The European Parliament approved on Tuesday cutting duties on many US goods imports to fulfil the European Union’s side of a trade ‌deal struck last year, and avert a new round of tariff conflict between the world’s largest trading partners. US President Donald Trump struck a framework deal with the European Union at his Turnberry golf course in Scotland last July under which the EU agreed to remove import duties on US industrial goods in return for tariffs of 15 per cent on most EU...

US President Donald Trump said Russia should make peace with Ukraine after a “very good” meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday, in comments that sparked cautious optimism among G7 leaders that a peace deal could be struck. The upbeat mood over the Ukraine war, now deep into its fifth year, stands in stark contrast to Zelensky’s meeting with Trump in the Oval Office last year, when he was told he had no leverage in potential peace talks with Russia. Zelensky and his European allies...

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, one of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, said in an interview published on Monday that Russia and Ukraine must compromise to end the war that has raged for more than four years with no end in sight. Lukashenko, whose ex-Soviet state has been improving ties with Washington, also said that ‌he would not rule out meeting US President Donald Trump. Lukashenko told Al Arabiya television that it was clear that victory on the battlefield was...

Shipowners ⁠will not resume transit through ⁠the Strait of Hormuz for weeks until they are confident that the US-Iran deal is “material”, the CEO of Japan’s Mitsui O.S.K. Lines told the Financial Times in an interview published ‌on Tuesday. The Iran war that began on February 28 with US-Israeli strikes largely stopped shipping through the transit route for around a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supply, along with products such as aluminium and urea. Mitsui O.S.K., one of...

Benjamin Netanyahu bet that his joint war alongside Donald Trump would topple Iran’s clerical rulers and bolster ⁠himself ahead of the election at home, as the architect of a US-Israeli alliance that would reshape the Middle East. Instead, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is on a collision course with Trump as the US president seeks to extricate himself from the war, with both men’s goals unmet and Israeli military operations tied down in Lebanon. For now, Israeli officials have been...

Iranian Americans streamed into the Los Angeles stadium where Iran play their first match at the 2026 World Cup on Monday, with some calling for Iranians to band together and forget politics while others bore symbols protesting the government. The team arrived at the stadium, having flown into the US on Sunday from their training base in Tijuana, ‌Mexico, touching down in Los Angeles just as a deal was announced to end the US-Iran war. They are set to play New Zealand in Group G at 6pm local...

California ⁠Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday accused US President Donald Trump of directing the Justice Department to undertake a politically motivated investigation of him and his wife. “Donald Trump isn’t just coming after me because of my mean tweets,” Newsom said in a ‌video statement posted to social media. “He’s coming after me because I am considering running for president.” Federal police officers in Sacramento, California, have been conducting several investigations related to the...

A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, that accused rival Sam Altman’s OpenAI of stealing ‌trade secrets for chatbots. US District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco, California, said xAI failed to show that OpenAI induced former xAI senior engineer Xuechen Li, a Chinese national, to divulge confidential information related to its Grok chatbot, or that OpenAI engineers knew Li might have disclosed any. Lin ‌dismissed the case with...

Fox Corp is buying Roku in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about US$22 billion in a bet that pairing its sports and news programming with a top TV streaming platform ‌will strengthen its position as audiences shift online. The deal, announced on Monday, gives Fox access to the more than 100 million households using Roku’s streaming platform, potentially helping the cable TV-reliant media company better target ads and reduce reliance on traditional distribution. It is Fox’s first major...

The stepson of Norway’s Crown Prince Haakon was found guilty of two counts of rape, one count of domestic violence and other crimes and sentenced to four years in prison, after a seven-week trial that has further dented the royal family’s once picture-perfect image. Oslo District Court ruled that 29-year-old Marius Borg Hoiby, who joined the royal family when ‌his mother Mette-Marit married Haakon in 2001, was guilty of two counts of rape including one in the basement of the crown prince’s...

The United States and Iran have reached a deal to end their war and will hold an official signing ceremony on Friday in Geneva, Switzerland, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on social media early on Monday. “The Deal with ‌the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete,” US President Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform shortly after Sharif made his announcement. The agreement was struck despite an Israeli strike on Lebanon on Sunday that drew criticism from both Iran and...

British armed forces intercepted a sanctioned Russian shadow fleet oil tanker in the English Channel on Sunday, for the first time leading an operation to disrupt the oil revenue ‌that helps fund Russia’s war in Ukraine. The vessel Smyrtos, sailing under the Cameroon flag, was boarded by Royal Marine Commandos and National Crime Agency (NCA) officials in the early hours on Sunday, with support from Chinook helicopters and other aircraft, a frigate and a minehunter. “This successful operation...