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After two years of war, there is a chance of a deal that will end the killing and destruction in Gaza and return the Israeli hostages, living and dead, to their families. It is an opportunity, but it is not certain that it will be seized by Hamas and Israel.It is a grim coincidence that the talks are happening exactly two years after Hamas inflicted a trauma on Israelis that is still acute. The 7 October attacks killed around 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians, and 251 were taken hostage. The Israelis estimate that 20 hostages are still alive and they...

Donald Trump had a warning to Democrats. Soon he will decide what "Democrat agencies" he would cut and whether those reductions would be temporary or permanent. He said the government shutdown, which began on Tuesday, had afforded him an "unprecedented opportunity". "I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame," he posted on his Truth Social website on Thursday morning. Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, may not be a household name. But Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for governing put together primarily by former Trump officials like Vought when...

A serving Metropolitan Police officer has been arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice over an allegation linked to a BBC Panorama investigation. The officer is a sergeant based at Charing Cross police station and was arrested in relation to an incident that took place on Thursday, a statement from the Met said. They have since been bailed and suspended from duty. The arrest follows a Panorama undercover investigation that revealed serving Metropolitan Police officers at the central London station called for immigrants to be shot, revelled in the use of force and were dismissive of rape claims....

Palestinians pursuing an apology from the UK over colonial-era war crimes allegations have urged the government to respond in light of its recognition this week of a state of Palestine. The group submitted a 400-page legal petition to the Foreign Office earlier this month seeking an official apology and reparations from the UK. They represent 13 families who say they were subjected to violence, exile or repression during the period known as the British Mandate in historical Palestine from 1917 until 1948. Victor Kattan, who speaks for the petitioners, said the government had a responsibility to acknowledge what took place...

The Trump administration has announced a plan to scrap a landmark finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to the environment, severely curbing the federal government's ability to combat climate change. Known as the "Endangerment Finding", the 2009 order from then-President Barack Obama allowed the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to create rules to limit pollution by setting emissions standards. ... The Endangerment Finding stemmed from a 2007 Supreme Court case in which the court ruled that greenhouse gases are "air pollutants" - meaning that the EPA has the authority and responsibility to regulate them under the US Clean Air Act....

When immigration agents pulled up outside a Los Angeles car wash on a quiet Sunday afternoon, it sparked instant chaos. Some customers at the Westchester Hand Wash, which sits in the centre of a busy shopping area just blocks from the city's airport, froze as the officers in olive-green uniforms approached, CCTV footage obtained by the BBC shows. Two employees who spotted them ducked behind a luxury SUV they were wiping down with a rag. Another worker halfway through cleaning the back window of a car looked up. Then all at once they scattered and ran, some jumping over a...

Americans across the country are remembering George Floyd five years after he was killed by police, with special gatherings in the city where he grew up and the one where he died. The murder of Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis by police officer Derek Chauvin led to nationwide protests against racism and police brutality. On Sunday, Floyd's family gathered in their hometown of Houston near Floyd's gravesite for an event led by the Rev. Al Sharpton, while Minneapolis held several commemorations. What many hailed as a national "reckoning" with racism after Floyd's death, though, seems to be fading as...

Canadian Prime Minister Markey Carney has said that "high level" talks are taking place with the US about joining its proposed "Golden Dome" missile defence system, aimed at countering futuristic threats. US President Donald Trump unveiled the plan for the new missile defence system on Tuesday, announcing an initial total cost of $25bn (£18.7bn). He said Canada was interested in joining the project. There are doubts from experts on how the US would deliver a comprehensive system and it is unclear how Canada would participate or how much it would pay. "It's something that we are looking at and something...

Donald Trump has proved to be the political Rottweiler of right-wing Afrikaner groups, taking their fight to South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa.They were quick to celebrate the US president's ambush of Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, with the Solidarity Movement - which had toured the US to lobby the Trump administration - saying it welcomed the fact that South Africa's "enormous problems have been placed on the international stage".Ernst Roets, a leading personality on the Afrikaner right, showed his admiration for the US president. "Donald Trump made history today," he said in a post on X, before thanking him for...

Denmark's foreign minister says he will summon the US ambassador to address a report that Washington's spy agencies have been told to focus on Greenland amid Donald Trump's threats to take over the island. "It worries me greatly because we do not spy on friends," Lars Løkke Rasmussen said, responding to the report in The Wall Street Journal. According to the newspaper, US spy agencies were told to focus efforts on the semi-autonomous country's independence movement, and American goals to extract mineral resources there. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard accused the Journal of attempts to "undermine" President Trump "by...

