint.The Houthis have responded by seizing the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, threatening that backup route too and helping push gas prices higher just weeks before the U.S. midterms.Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally asked Trump last week to strike the Houthis after they took control of the strait, according to a person familiar with the call.Trump declined, telling the crown prince that Riyadh should take the lead on what the White House considers a regional security matter. Asked about the call while in Ireland, Trump called the crown prince "a good friend of mine" and predicted "everything's going to work out fine and dandy."A senior administration official said the U.S. expects the Houthis to keep honoring the ceasefire, noting the group has signaled it doesn't want to fight the U.S.But David Schenker, a former top State Department Middle East official now at the Washington Institute, said the president's rationale is both strategic and political. "Trump doesn't want to start another campaign, certainly not before the elections. We're short of munitions and already stretched."Trump's reluctance is frustrating to Saudi Arabia and Washington’s other Middle East partners who never wanted the Iran war in the first place but are now tasked with containing the fallout.“The war with Iran really exposed the vulnerabilities of a lot of our partners in the Gulf,” Schenker said. “It raises all sorts of questions about what a U.S. security commitment to the Gulf looks like.”

Sep 18, 2026 - World

A United Nations investigation found "reasonable grounds” that the United States had likely committed war crimes in its war against Iran, and the report is scheduled to be submitted to the international body on Monday — just one day before President Donald Trump is expected to address the UN and its “deeply skeptical audience” in New York, Reuters reported Friday.The report is expected to be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, and found that the United States had acted “recklessly” in its strikes on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school on the first day of the conflict, an attack that killed more than 150 civilians, including around 120 children. Investigators came to a “similar conclusion” regarding a U.S. strike on an Iranian sports hall that damaged a nearby school and killed 22 civilians, Reuters reported.In response to the probe’s findings, the White House attacked the UN Human Rights Council, accusing the body of having “accomplished nothing for human rights,” according to Reuters.The timing of the report puts its submission to the UN on a collision course with Trump’s address to the international body, where Reuters noted the president will “face a deeply skeptical audience increasingly rattled by six months of war between US forces and an emboldened Iran.”Aaron David Miller, who previously advised secretaries of state in both Republican and Democratic-led administrations, said that Trump had only himself to blame for what may be a sour reception at the UN gathering on Tuesday.“We are seeing what happens when a president launches a war of choice without anticipating the unintended consequences,” Miller told Reuters.Jonathan Panikoff, a Middle East expert and former deputy national intelligence officer, argued that Trump’s dilemma was only likely to get worse.“The US clearly has (military) capacity challenges but even so the cost of inaction here is likely to intensify tensions among Gulf allies,” Panikoff told Reuters.

Sep 18, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump hurled furious threats in the middle of the night and insisted his MAGA base read a three-week old column from a conservative Washington Post pundit.The president took to Truth Social at approximately 12:15 a.m. Friday to share a column by Marc Thiessen entitled "What the disloyal leaks about Iran prove about Trump," published on Aug. 27."Keep on leaking you dirty dogs!" he wrote. "When we find you, you will pay a big price!!!"Thiessen's column chastised "disloyalists" who have grown concerned about the ongoing war in Iran — and have spoken out about it."The message of the leakers is clear: Had Trump only listened to us, we would not be in this mess," Thiessen wrote. "These self-serving leaks actually show the opposite — by demonstrating what a courageous decision Trump made. Virtually alone, surrounded by naysayers, Trump acted to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon."Those words got a nod from Trump in the wee hours of Friday morning where he wrote on Truth Social, “Very interesting. A must read!"

Sep 18, 2026 - World

Simon Peter Carman appeared in a Pattaya court on Friday charged with killing Tunchanok Donhomla An Australian man accused of murdering a Thai teenager and putting her body in a suitcase pleaded not guilty on Friday in a hearing in the seaside resort city of Pattaya, a court official said.Simon Peter Carman, 45, was arrested in June after 17-year-old Tunchanok Donhomla was reported missing in Pattaya City, about 150km south-east of Bangkok. A suitcase containing her body was found shortly after. Continue reading...

Sep 17, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump could hold a landmark sit-down with Venezuela's interim leader Delcy Rodriguez within days, according to people familiar with the planning — an encounter insiders say comes loaded with political hazards on both sides of the border.The meeting would likely happen on the margins of Trump's upcoming trip to New York for the UN General Assembly, where talks with Gulf leaders on the Iran war are already on his calendar. Tuesday has emerged as a possible date for adding Rodriguez to the schedule, Axios reported.One Trump adviser framed the relationship as central to the administration's foreign policy wins, saying, "Iran is tough, but Venezuela is without a doubt the president's top success, and Delcy is a key to that." A senior administration official was more cautious, noting nothing is locked in yet, and the final call rests entirely with the president.A Manhattan meeting would unfold not far from the detention facility holding Nicolas Maduro, Rodriguez's old political partner turned prisoner, who's been sitting there since American forces snatched him from Caracas in a January raid Trump personally signed off on and now faces narco-terrorism charges. Rodriguez stepped into the power vacuum left behind and has since built a working relationship with Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, most notably through a sweeping oil agreement between the two governments that's drawn its own share of scrutiny.Not everyone is happy about that partnership. Venezuelan exiles concentrated in South Florida — a politically vocal bloc — have grown increasingly angry watching Washington cozy up to someone they view as cut from the same socialist cloth as Maduro, both having climbed to power under the late Hugo Chavez. Neither Trump nor Rubio has demanded Venezuela actually hold elections, a notable silence given how relentlessly they once painted Maduro as a dictator who stole his own vote.Backers of exiled opposition figure Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, share some of that frustration too, still stung by administration pushback when she tried heading home after June's earthquakes.Venezuelan public opinion polling shows both Rodriguez and Trump struggling with weak approval, while Machado sits on top, even as her own support has started slipping. Some people close to Trump privately fret that being seen shaking his hand could brand Rodriguez a U.S. puppet in the eyes of her own citizens. The administration official waved off that worry entirely."The fact is POTUS loves Delcy because she's delivering and she's leading," the official said.Back home, though, political operatives in Florida say voters heading into the midterms are far more consumed by pain at the pump from the Iran conflict and the administration's crackdown on immigration than by anything happening with Venezuelan democracy — suggesting whatever backlash follows a Rodriguez meeting may stay confined largely to the exile community rather than spilling into the broader campaign.