Top World News

Jun 30, 2026 - World

Exclusive: Activist tells of his life as one of India’s most prominent political prisoners and his opposition to the government of Narendra ModiPrison is hardest at sunset. As the thousands of prisoners incarcerated in Delhi’s most infamous jail are cast out of their cells and forced into the dank yard until darkness falls, prisoner number 626714 feels the punishing dread begin to rise.Yet the inmate – better known as Umar Khalid – was recently moved to discover that another political prisoner, exiled at a camp thousands of miles from India, wrote of the very same feeling more than 150 years ago. Continue reading...

Jun 29, 2026 - World

Andy Burnham, the United Kingdom's likely prime minister-in-waiting, turned down an invite from President Donald Trump for the upcoming 250th anniversary of American independence, Politico reported on Monday.A spokesperson for Burnham told Politico that he won't attend the U.S. embassy's "Great American Jubilee" at U.S. Ambassador Warren Stephens’ official residence in Regent’s Park on Tuesday due to a "scheduling clash." The swanky celebration is expected to draw dignitaries, military brass and business leaders, and will feature a performance from country music superstar Tim McGraw."Invitations have been sent to every major party leader," according to Politico. "Previous attendees include former Prime Minister Liz Truss, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and outgoing U.K. PM Keir Starmer, who attended in 2023 before he entered office."Last week, Trump sneered at Burnham, calling him a former "mayor of a town" and "extremely liberal."Burnham was expected to be approved as the U.K.'s next prime minister on July 20, Politico reported.Burnham wasn't the only person to turn down Trump. Pop star Katy Perry declined to perform at America250 celebrations in Brussels over the weekend.

Jun 29, 2026 - World

The Wall Street Journal editorial board lambasted President Donald Trump over his efforts to secure a durable peace deal with Iran.U.S. and Iranian officials have agreed to halt their attacks on one another and meet Tuesday to talk out their dispute over the Strait of Hormuz, and the conservative newspaper's editors bashed the 80-year-old president for failing to keep the crucial waterway open – as it had been before he launched the war on Feb. 28."The best selling point for President Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran was that at least it opened the Strait of Hormuz," the board wrote. "Well, now the regime is trying to nullify those terms by using force against commercial vessels, Gulf states and U.S. bases. All of this violates the deal and calls into question why Mr. Trump signed it."The U.S. and Iran have traded strikes, and Trump has hyped what he called “gentlemen’s agreements” with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders to "turn over a new leaf," but the Journal's editors said the president was wrong to trust them."Well, these are no gentlemen," they wrote. "It’s the same terrorist regime, and this is the Battle of Hormuz that Mr. Trump thought he had ducked. In case there was any doubt, foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that Iran is solely responsible for managing the Strait under the memorandum. He said 'no other country has any responsibility in that regard.'""Force is the regime’s means to make the world bend," they added. "Without it, shippers refused to heed Iran’s dictates for Hormuz during the deal’s early days."The editorial board wondered why Trump was willing to give Iran anything without an assurance that the strait would remain free and open."The U.S. needs the leverage for nuclear negotiations, and it was never wise to give Iran a blank check," the board wrote. "All the more so now that the regime isn’t respecting the deal, which mandates a cease-fire as well as Iran’s 'best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels.' That means don’t shoot at them, for starters.""More U.S. 'love taps' against Iranian targets won’t impress the hard men in Tehran," the editors added. "They behave as if they have escalation dominance because they think Mr. Trump won’t return to war before the midterm elections. They don’t believe Mr. Trump’s social-media bluster because they see his reluctance to enforce the cease-fire terms."

Jun 28, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump’s decision to launch his unpopular war against Iran earlier this year has already sparked a global “shift,” renowned economic professor Richard Wolff argued recently, one that also set the president on an imminent path toward total irrelevancy in “only a few months.”A professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and former professor at Yale, Wolff pointed to the recent progressive sweep last week in New York as evidence of his theory, and compared it directly with the civil unrest sparked during the Vietnam War that ultimately helped – at least, in part – bring about the U.S. withdrawal.“We're beginning to see a significant self-defined socialist presence in our political life, and because it is coming at the time of the Iran war – and at the time of heightened focus on Israel and Palestine – it's very important to understand that there's a shift going on,” Wolff said in a recent appearance on the podcast “Dialogue Works,” adding that the “shift” had extended to “international affairs.”“Not everywhere in the same way, but, in a number of districts where that was the issue, the vote of the people has clearly been in the direction of criticism of Trump, the war in Iran [and] Israel.”Wolff, whose Jewish parents fled Nazi Germany for the United States, has been a fierce critic of Trump, the U.S. war against Iran and Israel. However, it’s been only after the Trump administration’s continued failures in achieving its stated war objectives in Iran that his views have gained enough traction to drive a major “shift,” he argued, one that would also result in Trump becoming largely irrelevant – and soon.“People should also be aware that there's really only a few months left for Mr. Trump,” Wolff predicted. “Once those elections happen in November – if, indeed they happen – he will then be a lame-duck president. And, given how badly his situation has developed over the first part of this year, we are looking at a man who is facing political pressures that include losing support and moving ever-closer to a day after which his relevance will be sharply reduced.”

Jun 28, 2026 - World

Iranian state media has reportedly declared that the country now has "no choice but to obtain the atomic bomb," according to a post circulating online — a statement that, if accurate, would mark a dramatic escalation amid the ongoing exchange of strikes between the U.S. and Iran.The claim was relayed by the account The Hormuz Letter, which posted what it described as a breaking statement from Iranian state media. According to that post, Iranian state media argued the country must "absolutely reach nuclear deterrence" before current negotiations can be conducted, framing the pursuit of a weapon as necessary to remove what it called "the military option for the occupation and partitioning of Iran" from the table.The reported statement seized the attention of David Pyne, an America First conservative who posts under @AmericaFirstCon and who has been sharply critical of the administration's handling of Iran. Pyne argued the development vindicated his earlier warnings about the consequences of President Donald Trump's approach."Iran is responding to Trump's continued nuclear threats against it by building more nuclear missiles just as I predicted they would do," Pyne wrote. He contended that "Trump's war on Iran hasn't reduced Iran's nuclear threat in any way" but had instead "served to greatly magnify and expand Iran's nuclear threat against the US and Israel."Pyne went further, delivering a stinging assessment of the president's broader record."Trump's disastrous foreign policy and endless unwinnable wars make Jimmy Carter look like a veritable foreign policy genius by comparison," he wrote.The reported statement also caught the attention of Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, who reacted with unease. "Ugh. Hope it's just bluster; fear it is not," McFaul wrote, sharing the same post.The reported declaration comes against the backdrop of a rapidly deteriorating ceasefire, with the U.S. carrying out repeated strikes on Iranian targets in recent days and Trump himself warning that "the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist" if forced to "militarily complete the job." Trump has also continued to insist that "Iran will never have a Nuclear Weapon."The Iranian framing — that only a nuclear deterrent can forestall foreign intervention — runs directly counter to the administration's stated goal of ending Tehran's weapons ambitions, and underscores the risk that the military campaign could harden rather than halt Iran's nuclear drive.