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US President Donald Trump said Monday that talks with Iran would proceed in two phases and described the negotiations as Tehran’s “last chance” to sign an agreement. He said the first phase would focus on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, with the goal of having it “completely open” by Tuesday. “The second phase will be the denuclearization,” Trump said, adding that Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

President Donald Trump said Monday that ExxonMobiland Chevron made “too much money” on rising curde oil prices due to the Iran war.“They’re making too much money based on a shortage,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I don’t like it.”

A Canadian nonprofit’s website that mails abortion pills to women worldwide will stay blocked in Korea after a Seoul court ruled that the government’s ban was not unlawful, according to legal sources on Saturday. The Seoul Administrative Court dismissed a lawsuit filed by Women on Web against the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC), seeking to overturn the regulator’s corrective order ㅑon June 12. The block is “hard to see as unlawful because Women on Web’s provision of abortion pills that were not manufactured, imported or approved for use in Korea violated the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act,” the court said. It therefore...

Iranians have adopted a new sport in the past few years: knocking the turban from a passing cleric’s head. There are points for technique and for how high and how far you can get their headgear to go. These are small acts of revenge against a hated religious elite who came to power on a wave of arrests and torture and who, as recently as January, ordered thousands of peaceful protesters to be shot in the streets. It’s also a symptom of something larger. Political Islam is in retreat across the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. “The strange...

Last week, I was invited to join a program hosted by an independent Iranian media platform called Azad, which specializes in facilitating debates between policy experts in Iran and further abroad. My debate was with Majid Shakeri, who gained prominence as a foreign policy advisor to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (the current speaker of the country’s parliament) during Ghalibaf’s most recent presidential campaign. Shakeri was also part of the negotiating team that went to Islamabad earlier this year to hammer out the (now-moribund) MOU with the United States. These days, when you listen to Shakeri’s interviews, you will hear him insist...

President Trump on Monday blasted Iran’s leadership as “unbelievably duplicitous,” accusing Tehran of privately pursuing peace talks with the US while publicly denying any negotiations were taking place days after he called off a massive military campaign planned for the weekend.In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed Iranian officials had sought a meeting with the US before turning around and insisting they were only in talks with Oman over plans for the Strait of Hormuz. “They ask for a meeting, some would say ‘beg,’ talks begin, with more scheduled in the immediate future, and they say, openly and proudly, that...

US President Donald Trump criticized Iran’s leadership for being “unbelievably duplicitous” and accused them of being dishonest regarding the status of US-Iran negotiations in a post on Truth Social on Monday. “They ask for a meeting… talks begin, with more scheduled in the immediate future, and they say, openly and proudly, that they’re not having any discussions, that nothing is being talked about,” Trump lamented. He added that “nothing gets through to Iran, unless we want it to, and nothing will get through, unless a deal, or total surrender, is accomplished.” Trump also disputed Iranian claims of controlling the Strait...

An Afghan man has been arrested in Athens in connection with the death of a Scottish woman whose body was found in a suitcase. Elisabeth-Jane Ross, 38, from Edinburgh, was discovered on July 18 stuffed inside the suitcase and hidden in an abandoned building in the Kypseli district of the Greek capital. Her body was discovered by a homeless man after a "bad smell" emerged from an empty building and he saw "what looked like a human limb" coming out of a suitcase. Greek police said a 26-year-old foreign national from Afghanistan had been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, robbery...

The Iranian government flat-out rejected President Trump’s claim that new negotiations were due to get underway later Monday, with officials stating that no talks were taking place or scheduled.Trump, 80, told reporters en route to Washington Sunday night that he had called off a planned “massive attack” on Iran at the request of US partners in the region — including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.“They thought that a deal is imminent,” said the president, later adding: “Now what we’re doing is talking to them [Iran], in the form of a ​negotiation. It begins tomorrow afternoon.” Iran Foreign...

Iran has denied Donald Trump's claim that new talks on ending the conflict would begin on Monday, after the US president called off what he said would have been "massive" strikes on the country.Speaking on board Air Force One on Sunday, he said Iran "knew the extent of the attack because they saw it forming", adding: "We're talking to them in the form of a negotiation. It begins tomorrow afternoon."In an earlier post on Truth Social, Trump said he had been asked by Iran and US allies in the Middle East to "hold off" as the "perimeters" of a deal...

A Mexican drug lord ordered a hitman to kill a beauty influencer because she had broken up with his son, authorities have claimed. Valeria Marquez was live streaming to her followers from inside her beauty salon, Blossom the Beauty Lounge, in Zapopan, the western Mexican state of Jalisco, when a motorbike-riding gunman opened fire last May. Prosecutors are now accusing Ramon Angel Alvarez Ayala, a senior figure in the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) - considered to be one of Mexico's most powerful criminal organisations, of ordering her murder, as well as a local mayor's. Ayala - more commonly known...

