France has been plunged into a new political crisis with the defeat of Prime Minister François Bayrou at a confidence vote in the National Assembly. The defeat – by 364 votes to 194 – means that Bayrou will on Tuesday present his government’s resignation to President Emmanuel Macron, who must now decide how to replace...
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced his administration has reached a settlement with Harvard University under which the institution would pay $500 million to resolve a long-running dispute with the federal government. Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said the deal was close to completion. “Linda is finishing up the final details,” he said,...
Donald Trump’s H-1B visa crackdown, opens new tab will hasten U.S. firms’ shift of critical work to India, turbocharging the growth of global capability centres (GCCs) that handle operations from finance to research and development, economists and industry insiders say. The world’s fifth-largest economy is home to 1,700 GCCs, or more than half the global tally, having...
European and Middle Eastern leaders have welcomed a US peace plan for Gaza, as President Donald Trump warned Hamas to accept it. The plan, agreed by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, proposes an immediate end to fighting, the release within 72 hours of 20 living Israeli hostages held by Hamas as well as...
Russia attacked the Ukrainian capital and other cities across the country on Sunday with nearly 600 drones and dozens of missiles, killing at least four people in Kyiv and injuring dozens more in an hourslong assault. “A massive Russian attack on Ukraine lasted for more than 12 hours,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in...
World leaders gathered at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on Wednesday as the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) moved into its second day. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Finland’s President Alexander Stubb were among those who arrived at the UN for the high-level debate. Wednesday’s lineup of speakers...
Israel launched a series of airstrikes on Yemen’s Hodeidah Port, a strategic site controlled by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) stated that the operation targeted military infrastructure used by the Houthis, who have been involved in missile and drone attacks against Israel and its allies. This move follows a pattern of...
An emergency summit of Arab and Islamic country leaders held in Doha has condemned Israel’s “cowardly” attack on Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital, but the participants made no promises of concrete action. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)’s pledge to “activate a joint defence mechanism” may have been the most actionable result of the summit,...
US President Donald Trump has said he is ready to impose tougher sanctions on Russia, but only if Nato countries meet certain conditions which include stopping buying Russian oil. In a post on his Truth Social platform, he said he was “ready to do major sanctions on Russia” once Nato nations had “agreed, and started,...
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday proposed that members of the 10-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) should sell joint bonds, a step that would mark a major deepening of their economic cooperation. At a summit of the group in China, Putin also floated the idea of a joint payments system for trade settlements. The SCO,...