Top World News

Jul 18, 2026 - World

Taylor Farms does not specify where products were served or sold, as US braces for weeks more of outbreakTaylor Farms recalled potentially contaminated shredded iceberg lettuce in 27 states on Friday, including lettuce distributed as recently as Thursday, as cases of cyclosporiasis continue rising in the US.The US is likely to see at least another two weeks of possible cases, since infections may have happened in recent days. And the expanding outbreak investigation could point to other products in coming days. Continue reading...

Jul 18, 2026 - World

Australia risks ‘shipping’ intellectual capability overseas if educational rigour not restored, experts warnFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAn academic at the Australian National University has accused it of a “hysterical” response to students using AI to cheat, as tertiary institutions rush to shore up the credibility of assessments.But a colleague warned Australia is in danger of “shipping our national intellectual capability” to companies in California and China if educational rigour is not restored. Continue reading...

Jul 18, 2026 - World

Incoming PM will reallocate unspecified resources from unpopular plan to helping with cost of livingAndy Burnham is expected to scrap Keir Starmer’s plans for digital ID cards in a “reset of priorities” when he enters Downing Street on Monday.The new Labour leader plans to redirect the resources earmarked for the scheme towards tackling the cost of living, his team indicated on Saturday. Continue reading...

Jul 18, 2026 - World

Sirens sound in Bahrain and Kuwait accuses Tehran of targeting civilian sites and infrastructure as Iran strikes US alliesTwo US troops were killed and one remains missing in Jordan after Iran launched a wave of attacks against US allies in the Middle East.Iran’s attacks came as the renewal of US strikes on Iran entered a second week and fighting escalated over the strait of Hormuz. Continue reading...

Jul 18, 2026 - World

About 10,000 people in nearly two dozen villages in southern Iran were without drinking water while the region was under an excessive heat warning on Saturday, after the US struck a water desalination plant in the village of Bonji in one of its latest attacks on Iranian civilian infrastructure.Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting said the drinking water supply was expected to be restored within a week, and emergency supply operations had begun.Drop Site News reported comments from the deputy governor for political and security affairs in Hormozgan province, who said several missiles had hit power infrastructure and water desalination plants in the region near the Strait of Hormuz, which President Donald Trump has demanded control over as he’s ramped up attacks on Iran in recent days, despite a ceasefire and a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to end hostilities that was agreed to in June.On Saturday, Iranian officials said the country was suspending its commitments to the MOU after the US violated the agreement repeatedly over the past week.“The US has violated and suspended all its commitments within the framework of the Islamabad MOU,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi. “We also likewise have suspended all of our commitments as a result; we are no longer implementing those commitments.”He added that Tehran is now “busy defending the country.”A representative for Hormozgan province, Ahmad Moradi, told Iran’s Tasnim news agency that over the past two nights, “about seven to eight people” have been killed in US attacks, all of whom were civilians. One attack targeted a bridge and hit two family cars. The neighborhood of Tappeh Allaho Akbar in Bandar Abbas was also hit, killing a woman and injuring a one-year-old, whose wounds required doctors to amputate.At least 116 telecommunication towers were out of service in southern Iran Saturday, Al Jazeera reported.The Iranian Embassy in India posted a video of the destruction of a bridge and also condemned the US attack on a maritime surveillance tower at the Chabahar Port, which US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth boasted about on social media on Thursday.“For a state that once cast itself as the global champion of order, liberalism, and the war on terrorism, proudly displaying images of destroyed bridges and civilian infrastructure has become its only remaining ‘victory,’” said Esmaeil Baqaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Saturday. “Yet with the collapse of every bridge, every tower, and every civilian facility, it is not merely steel and concrete that is being reduced to rubble. It is America’s moral standing—along with the entire architecture of international law and the civilizational claims of the West—that is crumbling before the world’s eyes.”According to Drop Site, US attacks have targeted nine bridges, two airports, a railroad junction, and a road tunnel since Wednesday. At least 41 Iranians have been killed and 408 have been wounded in US attacks so far this month, with Iranian authorities reporting that at least three women and one child are among those killed.In a letter to United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran’s permanent UN representative, wrote on Saturday that US attacks had “targeted and caused extensive damage to ports, transportation networks, communications facilities, logistics hubs, radar installations, coastal defense systems and other infrastructure indispensable to the civilian population, and to the functioning of the national economy.”“The continued commission of these unlawful armed attacks poses a grave threat to international peace and security, freedom of navigation, regional stability, and the security of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” wrote Iravani.Iran has retaliated against the US this week by striking American allies, including Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan. Kuwait’s government Saturday said a power plant and water treatment plant had been attacked for the second time in two days, as well as an oil facility.Two US soldiers were killed and a third was missing after an Iranian attack on a US military base in Jordan—the first American service members to be killed from hostile fire since an initial ceasefire was brokered in April.Roxane Farmanfarmian, a professor of Middle East politics at the University of Cambridge, told Al Jazeera that Iranian forces are “using Kuwait, in particular, as an example of what they can do in retaliation.”“The US is clearly hitting the south in Iran and hitting airports, desalination plants, and bridges, and so the same kinds of things are being hit now in Kuwait to show what kind of effect Iran really can have on those countries that are hosting American bases,” she said.Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, echoed Iranian officials’ condemnation of the US attack on the southern water desalination plant on Saturday, saying it was “not a legitimate military target.”“It is a war crime to target it,” he said.