Last year, a bipartisan group of members of Congress introduced H.Res.776: a resolution expressing concern about the persecution of Coptic Christians under Egypt’s Islamic regime. The resolution has only picked up 8 cosponsors and has yet to make it out of committee. By contrast, 103 House Democrats voted to cut aid to Israel out of H. R. 8595 which also apportions $1.4 billion to Egypt and $1.6 billion to Jordan. Meanwhile an amendment to zero out the $1.4 billion in military aid to Egypt never even made it out of the House Rules Committee while none of the Democrats who...

JERUSALEM—In Jerusalem’s Old City, a group of Israeli teenagers recently banged on the door of the headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church and asked if there were Christians inside it. They wanted to spit at them.The boys said it was a religious duty, or mitzvah, to humiliate Christians, or, as they called them, idol worshipers. “We are supposed to hate them,” explained one teen, wrapped in an Israeli flag. They were among the thousands of mostly young Israelis who on that May afternoon marched through the historic Old City for a national celebration that marks the capture of East Jerusalem...

Hamas terrorists were quietly building a sprawling European terror network for years — stockpiling guns, scouting targets, and even filming a martyrdom-style video — as they plotted a massacre on the continent to mirror the horrific October 7 attack on Israel, according to a bombshell investigation released last week. The chilling scheme, uncovered through a joint probe by European intelligence agencies and reported by Swiss outlet Neue Zürcher Zeitung, spanned at least seven countries: Greece, Cyprus, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Poland, and Britain. The terror group eyed the second anniversary of its 2023 rampage, October 7, 2025, as a possible attack...

Today, it's a field of grass. But soon, it'll be the site of the first mosque in this Japanese town. "It makes me worry about how our community might change," says long-time resident Noriko Izumizawa. Plans to build an Islamic religious site in Fujisawa, a laid-back seaside town about an hour's drive south of Tokyo, have sparked a wide range of emotions. There is anger and fear, as well as hope and acceptance, exposing the growing anxieties over immigration and social change as Japan grapples with a labour shortage from a shrinking and ageing population. Although immigration remains politically sensitive...

An unconscious woman lies motionless on the floor while medics gather around her contorted body. The 25-year-old has just been brutally whipped 21 times in public after an Indonesian court found her guilty of violating Islamic law by kissing her partner during a TikTok live-stream. The act may seem like an innocent exchange between a couple in love, but in Aceh – the only province in the South-East Asian country that applies a version of Sharia Law – it is met with severe punishment. The woman – who was pictured wincing in agony as she was lashed repeatedly – is...

The French government has revealed that an estimated ninety per cent of so-called wildfires are the result of human activity, undermining the persistent media narrative that climate change is driving spontaneous fires ravaging the countryside. On Tuesday, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said that 184 people have been arrested in connection with wildfires since the beginning of the summer. Those arrested are a combination of arsonists, criminals, and careless individuals, he said. According to the French Forest Observatory, around one in three (30 per cent) of wildfires are believed to have been set maliciously, Le Figaro reported. In total, the...

Japan is launching a new centralized intelligence body for the first time since World War II – a controversial move that some fear deviates from Tokyo’s pacifist ideals, but one others say is much needed in a country so riddled with security weaknesses it has been called a “paradise for spies.” The National Intelligence Bureau will formally launch on Friday, replacing previous structures criticized as disjointed and ineffective – and laying the foundation, experts say, for broader changes that could include an anti-spy law and a new external foreign intelligence agency similar to the CIA in the US, or MI6...

Sweden’s left-wing parties are running Arabic-language advertisements aimed at immigrant voters ahead of this year’s elections, repeating a strategy used during the 2022 campaign. The advertisements have appeared on Al Kompis, an Arabic-language website aimed at immigrants in Sweden who cannot speak Swedish. Political parties and public authorities have previously used the platform to reach the country’s Arabic-speaking population. Among those advertising during the current campaign are the Social Democrats and the Centre Party. An advertisement featuring Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson promises greater investment in healthcare and schools. It links to a dedicated campaign page claiming that the party’s...

Hours after Trump canceled a planned strike and said the outlines of a deal had been reached, a regime-linked Iranian outlet said the strategic waterway would remain closed as long as US ‘hostile actions’ continue. Iran on Sunday denied that it had reached any agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, directly contradicting U.S. President Donald Trump hours after he canceled a planned strike and announced that the outlines of a deal had been reached. “There is no agreement on reopening the Strait of Hormuz,” Iran’s regime-linked Fars news agency reported. “As long as the United States continues its hostile...