Vladimir Putin initially denied having anything to do with Russia's capture of Crimea in February 2014, when mysterious masked commandos in unidentified green uniforms seized the local parliament and fanned out across the peninsula. Those "little green men" marked the start of Russia's war on Ukraine, which culminated in the 2022 full-scale invasion. The future of Crimea is now at the centre of President Donald Trump's peace plan and has prompted Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky to rule out recognising Russian control of the peninsula. The exact terms of his plan have not been published, but reports suggest it would include the...

Donald Trump has said Volodymyr Zelensky shares the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin for "millions of people dead" in the Ukraine war. "When you start a war you got to know you can win," he said, also blaming former US President Joe Biden for the conflict. "Millions of people dead because of three people," Trump said on Monday. "Let's say Putin number one, let's say Biden who had no idea what the hell he was doing, number two, and Zelensky." It is estimated that hundreds of thousands, but not "millions", of people have been killed or injured on all...

When his camera stopped working on his iPhone recently, New Yorker Richard Medina didn't waste any time. With the threat of tariff-fuelled price hikes on smartphones bearing down, he quickly called his phone company for a new one. "I said, 'We've got to switch this out now,'" the 43-year-old recalled. "Let's take care of it." The move was a sign of the pressure rising across the US, where households are being buffeted by what could be staggering price rises, and even possible shortages triggered by the sweeping tariffs that US President Donald Trump announced this month. Some are trying to...

One country that did not feature on Donald Trump's list of tariffs on US trade partners was Russia. US outlet Axios quoted White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt as saying this was because existing US sanctions on Russia "preclude any meaningful trade" and noting that Cuba, Belarus and North Korea were also not included. However, nations with even less trade with the US - such as Syria, which exported $11m of products last year according to UN data quoted by Trading Economics - were on the list. The US imposed large-scale sanctions on Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine...

We're now getting a wider picture of how investors are reacting to Trump's sweeping tariffs. In Asia, major stock indexes have fallen in morning trading as concerns grow over the threat of a global trade war. Stock markets in mainland China have just opened with the Shanghai Composite index trading broadly flat, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng is down by 1.2%. The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo is down by 2.9%, the Kospi in South Korea is down by 1.7%, and Australia's ASX 200 is around 1.2% lower. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down by around 800...

Gurpreet Singh was handcuffed, his legs shackled and a chain tied around his waist. He was led on to the tarmac in Texas by US Border Patrol, towards a waiting C-17 military transport aircraft. It was 3 February and, after a months-long journey, he realised his dream of living in America was over. He was being deported back to India. "It felt like the ground was slipping away from underneath my feet," he said. Gurpreet, 39, was one of thousands of Indians in recent years to have spent their life savings and crossed continents to enter the US illegally through...

When Donald Trump's fortunes took a downturn in the 90s and he needed to raise cash fast, he sailed his 282ft (85m) superyacht, the Trump Princess, to Asia hoping he could attract Japan's wealthy. It wasn't the first time the businessman had sought out Japanese buyers or lenders for his projects. In the cut-throat world of New York real estate, Trump had a front-row seat from his Fifth Avenue skyscraper of Tokyo's buying spree in the 80s of iconic US brands and properties, including Rockefeller Center. It was then that his worldview on trade and America's relations with its allies...

US President Donald Trump has said Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has done a "very good job thus far" and that the pair have a "very good relationship". Asked by the BBC on board Air Force One about his relationship with Sir Keir, Trump added that they would be having a call "over the next 24 hours". Trump and the Labour leader have met on a number of occasions, including a visit by Sir Keir to Trump Tower in New York during the presidential campaign. Tech billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk, however, has been strongly critical of Sir Keir...

Conservatives - 25%, Labour 24%, Reform 24% This was on BBC NewsNight. I think it's released tomorrow from one of the top polling companies Nigel Farage is level with the party in government !!

For much of the 2024 US presidential campaign, polls and pundits rated the race too close to call. Then Donald Trump delivered a commanding victory over Kamala Harris, winning at least five battleground states, and performing unexpectedly well in other places. He is now poised to become the first Republican in two decades to win the popular vote, and could enter office with a Republican-controlled House and Senate at his back. So were the polls wrong about it being a tight contest? At the national level, they certainly appeared to underestimate Trump for the third election in a row. But...