Top World News

May 15, 2026 - World

Muscat silent about plans – opposed by US – to charge fee and demand details on nationality of all transiting shipsOman has been caught in geopolitical crossfire after Iran said it was coordinating with Muscat over the future management of the strait of Hormuz, including Tehran’s plans – opposed by the US – for fees to be paid by commercial shipping to a new Iranian government agency.The Omani exclave of Musandam lies to the south of the contested waterway, which normally carries a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil traffic but has been blockaded for 10 weeks since since the US-Israeli attack on Iran in February. Continue reading...

May 15, 2026 - World

The Greater Manchester mayor is hoping to return to parliament after a Labour MP stepped down, triggering a byelectionLabour’s deputy leader, Lucy Powell, has backed Andy Burnham’s efforts to return to parliament, saying there will be no attempt to stop the Greater Manchester mayor from fighting an upcoming byelection in Makerfield.Speaking at a Fire Brigades Union conference in Coventry, she saidWe could have further to fall as a party and we absolutely need to come back together as one team, because we’ve got to take the fight to [Nigel] Farage. We are at real risk of Nigel Farage walking up Downing Street in a few years time, and we can’t let that happen.But we’ve got to do our politics differently. We’ve got to end the factionalism. We’ve got to embrace all the different traditions of the Labour party, all the different voices, and bring one team back together. Continue reading...

May 15, 2026 - World

US-Iran War News Live Updates: US President Donald Trump is set to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping today in a high-stakes summit between the two countries.

May 15, 2026 - World

Move comes after state senators bucked demands to gerrymander congressional map following supreme court’s voting rights act decimationSign up for the Breaking News US emailJamieson Greer also said US export controls on semiconductor chips were not a major topic of discussions with Chinese officials in Beijing.The US trade representative’s comments to Bloomberg on Friday suggest a breakthrough on selling Nvidia’s advanced H200 chips to China remains far away, Reuters is reporting, despite Nvidia chief Jensen Huang’s last-minute invitation to Donald Trump’s Beijing trip this week.This was not a major topic of discussion at the bilateral meeting. We did not talk about chip export controls at the meeting.”First of all, it’s really important for China to have the strait of Hormuz open – no tolling, no military control. That was clear from the meeting, so we welcome that.With respect to Chinese involvement with Iran, our view is the Chinese are being very pragmatic – they don’t want to be on the wrong side of this. They want to see peace in that area, President Trump wants to see peace in that area, so we have a lot of confidence that they will do what they can to limit any kind of material support for Iran.” Continue reading...

May 15, 2026 - World

Zelenskyy accused Russia of committing war crimes after latest strikes on Ukraine killed at least 24Meanwhile, the Latvian president, Edgars Rinkēvičs, has begun political consultations aimed at finding a parliamentary majority capable of forming a new government after the collapse of prime minister Evika Siliņa’s administration.Rinkēvičs’s office posted a short video from the meeting on its social media. Continue reading...